To think we can't be the only ones?

[NotSayingImBatman]

I keep reading about 'equal' or 'personal' spending money on MN in relation to family finances.

Surely DH and I aren't the only ones who a) don't care who spends what on themselves, providing there's enough to pay the mortgage and b) don't have enough left to reliably divvy up each month once said mortgage is paid?

That's what MN is for, isn't it Daisy ? Talking to people who do things differently to everyone you know in real life.

I am glad to have my horizons stretched beyond what my mum and aunties and neighbours do and think.

I think the 'don't care who spends what on themselves' works if you either have shit loads of spare money, or pretty much none, or you both have similar spending habits. It doesn't work when one person has a £50 a week Starbucks habit and the other person's expense of £100 a month or one off purchase costing £200 is deemed as a bit pricey.

No it wouldn't why !

If I earn £1000 and DH earns £2000 and childcare (post childcare vouchers) is £1200, it means we'd have £1800 left overall as a household regardless of who's wage pays for it!

Actually slightly, it comes up a lot. Take the binned Christmas decs thread, someone told the op that replacements should come out of the husband's personal spending money.

YANBU. We have one joint account for everything Not "my money" or "your money" - just our money.

No- we don't care. Everything is joint. My parents always had 1 joint bank account- I never imagined that anyone did anything different. At various times we have earned differing amounts but it all went in the pot. Now we earn about the same but his is monthly plus an annual bonus and mine is erratic as I contract. We spend as we wish- I spend more but I tend to get all the family stuff. If it was over £1000 he would probably ask which card to use to maximise the miles.

Don't like having a joint account. We have separate accounts but I don't work so only money coming in is husbands wage. So though we have separate accounts we still see the money as pooled and not his or mine.

Yes but why should that mean the lower earner shouldnt work? Its a joint cost. Reducing it doesnt have to mean the lower earner takes the hit.

But if the family can survive on £2000 in my example, but not on any less, then surely it does logically mean the lower earner can't work.

We have a joint account for bills and food, we pay into it proportionate to our incomes, and we have our own accounts for our personal spending.

We have a joint account and don't keep tabs on each other's spending, but we are both very similar (and frugal, compared with our income) in our spending habits, and will discuss any really big spends . Also there's usually enough cushion in the account to cover any unusually big or erratic spending.

If we were virtually in the red each month and/or if we had greatly different spending habits then this system wouldn't work. However even in that situation I wouldn't want separate accounts - I'd want a joint account still but with more in the way of agreed rules on spending behaviour/amounts.

It would piss me right off if DH spent a lot more than me each month, so that I was putting more towards family money/savings and he was having more indulgences. Him having a separate account wouldn't help with that.

Mr Fox and I have our own "pocket money"accounts for spending, and we have equal spending cash. Then we have a joint account for household expenses. This is despit him earning a hell of a lot more than me, in fact, doing all the earning at the mo. It works well, except I spend mine, so he always has more flash cash!

Not really batman. It means they as a couple need to earn £2000. That doesnt have to mean one cant work. Also you didnt say they needed £2000 and no less.

You're not the only ones.

We have one joint bank account, two joint credit cards (one for air miles, one kept empty for emergency flights back home) and a joint mortgage.

DH pays all the bills, does the weekly shop, buys whatever the boys need as and when they need it, organises finances so they are as efficient as possible. I work FT to earn it :) neither of us particularly care how much the other one spends although if it's a one off purchase of >$100 we'd probably run it by the other.

At the end of the month once the mortgage is paid any leftover money gets put towards the ongoing building work!

We don't divvy up the money either. But then we're pretty much always together when not working so it's a non-issue for us.

Completely separate bank accounts here. We both like to check our accounts and hate the thought of having to sit down together to do this. Valuable time together is best spent in other ways. We are both happy.
Also imo overtime money is mine for treats :)

See, I can't live like that, because I need to know how much I can spend each month to stop me overspending. Plus DH has expensive hobbies and it would annoy me that some months he'd spend a fortune and others not. It helps us know we have the same amount overall - but not how each other spends it. (We have joint account for bills and food, then our own accounts, now I'm a SAHM, DH transfers my 'fun money' to me, which is half of what is left over after he's put into the joint account the amount for all the bills and food from his basic wage - he does get paid overtime, but we don't include that in the family budget and it is saved and pays for holidays and Christmas etc).

But I agree re the childcare costs. If you do set your family budgets off total income and total outgoings, then doing something that increases the income by £1800 but adds £2000 to the outgoings, this isn't a good thing for family finances, if you have other good reasons to do it, like personal fulfilment, then if you can afford it, great. But it's not every family that can afford to take that level of 'hit' on finances month after month for years.

We have always had a joint account. We both have access to it online and cards etc. All income and spending goes through it/attached savings accounts.
For long periods I was the sole or main earner. Now, he is. It hasn't changed how we spend. I usually discuss purchases with him because he does the job of making sure we have enough for rent. So if I've spent more we might need to move money around, and I just want his opinion (do you like this colour?!) He does the same with though.
I couldn't live with seperate accounts because I don't see how you can be fully partners if you don't club together as a team. I know other people have totally different ideas though... Luckily we both had the same expectations about this so it was never an issue.

Well it's not just about personal fulfillment, it's about impact on career earnings and financial security. A lot of families choose to have 2 earners when kids are small, even though short term they might be off with a SAHP because once the pre-school years are over they're much better off with 2 wages.

That said, there is an assumption on MN that everyone has a career rather than a job and therefore that career earnings will be significantly impacted by long absences from the workforce. This is probably not the case if the person in question works in a bar or in Tesco.

Also, whilst I agree it's not relevant if the family cannot afford to go into negative earnings on childcare, whilst 95% of SAHP are women, it is a political issue because the earner (typically the man) benefits careerwise from having free 24/7 flexible childcare, whilst the SAHP( typically the woman) takes a bit hit. It also tends to reinforce patterns of primary carer which means when the SAHP does return to work, they do so "around family commitments", so continuing to compromise their earning potential.

Being a woman has far less impact on women's earnings than being a mother. The same is not the case for men.

I've been away a bit lately and dh has suggested we get a cleaner, Yay, as he didn't realise how much I do ... He, being a bloke, only notices what I dont
if I had a pound for every person who said "well I hope HE'S paying for that then" then we wouldn't need to pay for it out of our joint account

Just on the issue of childcare costs - it can be worth taking the hit for a couple of years if the family can afford it, in order that the lower earning parent can stay on the career ladder.

I went back to work when my youngest was a year old. It was a couple of years before I was able to keep any of my salary - I just about broke even for those first 2 years, then as DD started nursery and reception, child care costs reduced. I was able to do various training courses and get a couple of promotions and that has paid dividends in the long term.