This is a topic of conversation that's been coming up recently with my husband.
We've been married 3 years and never got round to merging finances (I don't want to anyway as explained below!).
At the moment, all bills come out of one of our two accounts, it works out that we are roughly paying the same from each of our accounts for different things. I.e. he'll pay the utilities and council tax bills, I'll pay the mortgage payment and so on... Shopping I tend to do and he just pops me over half the money when I tell him how much it was. It's the way we've always done it, before we were married.
We have a joint savings account in case of a rainy day which we both pay into every month but after that our money is separate and we can do what we like with it. We earn roughly around the same as each other so it's never been an issue.
He has started mentioning maybe it would be easier if we had a joint account for everything, save all the hassle of sending this and that to various places.
Quite honestly the main reason I don't want to do this is I want my own money for our son. My husband has two older children and we have one child together.
I love having my own money and being able to spend it on my son how I wish without having to worry about being seen as fair, or it looking like Dad paid for this for Ben but not Fred when actually the money is half mine (not real names obviously).
I don't want to feel like I can't buy my son a treat or take him out or buy him some extra bits at birthdays and Christmas because we have to spend the same on every one from the "family money".
Is this reasonable? How would you say it? I don't want to come across like a witch but I'm not interested in my money getting caught up in paying equally for DSC in everything and feeling like I can never spoil my son a little when I want to out of my own funds because it's "family money".
I appreciate it is classed as family money if we were to separate, I understand that. But practically on a day to day basis as it is now, we don't question each other on who spends what out of their money and on whom and for the sake of how things are with our son, I want to continue that.
If we have any big expenses like family holidays (including DSC), we pay half. The other just sends it to the person who's booked. Same with food and bills. So I'm not completely separating things and I am contributing to everyone in that sense.