lending to spouses?

Sola

The reason we have separate accounts is to avoid me nagging him to death; he hasn't a clue what happens with his bank account while I'm incredibly anal about logging receipts and forward planning. This way I know there'll always be money in my account to pay the bills. It works for us.

Fleago

It's "our money" in this house too. Eveything goes into our joint account and everything comes out of it too, including our individual spending money. OH takes no interest in the management of our money, whereas I check it online etc, so he'll just ask if we can afford it if he wants to take a bit extra out of the account for something.

Borrowing off each other and having to repay it would be totally alien to us. :rotfl:

roxalana

I think the 'what's mine is yours' approach works well when you both have the same attitude to money or as a couple you have made a decision to share income due to unequal wages or one partner looking after children etc but I think keeping things separate is the way to go if people don't share the same attitude.

Like Sola says - where one person is careful with money and the other tends to spend I don't see anything wrong with having separate spending accounts. That is what me and my partner do (with his bills/rent contribution going to me for the direct debits), so neither of us have to feel guilty for buying things just for ourselves.

We don't exactly keep a strict record of who pays for what, but we know it's ok to speak up if we feel something is unfair.

pulliptears

I can see where you are coming from I guess. My SIL and BIL have no kids, but she says that her husband is child enough for her. She has to take the reins with the spending because he will go out and buy random nonsense like toys (!)

pinkpig08

Me and my OH have a joint account where all the money goes in and all the bills etc come out of. If we had seperate accounts it wouldn't work out as fair - he works full time but I work part time and also look after our DS whilst OH is at work (so I actually work full time but only get paid a part time wage!!).

Becles

My ex and me had a joint account for everything.

I keep a set of accounts, and plan and budget the finances. He prefers to go by the balance on the ATM. We had so many problems where I'd know there was enough money in the account to cover forthcoming bills, food etc., and in the mean time he'd looked at the ATM balance, thought we had loads of money so he spent it on "man crap" and I'd end up struggling to pay for the essentials :mad:

I was single for a while, then I met hubby who moved into my house. I already had my own systems for finances which was working well, and hubby openly admits he is rubbish with finance stuff. He is happy to send a sum of money to my account to cover his share of the bills, food etc., and he knows what he has left is for him to spend on his personal costs like running his car and mobile and general man type spending (aka booze and fags )

Sometimes he buys an odd bag of groceries or pays the milkman for me, sometimes he asks me to buy things like a packet of fags for him when I'm out at the shops. We never ask for the money back off each other, and it just sort of works itself out.

For big things we tend to go halves. We booked a holiday last year and split the main cost, then I paid for the connecting flights to London, he paid for a taxi transfer at the other end and some trips. Again it just works itself out roughly evenly, but we never cost up exactly who has paid what.

People might find us "very odd" but it works for us and we're happy with it.

inkie

When we married we made the promise 'all that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you'. Therefore, the practicality of living this out means, for us, that it is 'our money'. We have joint everything - there is none of this that is mine, and that is yours - it's all ours. When we married, we became one, and so that's how our finances work out, as one.

Sola

My DH would totally stress out if he was responsible for household bills coming out of his account. This way he knows what's left is his to play with, as Becles said. At the end of the day you can't force someone to manage their money, so we do what causes us the fewest problems.

Spendless

Same as original poster, though the cb and ctc goes into a seperate account and is saved for 'big item' things like a holiday, or things like school uniform. It is still 'our' money though.

My friend has always had seperate accounts with her husband and a couple of years ago, discovered he'd been financing a mistress with his.:eek:

arnie&caseysma!

We have separate account for various reasons and no joint account. We eat pay various bills each month and then I hold my hand out for cash for the food shopping aswell as I earn more than him but he doesnt get away scot free and have me pay everything!!!