Couples who have a fairly big difference in earnings - how do you split the bills, mortgage, etc?

[QuakingQuiche]

Couples who have a fairly big difference in earnings - how do you split the bills, mortgage, % of house share you own, meals out, holiday etc.?

One person pays? Both do 50:50? You adjust by % of household income each person contributes? Is it different for different types of spending?

Please state if married or not, cohabiting or not, if you’ve got children or not, how long you’ve been together and if the contributions from each person has changed over time?

Fairly taboo topic but interested in how others do it.

@burntpinky that I understand as expensive & potentially dangerous! sorry for your loss. It just wouldn't cross my mind to check with dh before I bought a bag or similar.

Married, baby on the way I earn £1200 a month part time he earns over £5k a month we just pool it all.. have 2bank accounts both joint x

Married, I earn more. All goes into joint account and we pay ourselves an equal amount of spending money each month.

Before we got married and had kids we earned a more similar amount and just split expenses 50:50 roughly. If there had been a big disparity I would have wanted to equalise things a bit more so if I earned more I would have paid more of our expenses.

One joint account, one savings pot. All in joint names. Together 30 years, married 21.

We're married with DC. We used to earn the same amount, but I moved to a more child friendly job (public sector and part time) and now earn a lot less than DH.

We pool everything. All income and expenses go into / out of one pot. We discuss big purchases.

We're both natural savers and I don't think we've ever had an argument about money.

Not married.

Dp was earning a 6 figure salary. He is not working atm but when he was he took what he needed for train fare, lunches, Enough to buy the odd shirt etc and gave me the rest.

He is crap with money so I paid for everything from what he gave me and saved whatever was left.

I earn 8k a year (part time, term time) and DH earns 45k a year. All money into same account, all bills come out of same account, debit card each and we just get on with it like that.

Whatever is needed or wanted we buy except perhaps an unofficial limit, I wouldn't buy anything £100 or over without saying hey what do you think of this? Just because we think that's a lot of money, not because we count how much each other has to spend or anything. It's just all together.

Married for 25 years.
DH earns 165k
I earn 2k
DH’s salary goes into our account which we use to pay for all bills, food, mortgage etc.
My 2k goes into my account.
We jointly own our home.

I don't mind replying to a genuine question but the OP reads like someone is asking for journalistic/other research purposes.

Married. One joint account. Full visibility of accounts for each of us.

DH pays for everything and then I add some bits to the joint account and pay for some things straight out of my account making sure I squirrel some away as I'm a saver.

I don't mind replying to a genuine question but the OP reads like someone is asking for journalistic/other research purposes.

Hmm, you're not wrong...

You mean they are running out of news that isn’t Corona related

We have a shared pot here. He earns more than me and everything goes into one account. We discuss together about 'big' purchases we both want and all bills are joint. It just works for us. The only sad thing is birthdays or Christmas as you can see what has been spent on the bank statement

Everything goes into the joint account. Bills get paid.

Married, but we did it that way since buying our first house.

I think our situation is unusual and while it works for us, I don't recommend it to anyone. DH currently earns about 90k and I earn around 20k. He pays all of the mortgage, utilities, credit card bills and food, plus gives me £800 a month. I pay for all the kids' clothing and expenses, plus everything for the dogs and horses and anything else I need. He pays for holidays. We don't have joint accounts and have never felt like we needed them, although generally speaking I would recommend joint accounts to other couples. We own the house 50/50.

I don't mind replying to a genuine question but the OP reads like someone is asking for journalistic/other research purposes

This is why I asked early on. No reply from the OP

Matried, I earn 35k he earns 95k. We work out what percentage of joint income we each earn and pay bills according to that ie. me 30% and he 70% of total amount of bills. In reality, we both put as much as we can in and any left overs go in savings. We have a few hundred each for bits and bobs in our personal account.

We find it easier to work from a joint account but my husband is very transparent and sees our earnings as ours not his/mine. We were like this before we got married.

Married 20 years, 2 kids. He earns 85K I earn 40K. We've always shared our account - he doesn't like all the faff of thinking about paying or saving for anything so is quite happy about this arrangement, and I'm a control freak who likes to know where everything is going (and he's very laid back with money which drives me nuts), so it works for us.

If it's a really big purchase (eg over 1K) then we talk about it, but he rarely objects.

We didn't start out like this though, when I first added him to my account I was the one supporting him - luckily though he's very good at a niche thing that people are happy to pay him for, while I took a step back after we had kids.

It's really very personal though - what works for one person would horrify another. My parents always kept everything very separate.

Married DH earns 6x my salary. I used to put £200 pm into joint account and pay childcare and he would pay all bills and mortgage. Also we both put money into savings accounts to maximise our tax free allowances. Now no mortgage and he pays all bills including DD university weekly top up spends, bar house insurance, travel insurance, my car insurance , DD car insurance. (I'm better at insurance shopping).
Whoever is going food shopping pays for it...my money is his and his is mine...if I run short I only have to ask but rarely do.
When we first met he was a poor student and had nothing and I had a full time job and helped him out.
We're a partnership and are happy, unless anything drastically changes I can't see would be different in the near future.

Yeah, funny isn't it @Batshittery?

Married for twenty years. DH earns six times what I do. We each pay the same % of our earnings in a joint account for bills, holidays, childcare etc via direct debit, and the remainder of our salaries is for each of us to spend as we wish.
I am a saver, he is a spender. My inheritance went straight into my savings and when and if he gets one too, or a bonus, it will be solely his.

Totally boring I earn £12k + bonus (part time wage since having children) he earns £48k + commission
All money goes into the joint account - all bills paid from here.
We have a credit card each that we use for day to day spending and we pay them off at the end of the month.
All bonuses/commission and £300 also goes into savings each month unless we want to buy something.
We've done this since we bought the house 7 years ago back and didn't stop as it works for us.

Cohabiting with one child. Joint account. Joint credits card which dp pays off at the start of each month. I work in crappy paid part time NHS admin and dp works in a corporate sales type job so big difference in earnings.

Dh earns more than me. All our money goes to joint account and all cones out of there too. Was the same when I was earning more.