To want to know what your family finances are!!

[MrsMaker88]

Me and DH have to have a serious conversation about money tonight. He’s been avoiding it for months and months but he’s not good with money and we live beyond our means. I have asked him to give me full disclosure on what debts etc he has so that we can work as a team to fix it.

I hope this is not unreasonable but I want to know what your debts or savings are if you have young kids so I can see what the norm is?!?!?! Please

No debt; decent amount in savings.

I've worked in finance my entire adult life, though, so I consider myself very financially literate.

I have accounts with four different banks. I have done this intentionally, not only to diversify risk, but to maximise the benefits for all accounts, and make particular amounts of money less accessible than others. I have no credit card, no finance or loan for my car, I pay my insurance and registration annually, not monthly. I overpay on my taxes so get a refund, which goes into savings. I take domestic holidays and only travel internationally (I do live in Australia, so international travel is a big expense) every few years. I bought within my means and had no ambition for a big house with 4 bedrooms, two reception rooms, an annex etc.

When our DC were little we had no debt apart from mortgage. I hovered at around 3k in savings, paid cash for my car that lasted a few years, although DH eventually got his on finance. We claimed tax credits to cover nursery fees because we were low earners, both slightly over minimum wage. We had about 100k in cash equity terms in the house between us.

I didn’t get a credit card until I earned more money and knew it would be safe to get one!

Ten years later we look more cash rich but despite earning more it’s tight month to month. That’s due to overpaying on the mortgage though. Now we have lease cars which are debts which on paper amount to about 40k over the next couple of years and about 7k between us in CC debts, although I don’t class them as debts as they’re interest free and we could pay it off tomorrow out of savings if the debt was called in.

Debt to me isn’t a normal thing, I was brought up not to use credit. The only reason we do is because we could pay it off tomorrow if we had to.

Funnily enough i've just worked this out as i've been henpecking dp about saving more. I don't have an issue with a load of strangers knowing.........it's not as though I know anyone on here in rl

Weekly income is £592 a week after tax.

All bills come in at around £100 pw.

(( smug late 90s buyer with a stupidly low mortgage in the north ))

40 pw mortgage

30 pw council tax

25 pw gas and electricity

Not sure on water.......think its around 7pw

5 a week house insurance.

So just over 100pw but meh.

Food is around 80 pw (( only me, dp and ds ))

Have around 15k in savings. Not a massive amount but it's better than nothing.

Get a takeaway once a month or so, if we eat out it tends to be cheaper places / chain restaurants where we have vouchers etc
We don't run a car........on paper we have an ok amount of money left over each week but believe me. It doesnt feel that way !!

No savings as such but we over pay on our mortgage by 130

And do £30 each savings for the girls

Dd19 give £100 per month for keep and I earn 700 with only 159 childcare so we’re up about 550 a month but it gets sealed up by swimming and gymnastics ect

Less important than 'the norm' in terms of debt and savings (which will vary widely) is looking at the norm in terms of fiscal communication. My DH and I have some joint finances and a lot separate, but we both know roughly what the other has in easy access savings, personal current account and tied up in various investments. We both have access to the joint account for household expenses and the joint saving account for larger household purchases.

If you don't know roughly how much cash is around and exactly how much debt then a serious chat needs to be had.

Best thing I ever did was get a banking app for my phone. I put all money in my account into my savings account and take out small amounts as I need them. It's really stopped me frittering those little bits that all add up. I save around £500 per month but that also pays for all holidays, christmas etc. So sod all really.

Agree with others, there is no 'norm'. By the time we had a baby we'd been married 10 years (my second marriage), almost paid off the mortgage, received a couple of small inheritances and were able to live very comfortably. We also consciously made the decision to only have one child and for me to be a SAHM. We are very boring sensible with money and have never have debts/overdrafts etc - always focus on savings, pensions and investments - even set up a pension for our DS as soon as he was born .

Don't think about what is the 'norm', look at your own financial situation and make the necessary adjustments. Having the same approach to finances is essential in a relationship - over 30 years of marriage and the one thing we never disagree on is money .

It's sad that people have to get into debt just to manage these days. Debt for luxuries is one thing but it's becoming common to end up in debt because of high rents and bills.

My sounds same as your dh. We have separate accounts. All bills come.out.of my account. Dh gIves me all his wages except spending money. We sat down and wrote everything out and agreed on amounts. We both have same spending, after bills and any left goes into two savings accounts - one in his name and one in my name. Dh cannot access my accounts but happily show him amount and where we are. We also do T have credit cards

Does he gamble? All sounds a bit worrying

My ExH had taken out loans I wasn't aware of, they were in his name only and I hadn't had the benefit of the capital so he kept them in the divorce, if there's a chance you're going to separate it is important to know what's happened to the money he's borrowed on loans, credit cards etc. has it been supplementing household spending or is it gambling or other activities you haven't been involved with.

My credit score is 999 out of 999 with Experian so no major concerns that debts are hitting my (and my kids) too hard if there is anything serious happening with DH.

I think it’s a good thing to look at different perspectives, I haven’t been on top of a whole families’ finances before and since I had my breakdown I’ve been burying my head in the sand till I could cope with it tbh. I guess I’m mostly trying to know if something untoward is going on as he’s now willing to go through the transactions at the moment (as he says he doesn’t want an inquisition), or whether the spending is quite typical for a young family with bills and costs.

*Not willing..

Though he says he’s going to show me the banking apps later

Our norm is 4 children, I'm a SAHM, own a house (with mortgage) which we rent out, have about £7k debt on a car loan and a sofa, and near on £20k in savings split between us, and each child.

Watching

Having been married to a gambler I am now ridiculously paranoid about money so I expect I am not average in my approach.

No debts, overpay the mortgage by 30% of the monthly amount each month, 3 months salary in savings, put DDs child benefit in savings for her, company pension and I increase my contribution by 3% each year. Just bought a new car which was a massive deal for me, had saved the money and paid cash/px my old car.

It makes me feel secure I think but I am still very anxious about money, I constantly think it's going to turn to shit again and I'm not sure as I'll ever get over that.

Aside from the mortgage, we have no debt.

HOWEVER, 6 years ago, DH had about £20k of debt on credit cards, I was on maternity leave & he was getting final warning letters all over the place (& not telling me). We were screwed.

We were VERY fortunate that I was able to get a loan to cover about 70% of it & that Christmas he got a bonus which paid off most of the rest of it. We paid off the loan in 5 years & haven’t used a credit card since. We also saved up for a house which we bought just over a year ago. We’ve got about £5k in savings at the moment.

It took a LOT of hard work & at times I thought we’d never get to where we are now, we don’t borrow money (except the mortgage) & we live within our means these days.

We have a mortgage and one CC with about 1400 on it that we used to buy a car. We pay off 100 a month and it's interest free. That's it. We have about 3500 in savings (haven't paid of CC purley because it's interest free)

Also my husband is spreadsheet mad with our finances and absolutely everything is monitored down to the penny. This helps see unnecessary spending and stops the frittering

Celestia Are you me??? My husband is exactly the same and everything is noted down when we come in from a days shopping, night out, holiday. It's rubbed off on me and we're both very careful with money.

We never pay on contactless without getting a receipt, I can't see how people can monitor their money when they're not bothered about what they're spending here and there.

We save every month and save when we get paid not at the end of the month. Friends save whatever they have left but if we did that, we wouldn't have accounted for it so wouldn't have half as much to save as we do at the beginning of the month.

We're now in the position that well be mortgage free in 2 years and will be able to save those payments (£500 per month) towards the future - University for the girls, a holiday home, etc.

I haven't had chance to read everyone's replies but if this helps.

When me and dh got our house we looked at all the debts and basically moved it all around so we were paying 0 interest or as little as possible this meant he took on nearly 25k of my debt (A saint in my eyes) however cause we both pay for house hold it does balance.

I have a lovely spreadsheet that has

Both ins
A list of my outs
A list of his outs
A list of house out (bills etc which are joint)

Based on our remaining money after paying our own outs I then calculated a fair balance for the 2 of us to pay the main house outs and to leave an equal amount of spending money

This does include money going into savings account, I pay into dd savings he pays into general house hold.

Due to mat leave etx we have no actual savings but are in a situation where we can afford the odd evening out and not feel tight.

If it helps my outs also include hair appointments (he doesn't have them) so basically anything we regularly pay for is accounted.

We have a bank account each for personal money, one for household bills (not used for anything else) and one for food and petrol.

Money is transferred into each account via standing order depending on what we are contributing so our own accounts only have our personal spending money . This reduces the risk of spending money which is needed for vital bills.

I worked out it's between 50-75 a week for food and household supplies and then for our car about 100 for petrol a month.

I then check these lists and the outgoings every few months to keep it in check.

The other thing to do is to go through each bill and make sure you can't get cheaper deals by switching. if you are in a contract put a reminder in your phone to 're evaluate when you can. This is important for gas electric and car insurance.

Also consider using cash back sites to get the most for your money. I have found quidco better than topcashback but that's personal preference.

You can get it under control and it may mean dh only has a card for his account and no others so he can't spend the vital money. Also if he is worried about spending money meant for paying his debts you could change the account the debts are paid from to one he can't access and set up a SO so the money comes out of the account the day he is paid. Credit companies may also change the payment date in line with payday if they know there is a risk of not getting their money.

The quicker you can move money that is vital the better as it reduces the risk on it being spent elsewhere

I hope that helps. If it has and you want more info feel free to pm me. Being in debt and trying to get it straight is hard but it is possible. Might it may be a long game im afraid.

The fact he isn't willing to go through transactions doesn't bode well. Has he said why? You need full disclosure otherwise it will never get resolved.

Does your H not see that him keeping this from you isn't going to help anyone's stress levels.

Just over £15k debt between us. Pay mortgage to parents as they bought our house and we pay back each month. Outgoings are around £1100 for us both and my salary is very low. Only £17k a year but DH is on £30k so we manage ok

We both earn well above average income and live in a cheap part of the country. I am a saver and sat DH down very early in our relationship and insisted we save the same amount each month into long and short term savings and put money into the joint so we have comparable amounts of money to spend on ourselves. I always live well within my means. Because of that we have never been in debt but he has got both his own account and the joint account as overdrawn as he can more than once. I can't count the number of times I've had to bail him out with my short term savings. I think if we had a lower income I'd have left him because what is an annoyance with our income would be disasterous on an average income. He seems to be incapable of thinking 'if I want to do X then I need to save Y first'. Sigh.

But thanks to me our only debt is the mortgage (not overstretched and we overpay) and we have about a years salary in savings.

I think it's very strange this is only happening now after you married & had a child

Me & my partner have lived together for 18 months and the day he moved in we wrote all our bills down & income & worked it all out!

Partner has car on finance which is a huge chunk, a credit card that if he uses he does the overtime to pay off & it's only 4% APR so not much of a big deal, think there's about 1.5k on it at the moment & I know he's paying 1.2k off it on payday this month. The mortgage payment is the same as the car but we both pay that along with a 10k bank loan, Virgin, house bills etc. Other than that we have a joint argos card that we pay 50 a month on for the next 8 months.

I have ontop of this my own credit cards that I do pay chunks off but it's always floating with about 300 on as use it to book anything we do so I'm covered (pay it off & book something else) and about £800 in debt from years ago that was £3.5k that I've nearly cleared I pay £220 a month on that.

Currently have £700 saved which I keep thinking I should pay off my debt but it's nice to have it there & my debt is frozen so doesn't increase with charges or interest.

We live well but compromised buying a cheapish house as we know in the next year or two I'll be dropping onto maternity & then dropping my house. I imagine our mortgage is a lot less than most