To think it's ok not to share money

[ToooRevealing]

Right, so this thing about "family money". My DH was one of those, a long time ago, who wanted to keep absolutely everything separate. We got a joint account for bills when we had DS1. Then after two years we sat down and recalculated things because I was always having to ask him for more money each month (I was the lower earner and on mat leave). He was happy to sling me an extra thousand quid every few months ad hoc, but that didn't work for me, I wanted us both to contribute to the children's upkeep more obviously, so he could see clothes trips treats football lessons etc all coming out of our joint money and never have any vague feeling that I'd just "overspent". He was of course fine with this (this isn't a thread about financial control, our communication is fine & power balance good!)

He still says, though, that he has "chosen a higher earning job than me"; which to be fair he did, before we ever had kids or even met each other. So while we should contribute proportionally to our joint family, we should each keep our discretionary money for ourselves. In practice he puts loads in his savings (so I'm sure I'll get it in the end, ha ha!)

But is he right? Part of me thinks yes, as long as neither if you is in financial trouble or hasn't got enough, and if you take the long view, the higher earner can stash their spare cash away in accounts the other has no access to.

But then I think it's a grey area- I'm not progressing as fast in my career as I would have done if I didn't have children, and that's not quantifiable. I am part time, so we know what we save on childcare and the value of that. But... I was part time before kids too! I like being part time & would want to stay that way. He likes being full time.

If we were both full time and both absolutely went for it, he would be earning say £100k a year and I would be earning say £90k a year. As it is, I earn £50k and he earns £100k. So this AIBU isn't about being tight for money. Am I BU wanting our discretionary personal money to be equal; or is he BU, saying that once we've provided for our family together and proportionally, we can have different discretionary amounts for fun and savings, because we have different careers? I think his view is fair, but because he loves saving money, and it's always me who pushes to spend money, that can muddy the waters.

If your earning potential has been affected by you having children (taking a career break, working part time etc) then it’s not fair to have different amount of discretionary money to spend on yourself.

I also think, regardless of children, it makes for a very difficult power balance if one person earns a lot more and is not prepared to pool finances. You will either have one person always having to pay for things like holidays, mortgage etc and resenting it and the other person feeling indebted the whole time, or you will have two people with very different quality of life which will also lead to resentment.

My husband earns a lot more than me and we treat our finances as joint (despite our earnings actually being paid into different accounts for practical reasons). He is very conscious that I have a lot less of my own money but is always very clear that I should treat my spending power as equal to his. Part of the reason I earn less is due to having children but also because I chose a career path that just pays less (although is equally valued by society).

@Shoxfordian

Not a position I would ever personally put myself in

Wise words.

Marriage is essentially (and unromantically) a contract uniting two people economically.

Exactly. In particular as soon as children are on the scene the woman's career prospects/income is negatively affected, even if she continues to work. Anecdata about the lady-who-lunches or female CEOs don't change the reality for the majority of women.

The only fair and realistic thing to do is to treat the unit as a unit where all share in the benefits and losses.

So are you saying for example at the end of each month you have 200 spare cash, he has 400, and while rather than you each having 300 to spend, you both have 200 to spend and he saves the extra 200 - I do think that is fair (but the savings should be in both names - even if you don't have immediate access to the account because you both know you'll spend it (all or some)

If you decided you wanted something that was more than you could afford out of the descretionary spending - be it a holiday or new kitchen, new car etc - and you both agreed it was a good idea. Would it all be paid for out of the savings? even if they were in his name - or would he pay half and you need to provide your own savings/loan for the other half

i would be on your side if you hadn't chosen from the word go, pre children, to be part time. Presumably you never intend to work full time again even when your children are grown? If a man chose only to work part time for the whole of his working career, MN would take a pretty dim view of his lack of financial responsibility for his family.
If you want an equal share, go back to work full time once your children are settled at school. Take an equal role in financial responsibility. To demand the right to work part time but be cushioned by your husband working full time seems very unfair.

imo, people should be able to keep separate any assets they had before marriage, or any inheritance.

Apart from that, whatever income is earned by either of you during marriage should be joint,
or otherwise you are really just housemates with benefits rather than a partnership

So, equal PENSION CONTRIBUTIONS, SAVING POTS, as well as equal spending allowances

However, that assumes either both working ft or both pt regardless of salary differences,
or both agreeing that one person would step back

If - without health reasons - one person gives up / reduces work without the agreement of the other, or doesn't return when agreed beforehand,
then that is unfair on the other person, who might reasonably decide not to share income equally until the situation hass been redressed.

I'm with your husband on this one. Why should he supplement your lifestyle just because you don't want to work full time? You have said that you worked part time before having children so your career hasn't been effected so I don't think he should have to share his wages beyond his share of the bills.

Me and my husband pool everything but we both work full time in the careers we have chosen. Different times over the course of our relationship it has swapped between us who was the higher earner. It was never an issue to us because we were both working full time doing our best. But to be honest if I was the higher earner because he chose to work part time then he would have to adjust his spending habits to allow for that. And I would expect him to feel the same if I decided I only wanted to work part time. I would have to cut my cloth according to my means.

I don't get why you feel your are entitled to the money he has earned. The only extra I think you should get from him is the amount he is saving in childcare by you choosing to work part time.

I think the difference to you and other women who might start these threads is that although your earnings are very different you still take home a very good salary. You are hardly struggling.

Would you feel the same if you worked 30hrs per week and took home £13,000 a year whilst your husband took home 100k?

Me and my DH earn roughly the same and we are both high earners so keeping my own money would work for me. However I grew up with a SAHM and it was always family money and all accounts, investments and savings were joint. The thought of my dad letting my mum struggle is repugnant to me.

Thanks @DowntownAbby

My comment especially stands if a woman is not married to the man as her financial position then is incredibly precarious and dependent on his good nature.

Any woman should have her own walking money just in case.

The children and I have always had what we need. There was no disagreement about what we needed necause dh and I had similar values. DH has a niche highly professional role and did actually need good suits and classic shirts/shoes. When I was a SAHM he was the one who said "does it annoy you that a cpl of shirts, suit and pair of shoes for me comes to a lot and you seem to be spending only a couple of hundred a year?" No, because that was all I needed but it meant the world that he cared and wpuld have been happy for me to spend more.

Any woman should have her own walking money just in case

Completely agree with that, too.

It's so sad reading threads like this one: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3827827-how-much-should-your-partner-earn

Where women are clamouring to say they'd quit their jobs instantly if their husband earned enough.

I honestly despair at this attitude after all the progress made with working towards equality and the security that having your own job offers.

We’ve never shared money and we’ve never sat down and worked out who pays more for what overall because it doesn’t matter to us. We talk every now and again about how much in savings each of us have - it’s handy to know the total should there be a large, unexpected expense - but for the most part it all just works out.

For example. I pay for pretty much all of the kids day to day expenses. He pays for basically all the food. He earns more than me so he pays proportionately more of the mortgage and childcare etc...

It just works for us. I don’t think there a right way to do anything, as long and you’re both happy with it. If you’re not happy, talk to him about it.

We have been married for decades and have always had separate finances. It suits us better that way. Until recently our only joint asset was our house, though I have now put some of our investments into joint names to make better use of our personal tax allowances, and I will probably put some of this into an ISA in his name.

We each have our own discretionary spending, and for bigger things such as holidays, a new car or work on the house we discuss who will pay for what.

Just because we have separate accounts, doesn't mean we don't see it as joint money. When we were younger, money was very tight and we used to just ask each other for money if one of us was running short that week. (Discretionary spending wasn't an issue then as neither of us had any!)

This is partly a matter of different attitudes to money. I like to have savings, for our retirement, for emergencies, just to make myself feel secure. So that is what I do. DH is largely disinterested in this, though I go through it with him occasionally - just in case anything happens to me, he will need to know where the money is.

I think @Lucked has a good point. It doesn’t matter that much if you have separate or joint money as long as you both have enough for your needs and it works for you both but if one of you is struggling and the other is not and happy to sit back and watch, you have a problem.

One pot is the only way that works for me- all income is ours equally, all outgoings are ours equally, we have equal entitlement to spending.

DH used to earn more than me, especially in the mat leave days and when I went back PT instead of FT at first; I now earn 3 times what he does. We've had dreadful times, like when we were both unexpectedly out of work and living on fuck all and crying over bills, and better times, times when income has been pretty equal and times when, like now, it's been significantly unequal. What has never changed is our approach to how finances work in our relationship. Doesn't matter who 'earned' it, it's ours.

I wouldn't want a relationship with someone who thought a higher income meant they had more entitlement to personal spends. It wouldn't work for me at all.

He sounds a peach!

If he is a saver and regards you as more of a spender (you need to decide whether you are or whether the spends are simply necessities like furniture, nursery, clothes etc and not spa weekends) then agree to a joint access account for all family spending, regular savings, and personal allowances of the same amount for non essentials. You are a family unit not separate entities. It should all be joint money.

Do you use your free time to take care of children and household? Would he be happy to take half of that work over, if you went to work full time?

My DH earns about 1/3 of what I do. If I asked him to contribute proportionally and just live on the rest then indeed, I could be going on luxury long haul holidays and he would be camping in our garden.How would that work?

IT’S NOT HIS MONEY! Or at least, it shouldn’t be, in a proper partnership. She’s enabling his high earning by doing the lion’s share with the children and at home. They’re a team and should act like one.

Which is fine if you've agreed that (for example) one partner works full time and the other is a SAHP/works part time for the purposes of benefiting the family as a whole.

What about if one person chooses not to work/works less hours than they should do or works in a poorly paid job because they love it - without any particular benefit to the family as a whole - is it still up to the higher earner (who may also want to work fewer hours in a different job) to subsidise the lower earner's choices?

I struggle with this one I must admit. I have plenty of friends who choose not to work (initially to care for children, but that's no longer the case as the children have grown up) and are supported financially by their husbands. Everyone makes their own choice, of course, but something doesn't sit well with me when people choose to opt out of full time work or work at all, preferring more free time, but then complain that they don't have the money that goes with a full-time role.

In this case, you've chosen to sacrifice some of your salary to have more downtime which is a lovely choice, but I always wonder how that sits when your husband works longer hours and with that salary, I'm guessing it comes with plenty of responsibility and stress. I do wonder how my friends feel when their husbands struggle with the stress and strain of work, while their days are spent doing lovely stuff.

He still says, though, that he has "chosen a higher earning job than me"

Oh what an enormous, entitled, blinkered twat he is being.
He also "chose" to have children with his DW, who has sacrificed the high-flying element of her career path on order to provide him with his children.

It doesn't have to be full blown financial abuse to be wrong.
You don't have to be starving in the gutter before you object to his bizarre & insulting DoubleThink.

Some of the nicest men are unreasonable in this regard - the world is so perfectly constructed by them, for them, that they don't catch sight of womens' reality.

If men routinely took years out of their careers, wrecked their bodies & risked their lives to parturate, you can be damn sure they'd be well compensated for it. We'd never hear the fucking end of it.

Tooo - you need to impress upon him that his "choice" is only available to him because you have facilitated it for him. Oh, & tell him from me he's being an arrogant arse who needs to get some perspective.

Fine before you have children, if that's what you want. But after that your career is more than likely irrevocably damaged and it's not fair of him not to compensate you for that, imo.

As others have said it isn't fair. I have been the FT worker and much higher earner for years. We pool all our money, agree priorities such as paying off the mortgage, a new car etc and have equal spends for us as individuals. The rest is savings. I couldn't have my children and my career without DH going on a slower lane in his and no way could we afford for me to stop being FT early in our marriage/having children.

If I refused to pass on my greater wage and keep it all, as woman, it's often seen as sensible! But if a man does it it's financially unbalanced and controlling. It's the latter who ever keeps the lions share - marriage should be a partnership. You might have different roles within your lives but you are equally important to the family diynamic.

It only takes a quick glance on here to find men who are not parenting properly, not contributing to the household, not acting like responsible fathers. If you don't work and you don't have money then it makes it so much harder to leave. Money is independence and freedom, it shouldn't be something you rely on a man to provide you with.

If you want to keep finances seperate that's great - don't get married though.

But... I was part time before kids too! I like being part time & would want to stay that way.
I think his view is fair, but because he loves saving money, and it's always me who pushes to spend money, that can muddy the waters.

These two statements make me think the current arrangement is probably a good one for your marriage.

He likes to save, you like to spend. You choose to work part time*, he doesn’t. The children and household are well provided for. I’d probably be pissed off at handing more money to you to spend on things I don’t necessarily agree with in these circumstances, and your current arrangement avoids that.

*I know you are saving on childcare just now, but given you worked part time before children and seemingly are quite happy to continue that way when they are older... how much is “sacrifice” on your part that he must compensate you for and how much is “choice”?