How married couples manage finances

Team separate accounts here. I pay the majority of the expenses including the mortgage and food (I am DW).
This comes down to DH's lifestyle choices: 7 years finding self not working, then retiring early (at 62) which has been funded by DH's generous inheritance rather than sponging off me.
We'll recalibrate soon as we (I) pay off the mortgage.
There is no rush mind as DH still hasn't sorted out state pension (complete ostrich about finances).
Basically, I have taken all the financial risk and it's too stressful talking to him about money.
My BestF tells me I've been a good provider 😊

I’ll probably be accused of being ‘joyless’ but… we generally don’t buy gifts for each other 🤷‍♀️. It’s not something we value, and I hate the waste of gifts that aren’t correct or giving for the sake of it. And we both generally just buy anything we need or want anyway.

We’ve settled on buying a Christmas / birthday gift that’s from the family, rather than individual. So DH will get together with our two DSs and they’ll choose something small for me, from them all.

Sometimes I’ll even buy my own gift that I know I like, and give it to DH to give back to me, from him and the DSs 😂. Everyone’s a winner.

Again, it helps that DH and I are on the same page on this. Neither of us spends a lot, ‘treats’ aren’t a priority, and in 25 years I’ve never had to explain or justify a purchase to him.

Why is it barmy to keep your wage mostly for yourself and maintain financial independence? We keep our salaries to ourselves, and have one joint account which is used exclusively for bills. The bills money is paid into there, and we will top it up to pay for holidays and days out etc. Also have a credit card which we use for food shops, car repairs and big ones off purchases, which is paid off every month. I can't get my head around the idea of paying both salaries into one account and living off that, as I think everyone needs a level of financial independence and if one person out earns the other, they inevitably end up paying more. Every couple I know that's done this seem to have more arguments than us about money when one person disagrees with a financial decision but the other inevitably gets their way and steamrollers ahead with it! We both have our own savings from house sales we had our own houses before we met, but brought our own place together. No joint savings currently due to recently retraining and taking a paycut, but hoping to start this again soon.

We have a joint account for all bills, utilities and childcare which we transfer equalish amounts into each month.

But we each have personal accounts that we get paid into that we can do with as we please, but tbh we never really see it as our own money, it's still family money. We pay for things like food shopping, fuel etc from our own accounts but keep it roughly equal eg if he paid for the food shop one week, I'll get it the next, etc.

I'm a higher earner (not by a huge amount, but enough to make a difference), so I'm happy to spend more on the kids eg clothes, activities, home decor etc. But I also spend more on myself than my DH does on clothes for example, so I'd find it weird all that coming from a joint account and having to tell each other every time we make a purchase.

Works for us.

We do our finances exactly like this too. Great for surprises and we don't need to know what each other spends spare on.

We have separate accounts and we have a joint account that we both pay pretty much equal amounts in to (we earn similar amounts). All household bills, food, childcare, family entertainment, anything for the kids, all joint/family cost come out of this account. Anything left over in our separate accounts after we’ve transferred to the joint account is ours to do what we want with so all personal items ie clothes, going out with friends, etc comes out of our personal accounts. I prefer it how we do it to be honest, i don’t want to have to ask permission to take money out of the joint account if I want to go away for the weekend with friends or out for a night out with friends or if I want to buy some new shoes, etc, I can spend my money on whatever I chose without even having to tell my husband if I don’t want to.

There was dissension in the ranks about exactly how much stirring was required and whether my slightly neglectful (reading a book at the same time) vague stirring would lead to burning.

Plus whether we should just chuck everything in at once and hope for the best (my view) or at different times depending on how long each thing took to cook. (Dh’s view but he had some funny ideas about how long things took to cook.)

🤣🤣 how do you stir a stir fry? I'm intrigued!

I like having my own current account. I don't want a joint account for everything. I like knowing from month to month how much disposable income I have and as I forward plan that helps me budget. We have a joint account for the mortgage, bills and kids classes which is paid into proportionately. This works for us.

I cut from your origin post to this: all our finances are pooled. Those which legally cannot be pooled (like ISAs) are open and discoverable.

We've taken a punt on each other. He worked FT; I worked PT, (23 hpw plus quite a lot of weekend better paid overtime, NHS) while being the 2DC 'go to'. I seconded my career to his, on the understanding that I picked up the family slack. Thus was entitled to equal pull on the family finances.

His is mine, mine is his.

Currently, he's retired, but I do quite well paid bank in my job, semi-retired. If we have an expense, I'll volunteer more hours to pay for it, but, I won't come home expecting to make the family dinner!

We have always had separate accounts - I think because we both spent years being self-employed and so keeping things separate made sense in some ways. But our finances are totally shared. We do earn broadly similar, and just pay different bits of the outgoings from our own accounts. There’s no personal spends “budget”, but we’re quite comfortable so don’t really have to worry too much about that, and have a pretty similar attitude to money, so each other’s spending doesn’t cause rows.

There is no sense (in how we feel about it) that our money isn’t joint money, just because our accounts happen to be separate.

This^
also I suspect that it works better if people have children from previous relationships.

Disclaimer: we have absolutely boring approach of one joint account, no surprises.

I will never put my money into just a sole account ever... been there, done that, got the CCJ thank you very much!

I have a sole account where all my monies are deposited. We share a joint account where we both deposit an equal amount each from our sole accounts, I then have a savings account where I save. We have a joint savings account which is for holidays which he pays into (and I spend) and we both contribute equally too an account we use for holidays which spending money!

We do still have our old single accounts just don’t use them much. I agree I wouldn’t actually get rid of those.

But if someone dies then if their salary is going into their own account and a SAHM doesn’t have access to it then that will be much more of an issue. A regular joint account won’t be frozen just because one spouse has died.

But why would you feel guilty buying yourself something? Presumably your spouse wouldn’t begrudge you of it. It’s still coming from the same income of money that would be going into your joint account.

Also consider if one of the parties has children ( that don't belong to the other) If there was a joint account that everything was being paid into then it would mean the person who didn't have the child was paying for themrather than their parent paying.

The ideal for me would be all household pills being paid into one account ( ,Per percentage of income) and the rest of money is your own

Can't imagine not having my private bank account. I want to decide what I buy without justifying it to DH

However we have always had similar incomes and split expenses 50/50 which makes it easier

When I married the first time, we put it all in one pot. I was a SAHM a lot of the time, and worked small part time jobs occasionally. He was the earner, I was the budget-er and we never argued about money. When we divorced after 22 years, we were fair and treated each other right. When we were no longer married, we could be friends again, and we were until his death. Meanwhile, DH number 2 entered, and we were both established. I owned a home, had stocks, bonds, etc. We decided to keep it separate, but each is listed on the other's accounts. He pays for groceries, household repairs, etc. I'm the higher earner now, but we work it out and neither of us has a complaint. Having done both, I think I liked joint accounts best, but it depends on where you are in life I guess.

We have a joint account for bills and house and child expenses which we pay into proportionately, and then our own accounts. It's the best of both worlds in my opinion. I don't have to feel guilty about buying myself clothes or treats, and I don't lose out or have to ask for money when I'm buying stuff for the kids.

I understand why it works for people to have just a joint account, but what would you lose from also having a personal account? Also I think everyone should have 'get out' money of their own just in case. Joint accounts can be frozen after a death, for example...

I am married. We have a joint account for bills and joint expenses. We both have put own sole account for our personal expenses and we both have the same amount each month to spend. The general expense /.personal account is not so he has so much and I have so much etc it just helps to budget
I know I have that much money to spend each month on anything I want. If I didn't do that I would be wondering how much I have spent and if the balance in the joint was getting lower and lower . Works for us just fine.

It is possible to have separate accounts, and share money. I know, because that's what we do.

"how to stir a stir fry" really made me laugh!

We've always had separate finances (25 years in now). In the beginning, it was because I had a small-but-significant gambling problem, and I knew I couldn't be trusted with family finances, so we made the decision to limit the potential damage if I had a bad relapse.

I'm long past that problem, but it's worked out well enough that we see no reason to change it; we each have our responsibilities monthly, and we spread that load. Neither of us hoard our money - what's left after bills are paid is ours to spend as we see fit, but it's not like either of us will let the other struggle.

Exactly so.

The day after we returned from honeymoon dh changed the name of his bank account to our joint name. We had already decided that I would become a SAHM, and both of us had full access to the account. There's no 'my money/your money' etc just as everything we own we own together, just as we are both responsible for paying for our children's needs.

Early in our marriage my wife didn't work, it seemed patronising to pay her an allowance so we had a joint account and save for a couple of ISAS we still do.

We've slightly gone to the other extreme and between us, DH and I have over 40 different bank/savings/isa accounts.

They are single and joint and each one has a specific purpose whether it is good deals on bills, breakdown cover, access to good savings etc.

We do a monthly spreadsheet but include a set amount of personal spend that goes into our main single accounts.

Many people don't get it but it works for us and all money is family money.