in splitting the household bills???

[fustyflaps]

Hello all,

I'm a bit cafuddled. I know there's a lot of you on here who all put your money with your DH into one big pot but its not like that in our house as DH is not good with money so here goes:-

I get £2100
he gets £1500

I pay
mortgage £734
Gas& Elec £100
House Insurance £40
Shopping £320 (i try to stick to this budget)

he pays:-
council tax £80
Phone,tv,broadband £80
water £45
tv license £12

We both put petrol in our own cars and pay own own insurance and credit cards I provide the majority of childcare as I'm able to be more flexible.

I also buy all Christmas/Birthday presents and provide holiday money.

Is this fair??

LRD - Family as in me, him and the kids and no I buy all the clothes and household things xx

Well, I don't think it would be unreasonable to ask him if the two of you can sit down and discuss what the money is going on. If it is family stuff, he should have an idea of it. If he doesn't, and he's bad with money, that's not a cardinal sin but I do think you should be entitled to know about it when you are living together and have children together, even if you don't have joint accounts.

And talking to him about what exactly happens to the money could at least reassure you that it's nothing awful (which I hope it's not). Or it might make him realize quite how much more you're spending on family things than him.

I'd suggest that you need to understand exactly where his money is going. Is it being frittered or is he genuinely spending it on family expenses?

Im going to arrange to have a talk with him xx

How can he even think that this is fair? (says the woman who relies on her husbands income)

A few years ago DH and I couldn't figure out what we were frittering money away on. We agreed that for one month we would put the receipts for EVERYTHING into a shoe box and sit down at the end of the month and see where it had all gone... £198.64 went to Costa alone .

Would your husband be open to doing this for one month? IT really helped us.

Me and DH work the same as you poopnscopp - everything is joint, 1 bank account and anything left after billd is ours, not mine or his. We dont divvy it up, call it pocket money or anything like that either. I earn more than him and have never had a problem with this sytem, we are a family at the end of the day and work like this to.

Sorry but it doesn't sound fair to me at all. I (female) am the main breadwinner and my male partner makes a fraction of what I earn. Until fairly recently he didn't earn anything, to be honest. I pay most of the bills, and organise all the finances as well as taking care of buying clothing etc for our DS. Come to think of it I also do most of the cleaning, tidying up and washing.

BUT my partner (male) does most of the child care, is almost always the one who gets up in the night with our son, and gets DS up and gives him breakfast every morning while I stay in bed with a cup of coffee brought to me by my OH. Plus OH almost always makes dinner, especially lately as I am getting rather tired at 32 weeks pregnant.

There has to be give and take in a relationship and it seems like your relationship is fairly unbalanced.

so you pay most of the bills and also do all the childcare and housework? sounds a bit like a cocklodger to me.

If you're going to have a talk get clear what outcome you would like. And what system would achieve it.

It does sound as if he spends all his disposable income and then has none towards holidays etc.

Suppose you were to open a joint account which is a household account, and which pays mortgage, all bills, food, children's clothes, house maintenance, holidays and all joint family outings such as holidays and days out.

Decide whether you wnat to each put an equal amount into this account, or whether you want to each out the same proportion / percentage of your income, or whether you want to each have the same amount of 'personal disposable' and put the balance in the household account. Then everything joint / child and household pay from that account, everything else coes from you own personal accounts - so social outings and hobbies with friends, your own car stuff, your own clothes and CDs etc.

Why do you do the majority of childcare? If you both work f/t he needs to find a way to take some responsibility - which may include covering the children at w/e so you can be flexible.

Finances - not fair
Household chores - not fair
Childcare - not fair

We use the mistlethrush method and it works for us. It sounds like you are getting a really poor deal, OP.

Not fair as others have said.

In your situation I would want to have a single joint account so that I could see what he was spending money on. The fact that your DH is crap with money makes it more important for you to have a joint account, not less important (IMO).

Then once you have seen what it goes on you can have a proper discussion about whether those are legitimate things to spend money on.

These "your money my money" arrangements just duck the problem of one partner having different spending habits from the other. It sweeps the issue under the carpet until the partner who spends less gets fed up with it like you now have.

Family accounts - were always a nightmare with XW.

DW and I have a joint a/c and always have.

Originally, before we married, we had an account we each paid equal amounts into. That paid rent, bills and shopping.

Later we then had a joint account which my salary went into, all the bills came out of, savings went out of, and I got a generous allowance (out of which I paid support for my children).

[She knows what my allowance is, but not what I spend it on]

DW got paid less than me, but a proportion of her pay went into the joint.
{I know what she pays into joint a/c but not where the rest goes.}

It's up to you what you think is fair, but him paying less money out and having more disposable income definitely isn't.

It doesn't sound particularly fair. With DH#1 we had two joint accounts the account where both our wages got paid into and then a separate 'expenses' account that every DD/SO/annual expense etc came out of. We worked out how much we were likely to have to spend on absolutely everything essential (car maintanence etc) in a year and made sure we put in enough each month to cover all the bills and a monthly payment towards any annual costs and house maintanence stuff. That money then got transferred at the start of the month out of the regular joint account into the expenses account. We used the regular joint account for everything else incuding food, presents, clothes, home decoration - it was great knowing how much we had left to 'spend' right from the start of the month.
When we separated (but still lived in the same house for nearly a year!) it made life a lot easier (the joint regular account became my husband's and I set up a separate account for me) - we simply put enough into the expenses account from our separate accounts to cover the needed amount and leave us with exactly the same amount of 'disposable' income afterwards.
Now, with DH#2, we both get paid and pay all the billls out of the same account - he 'does the money' and seems to have a pretty tight grasp on what is happening on a daily basis. We both alway discuss purchases out of the norm with each other though.
Maybe these ways aren't 'fair' either though - at the end of my first marriage DH1 earned about double what I do. I now work part-time and DH2 earns 4-7x what I do - I have absolutely no idea how we could organise our finances any other way. I would say that my personal spending on things for myself and in-line with my income rather than DH's though.

I'd do the All money goes in one pot, and you both get a set amount each month for fun money and pays off personal cc bills, and the rest pays bills and goes into savings.

Make him pay half the mortgage and utility bills. What a freeloader. Why do you let him do this?

I do some financial literacy stuff at work and advise that couples keep receipts FOR EVERYTHING for at least a month (6 is better) to work out what they spend their money on. Then do a joint budget so that the household stuff is accounted for and then you split the leftover however you see fit (with savings, pensions and so on taken as you like). Without knowing what he is actually spending money on, how can you budget as a family. Also, when you write down what you spend (on clothes, bedding, towels and so on) he can see that you don't have the disposable income he thinks you so.

He is taking the piss.

Hes just give me £200. Is this fair?

One off or as a higher normal payment? One off - nice, but doesn't address your issues. Increased contribution - possibly not as you're still questioning it.

Increased contribution x

Well, no, of course its still not fair. As he is still getting virtually free accommodation and his fuel bills paid. Where would he be able to rent even a room in a shared house for £200 a month including bills? Why are you subsidising this man? Sorry for asking, but what is the point of him, and why can't he simply pay his fair share?

Yes, sorry, I agree, he should be doing his share - paying you £200 more when you're also doing so much more around the house seems off. Does he not get that this is about more than the money?

I do think it is fair he contributes less than you because he earns less, but £200 doesn't sound like very much to me, in this context.

What does he think about it all?

It's now fair in that you're both left with almost the same disposable income. But there are still queries over you buying more stuff, housework, etc.