To ask how you and OH manage finances?

[Strawberryfelineforever]

Just wondering how to go about organising financial responsibilities when I move in with future husband later this year. I earn about half of what FH earns at the moment but he has more expenses than me eg he has a car to pay off whereas I don't drive. We have no children and he is covering more than I am for the wedding as I earn significantly less. He suggested he could cover rent/mortgage and I could cover the food shop and bills? We didn't talk about what specific bills just yet. We both agreed we would set up a joint account whilst still having our own separate accounts (I think it's important to have your own account as well). Does this sound reasonable? Should I be putting the same amount in the joint account if I earn less? Just wondering if anyone has tips on splitting things and what is fair. Thanks!

I'd suggest rather than he covers some things and you cover the others that you have a joint account, agree how much you will both contribute, and use that account for all household bills & food.
That way you are both contributing to all aspects of your life, and both responsible for it.

Then keep your own accounts for personal spending.

You'll get a multitude of replies for this scenario OP. Myself, we have joint accounts where all the money goes in one pot. Others do it as a percentage of the ratio of wages.

Pay goes into individual accounts, we both move money into the joint account - I put slightly more than DH now as my base pay has tended to be higher over the years

In the end you both should be left with roughly the same for spends - for us that’s easier with all bills etc coming out of one place - and when you have DC it’s easier to see things like weekly shop, childcare, random stuff for the DC, house etc coming from there and then both decide to up the amount going in if needed

We have our own accounts and a joint account. Each month we transfer money into the joint account to cover mortgage, bills, food etc. We earn different amounts, so it’s worked out that we have roughly the same left to spend ourselves

We worked out our combine take home pay the all the bills including an amount for food, we then worked out what % of the combine wage would be bills and each paid that %. For example our bills were 47% of our overall take home pay therefore we each put 47% of our wage into the joint account.

You should do whatever you feel comfortable with. In my 24+ year marriage, there is no "your money and my money." All money belongs equally to both of us and who earns more is totally irrelevant. There is no "his car and my car", they are both our cars equally. We have never once had disagreements about money because everything is both of ours equally. To me, that is how a marriage should be, but everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish.

We have one pot. Both salaries goes in. All bills come out. We use leftovers as and when we need and just use common decency to run big purchases by the other person.

You should do whatever you feel comfortable with. In my 24+ year marriage, there is no "your money and my money." All money belongs equally to both of us and who earns more is totally irrelevant. There is no "his car and my car", they are both our cars equally. We have never once had disagreements about money because everything is both of ours equally. To me, that is how a marriage should be, but everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish.

Ditto

We do a joint bills account - DH pays in more than I do, he's mostly freelance, so not always working, but he gets paid a very high day-rate when he does, so it balances out to a decent annual salary and my earnings aren't massive. Joint account is for mortgage, bills, shopping and ocassionally for child-related costs. When we had au pairs, he'd pay for them as well. It was never worked out precisely but works well enough.

We both have the same individual fun money, regardless of who earns what. All the costs etc are from a joint pot. So in essence we pool everything then take some back each.

@Aquamarine1029

You should do whatever you feel comfortable with. In my 24+ year marriage, there is no "your money and my money." All money belongs equally to both of us and who earns more is totally irrelevant. There is no "his car and my car", they are both our cars equally. We have never once had disagreements about money because everything is both of ours equally. To me, that is how a marriage should be, but everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish.

Yeah basically same as this. Only diff is we have 2 cars and we refer to them as mine and his respectively. But money wise the pot just pays for both as they are effectively ‘ours’.

We have always had a joint account, and our pay goes into that. We then each have our own accounts, and pay a set amount (the same amount) into that monthly, so we get the same amount to spend on ourselves. All of our bills, mortgage, credit cards etc are paid from the joint account. When we first got together, I earned very significantly more than he did, but over the years that's changed after I went PT post DC, but we've always done the same and it's fairer than other ways of doing it in my view.

Before we moved in together we set up a joint bank account where we would transfer money each month for our deposit / furniture savings.

We eventually then fully moved all our accounts into one, both our wages and all direct debits come out of one account. We find this a lot easier to manage than working out percentages and who should pay what etc...
My wage probably only covers 1/3 of our monthly outgoings and dh covers the rest (haven't worked it out exactly)

I know that this takes a lot of trust etc but we've not had any arguments over spending so far. (10 years)

I’m not sure if this is conventional or not, but me and DP split bills 50/50, DD’s stuff I buy unless big things, then we split, and DP buys groceries.
What we individually have left (not a lot sometimes) is ours to do what we want with and the OH can’t say anything.
It avoids all money arguments for us and we get to buy things we’d like without having to ask permission.

And we don’t have a shared account (I have more savings than him) sorry for the double post

@DustyMaiden

You should do whatever you feel comfortable with. In my 24+ year marriage, there is no "your money and my money." All money belongs equally to both of us and who earns more is totally irrelevant. There is no "his car and my car", they are both our cars equally. We have never once had disagreements about money because everything is both of ours equally. To me, that is how a marriage should be, but everyone is entitled to do whatever they wish.

Ditto

This with bells on

Completely separate accounts here.

DH pays mortgage and some of the direct debits. I pay the others. It's roughly proportional to income.

We do have a joint savings account where we put any bonuses etc. and withdraw for holidays or unexpected expenses. We run any 'big' purchases past each other.

Both of us have money for personal spending. If I run short at the end of the month DH will transfer cash and vice versa.

Not for everyone but works for us.

We both earn full time salaries, we both put into one back account and all bills comes out of that. We buy what we want when we want and we don’t have separate accounts. We are married, what’s mine is his etc. And btw, I earn a hell of a lot more. Doesn’t bother me one bit who spends what as long as we’re sensible what’s the problem.

We've had different arrangements depending on life stage/children/wages etc.

Initially we had a joint account and paid into it for bills and kept the remainder. Then we paid everything in and paid ourselves an allowance. Then we were skint so every penny was spoken for. Now we know what we have, and spend what we want simply put of the joint account. We both have a similar idea of how much we'd spend without discussing it.

We both pay into pensions and have separate savings accounts which we pay into each month.

Mainly, we've always talked about it, agreed what we're going to do, and there's always been transparency on earnings/expectations.

We've been together ten years and have no plans to get married. I earn about twice my DP. We each put the same amount into our joint account to cover bills and fun stuff. I pay the mortgage and it's only my name on the deeds. This roughly works out with us having the same disposable income. The house is left to him in my will, but if we split up it's 100% mine. This situation works well for us.

From the day we married there was no ‘his money’ or ‘my money’. It was entirely ‘our money’.

Our houses have been our houses. Our food is our food. Our cars are our cars.
We don’t need permission to spend or never need to ask for money as it’s all in the one pot. We’ve agreed spending priorities when money was tighter; we’ve got cars we usually drive and say my car and his car, but he takes my car and I take his sometimes. It’s to identify cars not for ownership.

When DH was working all money went into joint account and all bills went out of that account. There was no mine or his. Now that DH is a SAHP my salary still goes into the joint but we have separate accounts that (equal) money is transferred to so that we can still surprise each other.

When DH and I first married we earnt similar amounts. At the moment he earns a lot more than me, and at times I have not been earning at all. We have always had the same arrangement and we are both happy with it:

• We have a joint account that we both get paid into, and all the bills and day to day stuff comes out of.

• We have a separate personal account each that we put a kind of monthly allowance into. It's the same amount for both of us, and is for us to spend on whatever we like - clothes, hobbies, outings etc.

• We also have a savings account each with emergency backup money.

We have been married for 30 years and money has never been an issue. We have never had a joint account and when we married the equity was mine so we had a pre-nup.

If I were advising my DC nowadays I'd probably suggest a clear budget noting all expenses: rent/mortgage/utilities/insurance, etc. If they total 1500pcm and one of your earns 50k and one 25k then each individual's contribution should be proportionate. It does require absolute transparency though and how student loans are dealt with I can't begin to imagine but you have to decide which expenses are essential and joint and which are discretionary.

@BashfulClam I worked it out using your system, if we did that I would be left with about 685 per month discretionary spending and he would have about 1300. Does it really matter if one person has more discretionary income than the other? LOL sorry I'm used to living either at home or on my own so I'm still figuring it out!