To ask how you organise your joint finances when you’re a SATM?

[DaisyMaisieMe]

I’m self employed and pregnant with my first. I will be going on maternity leave in December. Can I ask how others organise their joint finances when they were on maternity leave? What do you do with rent/mortgages/savings? Currently our salaries are paid into our separate current accounts and we have a joint account for bills and rent. I may go back to work part time after about 5 months but I’m going to play it by ear.

Title should read SAHM obviously

The same as when not on mat leave. The money is effectively ‘pooled’, all bills, joint savings and expenses accounted for, a s then the remainder is split equally. We both get paid into personal accounts and transfer the requisite amounts into the joint - both have full access to joint money obviously.

When onmar leave as I currently am we have around £200 each per month, when I’m working it’s more like £600.

Joint account, everything we both earn goes into it, use You Need A Budget to budget and track spending down to the last penny

We had one account that we both had equal access to. Its your money too!

All income into one account. Max out personal tax allowances when possible but if you're mature enough to have a child together then you're mature enough to have a joint bank account.

I'm not a SAHM, but DP & I are getting married in a couple of months, & we have changed our finances so our salaries are paid into the joint account, & we have a direct debit into our personal accounts for our travel/phone bills/gifts/clothes/ general frittering.
We are paying for the wedding and then we need to finish renovating our house so it made sense to have the money in one place.
We used to transfer a proportional amount into the account but we want to build up some joint emergency savings & it's easier to see where we are at on the house fund etc if it's in a joint savings account.
If DP wants to spend his budget on coffee & guitar equipment, he has the money to do that, and I can blow £50 on a haircut or take my mum out for lunch, without it being from the joint money. It works for us.

I would stipulate that all baby-related expenses come from the joint account though.

Are you married? When you are single and earning it isn’t that big a deal, when you become a SAHP, it becomes important.

It’s time to sit down and start some family finances planning.

We just have a joint account so no issue. If we wanted to keep separate accounts I would just set up a joint account for joint expenses: bills mortgages etc. I would then have the person with a salary pay money into the joint account to cover that months expenses, pay X amount into savings (if we could afford to save) then have an equal amount of spending money each so the earning partner would pay the other partner's spending money into their personal account.

All money in one account which we have equal access to.