To think that it’s absolutely fine to still have your own money when you are married?

[itsgoodtobehome]

I read so many threads on here about how all money is joint money once you are married. I don’t get it! I am married. DH and I have our salaries paid into our own individual accounts. We then make a regular payment each into a joint bills account (pays all bills, mortgage etc) and a joint spends account (pays for shopping, meals out, family activities, kids stuff etc). The rest is individually ours to do what we want with. I would hate to not have my own money to be able to spend as I like - clothes, lunches out with friends, gym, fitness classes, and DH is the same with his hobby and own pursuits.

However Mumsnet seems to think this is wrong. Am I the only one that thinks like this?

We have always kept our accounts separate, he pays some bills, I pay others. What is left is ours to spend. We did this when we were both full time earning the same and now I'm part time earning 1/4 of his wages. He just pays more bills from his to address the balance

DH earns more in a week than I do in a month. I earn a great salary, his is in the realms of the ridiculous. Should we (and our DC by default) life different lifestyles based upon this? Should we each take holidays according to our own salaries, sharing the DC between us? Should we do separate shopping each week according to what we earn? Or should we live a joint lifestyle based on being a unit, a family?

It's odd to think that some people genuinely see it as anything other than both of you united in pretty much every way. When I married DH it wasn't "from this day forth, you bank with Coutts and I'll shop at the Asda"?

I have no idea what we each have leftover in our individual accounts. We both earn roughly the same salary, but I don’t know what DH spends his money on, and vice versa. Does it matter? I really can’t get my head around one person earning loads more but then having to share it once all household things are taken into account. So I’m talking about sharing childcare costs, sharing bills, sharing children’s clothes, activities etc. But individually, why should another person fund your lifestyle?

Totally fine when it’s fair. It only becomes a problem for me when say one of you worked part time to look after the kids and brings in 10,000 the other works fulltime and earns 60,000. Then no bills etc shouldn’t be split evenly when it means one won’t have so much more than the other.

If that works for you great.

Personally we just have one account. And I still spend as I wish

(As does he!)

not only fine but vital in my view...I rely on me and would never depend on any man even my husband.I have long held the view that its vital to protect myself too and my money would provide me with a way out of any situation I hopefully would never find myself in.

Personally I can't think of anything worse than having to share finances and I would never ever do that, even in the unlikely event that I got married again. I've fought really hard for my financial independence and that of my child and I wouldn't sacrifice that for anything.

I think the emphasis on shared finances makes sense from the point of view of a woman who has either stopped working to raise children or taken her foot off the pedal career-wise. If a man out-earns his wife considerably because she is bringing up his children then of course the finances should be shared because she is effectively supporting his right to earn by raising the children and maintaining the home.

But let's be honest, this situation largely only exists because for generations society has been set up with the expectation that the woman will stay at home and if it were normal for men to do half of the domestic tasks and childrearing this situation wouldn't occur beyond the first few months of having a baby.

Where women genuinely want not to work to bring up children their partner should share their finances while the woman is at home, of course. But I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The lack of financial security for the woman is too great a risk. Even marriage doesn't totally protect you against financial hardship and too many women assume they are going to be taken care of.

Or looking at it another way, they're jointly funding the lifestyle of a couple earning £65k.

This is the way we look at it. We have separate accounts but all money in them is joint family money. It doesn't matter who's accounts he bills are paid from (mostly DH's).

We just spend what we want day to day. Larger purchases will be discussed.

But individually, why should another person fund your lifestyle?

Because that literally what marriage is, a legal and financial contract. All the hearts and flowers are irrelevant. You are worldly goods endowing. Otherwise why bother getting married? You are legally joining your lives. They become mostly your de facto inheritor as well.

But individually, why should another person fund your lifestyle?

I find this such an odd statement. If you're young and early days in a relationship then yeah, sure, why should they. But if we're talking about married couples with kids then surely neither funds the other; they both fund the family?

If you earn about the same then it will be pretty even anyway but what about where one out earns the other significantly? One spouse drives to work in their BMW, goes out for lunch everyday and buys designer clothes... the other gets the bus with their packed lunch and Primark raincoat? (Nothing against Primark, I'm wearing Primark as we speak!). I couldn't do it personally.

@bailey we are exactly the same

Well your attitude towards it is quite wrong. How is anyone funding anyone else's lifestyle? It's great for you that you both work full time and earn roughly the same but not everyone is like that. I hardly think my husband is 'funding my lifestyle' when he earns 5 times as much as me because he's full time and I'm part time because we have a 3 year with SEN issues. Your post and further responses sounds a little boasty and not taking on board anyone else's potential situation. As soon as you use the term 'funding someone else's lifestyle' because one earns more, usually the male, you're in the terroirty of sounding and looking idiotic...

“But individually, why should another person fund your lifestyle?” Because ESPECIALLY when you have kids it’s not your (individual) lifestyle it’s your (joint/family) lifestyle.

You’re coming at this from a perspective of 2 adults earning roughly the same, both working full time (I think?) and neither irresponsible in any way with money.

But when one earns significantly more than the other, more than likely possible due to the other party being part-time/sahp, and/or one party is a spendthrift/gambler/addict then there IS an issue of balancing things so they’re genuinely fair.

It’s not fair or morally right eg for a high earning husband with a sahm wife who enables him to have a family AND work long hours (often at short notice), travel for work etc to have hundreds even thousands as spending money while she’s left scraping pennies together to buy anything but basic essentials. Why should a wife (or indeed husband or partner) in that situation go without because they have jointly decided that this is how they will manage their family organisation?

It’s a LONG time since I was married but prior to the divorce my ex was fair and so was I, because at various points through the marriage sometimes I earned more, sometimes he earned more, and at the end I wasn’t earning at all.

We had a joint account (admittedly I regretted that when we split for different reasons) from the beginning, both had our wages put in it and after some hiccups at the beginning (he was a bit of a spendthrift and of a mindset he wasn’t stressed about getting in debt - until I educated him about interest rates and bank fees!) we set a budget such that bills were covered, a little set aside for savings and what was left divided between us equally as spending money we could spend as we chose - one of the hiccups in the early days was he THOUGHT I was spending more on personal luxuries than he was, but when I sat him down with a bank statement and showed him that actually he spent (iirc) 3 x more than I did on personal stuff (and he certainly wasn’t earning 3 x more!) he was shocked and suitably apologetic.

His financial literacy when we first married was appalling!

I was a sahm at the end and at that point we still both viewed all income as “our” money (we got child benefit and a small amount of tax credits too) and continued with bills covered, savings covered and same amount each for spends.

Certainly as far as the law is concerned you are financially joined and all income and most assets are joint.

It just seems inefficient to me (aside from the morals of it). It is far easier to pool resources to manage a budget as a household. I’ve seen threads on here where the couple can’t have a holiday because one of them has just paid for a car etc despite the other one having more than enough to cover it. That to me just seems daft. But, there are also the financially abusive posts too which are far sadder to read.

I find some of the attitudes about funding the other’s lifestyle very odd. Me and DH share the finances but have total autonomy over what we spend as individuals too. It works this way because sometimes he has earned far more than me and sometimes I’ve earned far more than him. Currently we’ve made the decision for him to earn less but do more of the childcare and I earn more but work full time. That doesn’t mean that he should have less spending money because actually he’s made sacrifices in other ways

I earn 200k a year, until very very recently my partner just had student income, now around 40k a year. I cannot imagine how much of a dick I would have to be to keep all of my spare cash at the end of the month, while my partner had nothing to spend. When we got married we agreed we were a partnership and building a life together. My partner does more around the house than me as I work longer hours, for example. We are a team.

Not pooling finances is surely only reasonable when you are earning in the same ballpark and therefore the outcome of pooling or not pooling is essentially the same?

So absolutely agree op, what’s mine is mine and what’s his is mine too. 🤪

Not pooling finances is surely only reasonable when you are earning in the same ballpark and therefore the outcome of pooling or not pooling is essentially the same

I disagree with this. My exdh earned far more than me but my view is that they were his earnings, mine were mine and as long as he supported joint outgoings and I had plenty to live on from my salary, his spare cash was entirely his

My DD studied couples’ bank arrangements for her dissertation and the younger generation are far more likely to maintain separate arrangements. One joint bank account is becoming more unpopular which is a good thing imo

I'd never share money ever again.

We pool our income, regardless of who earns what, into a joint account, a set amount covers the joint account to cover all family, household, bills, mortgage etc spends. What's left over is split 50/50 and we each get the same personal spends into our own accounts. Some months it's a bit less for each of us because we've had to spend more from the joint account. Some months it's a bit more for each of us, but e decide if we'll put the surplus into our joint savings ac ount for a rainy day

We agree a budget for joint account paid for stuff (meals out, theatre tickets, holidays if saved for etc) otherwise we take it in turns to pay out of our own money. It allows us to treat each other, buy presents etc.
Works for us

Oh and the joint account includes some surplus for savings, diverted each month into a cash isa savings account

OP if you have similar salaries then surely you have a similar amount left over, in which case it makes no difference if you share it or not? If there is no need to share then by all means have separate finances, but obviously not all couples earn the same salary.

If you got a huge pay rise would you share it or keep it for yourself? If your DH got one and treated himself to holidays you couldn’t afford how would you feel?

You don’t have to share finances, but you should make sure it’s fair, anything else and you’re not really a partnership.

It's perfectly alright and is what most people do.

lovetolurk - out of interest, did you split all non-work place tasks equally, eg cleaning, cooking, looking after any kids, etc?

Also, you don’t need just one joint bank account to have what are effectively joint finances, in my opinion - you just need to end up with basically the same free money once everything else is paid for. So maybe we also all have different understandings of why joint finances are

It's perfectly alright and is what most people do.

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