Do most married couples really pool all money, or keep some separate?

Married 30 years. Everything pooled but obviously individual Isa accounts and such. We have both had periods of being the higher earner but DH has the better pension.

All major finance decisions taken together.

Wouldn't want it any other way. It feels like we're properly a team.

We have separate accounts, and put a proportion of our money each based on earnings into the joint account which all of our bills come out of, as well as household spending/things the kids need/want.
We then have our own accounts for things like mobile phones and have an amount left each in them for discretionary spending. 1st marriage and we have 2 children together

One joint account that we both pay a set amount to each month for bills, joint expenditure items (we top up as needed) etc. and then the rest is for each individual to do with as they wish re: savings, investments, pensions.

Works for us. We are both multi six-figure earners (I slightly out-earn him) and no children. Both very prudent with our cash and investments, we like to splurge on the odd quality item but that is it. We got married in our 30s and are both quite independent-minded.

Second marriages are different. And there’s no way I’d allow him to live there indefinitely. Your kids would be lumbered with half the mortgage for a house they aren’t living in. You can have a reasonable period like 2 years to sell the house, but your adult children would want independent finances after that and he wouldn’t need a family house, while they might.

Separate here, I like having my own money. Joint account for bills and a bit of saving.

I can see that if you're a SAHM without any money coming in, or there's a big imbalance in salaries, it makes sense to combine.

All income is added together, expenses/savings deducted and we both have exactly the same 'spending money' to do with as we wish. DH is more of a spender and I am more of a saver.

We have always worked this way since we married many years ago. Some years I earned more and some years DH earned more - we are a partnership so no matter whose income is greater, we both end up with the same personal money.

I would not have it any other way and it works really well, no arguments about who spent what.

We’ve been together 20 years, married 15 and have a joint account for house stuff but our own accounts for day to day spending, and our own savings. It would feel odd to pool our money into one account to me, even though we both often comment any money is our money when one of us pays for something.

We have a joint acc for all household / child spends, a joint savings account and our own accounts for “spending money.”

I quite like having my own pot of money to do whatever I like with, no explanation.

I’m not talking thousands though 😂 just whatever is left over after we pay for everything else.

Same here.

My parents did the same whereas PIL pool everything. DH expected us to do the latter. I pointed out that in that case I wanted every single receipt from him in good order so I could monitor our spending - as PIL also do. He hadn’t thought about that part! He wasn’t hiding anything, but his handling of receipts etc was shambolic, and so we decided to keep our personal spending separate. That way he could continue to not worry too much about what exactly had been spent, and I would always be on top of mine, and I wouldn’t be constantly on his case. It works for us.

Totally joint account - I earn more. Never ask each other about spending (maybe if buying something big like a holiday!) and split money between us when we put into ISAs. Just makes it easier tbh. First marriage, two DC and if we split I have much higher earning power so I’m not concerned about the DC future particularly.

I think second marriages or blended families will always have a different way of doing things, and yours sounds pretty fair so I wouldn’t change it in your shoes. But when it’s a first marriage and children aren’t involved, I think the best approach is to pool everything.

My wife and I pool everything, have exactly the same amount in savings etc., and each get the same amount of mad money every month to do what we want with without any guilt. It doesn’t matter who earns more, it’s a marriage. I do see that a lot of women on MN prefer separate finances because their husbands are bad with money, but something like that would have (and should have) stopped me getting married in the first place. Being on the same page when it comes to finances is just as importance as lifestyle, religion, children etc.

Have you also got a will to support your plans OP?

First marriage and children for both of us.

We each have our own money and earn very similar amounts but he takes home a bit more. We pool enough from salaries for the joint things like bills.

But as we are both very good with money, we tend to be lax about who pays for what. So for example, we put all household spending on credit cards (to benefit from points) and we initially had that in my name (he had a named card) and a direct debit from the joint account. We then cancelled mine and he took out the credit card in his name for a points bonus, but he has never gotten around to setting up the direct debit, so he pays it from his personal account and I'll periodically send some money. Some months he pays the whole lot, other times I will.

Sometimes we will e.g. book a holiday and I'll just transfer the full sum to him to pay the credit card bill.

For us, neither of us are big discretionary spenders and we have the same life goals, so it's effectively a shared pot with individual names.

We still need to sort wills but he 100% doesn't want more kids and he put in almost all.of our house deposit and insisted we were joint tenants with an equal stake from the start so I've no reason to worry that he wouldn't look after the kids if I went first. Having said that, we really do need to sort the will, it's the one bit we've fallen behind on.

What people do with their money is up to them. Its not unreasonable if you are both happy with that arrangement. I'm only recently married for the first time and personally, in my marriage, everything is shared. To me, marriage means sharing everything completely. It doesn't have to mean that for others.

We took out a joint account 25 years ago when we got married and we kept our separate savings. If one or the other - through redundancy or caring for DC - wasn’t working, they still had access to all the income of the other be it salary or child benefit, or income from our rental property.

I mean we benefitted jointly from my inheritance (although I still have about 70K in my own name in savings) and we’ll benefit jointly from dh’s late MIL estate shortly. Prob pay off mortgage, maybe move etc.

I think v different if you’re not married or in a civil partnership- no tax breaks and no automatic inheritance if the spouse dies etc.

We do tax returns and split rental income/expenditure and joint interest and our individual income just goes on separately.

I know couples where the husband gives the wife ‘pocket money’ if she runs out cos she’s bought stuff for the kids out of her part-time wage. That is anathema to me. Your kids are your joint venture, surelt!

We have a joint account for most of the "bills" but we have our own accounts for spending. I doubt my husband would want to know what he spends on golf! But I don't want him to know what I spend on my hair. With our own pots we can both live in blissful ignorance of the others spending.

I cringe when couples say they’re ‘lending’ each other money and everything is accounted for meticulously 🤦‍♀️ Are you a couple or are you flatmates? We have joint account for everything and it works just fine. Whoever is nearest the till pays using our joint account card. Whoever picks up the bill first in the restaurant pays it…using the joint account card. Works fine for us 🤷‍♀️

We were out with a couple a few months ago and they were quibbling over £2.50 for a coffee. I was dying of secondhand embarrassment for them both.

Second marriage and chindren not being joint makes a huge difference. If something happened to DH and I would marry again, I would not have joint finances exactly for the same reason, DC will come first and I need to protect their future first and foremost.
As (current) DH is their father, our finances are joint. We do have a couple of separate accounts and some separate savings for tax reasons, but it's still joint money.

We pool everything but I’ve been with my husband for 38 years and we pooled from day 1. We’ve never argued about money.

If I was on my second marriage and had children separately I’d probably do more what you’re doing. Not sure I’d be funding the holidays he can’t afford though. Your kids will need a lot of money potentially for uni or any private healthcare which is increasingly happening in our house so I’d put spare money when he can’t afford holidays in an account for that. Unless he goes half with kid expenses. Not sure I’d take the brunt for the cleaner either. That should be split. Do make sure the house is sorted properly for the children. Not 100% sure re him being allowed to remain in it if you died. That could go on forever and you need to make sure they have paperwork somewhere safe somebody knows about so they can easily get their inheritance.

I think there’s no one size fits all and although I can’t imagine not pooling I do see situations differ. A load of strangers on a forum should not tell you what to do as we don’t know your relationship.

We keep an agreed amount of "spending money" each (it's the same for each of us regardless of what we each earn) and we pool the rest. Stops any arguing about "you bought those shoes and now we can't pay this bill"

Savings come from the pooled money into a joint saving account. We obviously have separate pensions but when we start to receive them, they will go into the pooled account like a salary does now.

DH has just been gifted some money by a relative - there was no discussion about who is belonged to, it was a given that it was for us both.

It is totally different in a second marriage with children. We've been together since we were 18 and poor students so have built any savings and such together.

That said, we have separate current accounts for wages. We have a joint instant access savings account that DH pays into as he earns more so we use that for unexpected bills, holidays and cars. If we get any bonuses or parental gifts they also go in there. My mum and dad recently gave us a few thousand and it was intended for both of us.

We have always pooled everything, Even before kids. We’ve been together 30 years. I worked full time before kids, part time afterwards and slowly increased it. He’s earnt more than me mostly and I’ve earn more than him sometimes. I supported him
while he started a business by picking up extra night shifts. It’s all balances out.
I can’t imagine doing it any other way.

We have 2 current accounts his money goes into one and covers the bills. Mine goes into another and that’s spending/saving money. We both have equal access to everything.

We have a joint account where everything is paid into. Then separate accounts where we each get the same ‘pocket money’ what he does with his is up to him, as with mine. Shared savings thon we also have separate. We only really ask permission on big spends but it’s never been a written rule, it’s just what we do. We do keep it even tho, if he accidentally uses the joint to buy work lunch I then do the same sometimes to even it out lol. I manage it mostly (keep an eye on things) just let him know if things are looking a bit tight, but he can also see this. I’m just on it more. We also have a joint credit card used for bigger purchases. This one we do discuss before spending on it. But it’s never anything we don’t have the cash for, used for the extra security than the spending.

when we were first together pre marriage and mortgage we had a joint account but put each share in. Buying a house together we then pooled it.

We only have joint accounts. However, we have shared children only if that makes a difference?

There is no way we are wasting time faffing about with transferring each other money, or putting things into accounts for shared expenses etc. My life’s far too short for that.

We also just spend what we want individually, we pretty much have zero discussion and we certainly don’t have to agree or give each other permission to spend, again no desire for such faffing about. We do flag if we anticipate big expenses coming up, for example last month DH flagged that he had several thousand that would be going out (necessary), so obviously I then think twice about any big purchases I may wish to make that month and take that into account.

Honestly I don’t see any point in someone being in a marriage if they don’t trust the other person enough to share finances with them.

We’ve been together 20 years, since we were kids. Our money has been joint ever since we moved in together at 18. Through good times and bad, all money either of us has is both of ours, and it will always be that way.

We pool, so our wages are paid into our joint account, all bills etc come out of that account. We then have a joint savings account.

We both get pocket money each month, so on payday our pocket money transfers to our personal accounts.

We have ISAs, well they’re kind of the equivalent of a UK ISA, as we’re married they’re legally joint assets, so no matter which name is on the count we are both able to access the money, so we can both add and withdraw from the account.