To ask how you manage finances/divvy up money?

[MeSanniesareBrannies]

Cross post with relationships. How do you manage finances/divvy up money?

So, background info:

Me: 34, earning just over £60K (less than £20K savings). Unlikely to ever earn more than £90K.

DP: 32, earning £100K + bonus (also has £100K savings/deposit). Earnings upper limit impossible to predict.

My partner and I have been together three years, lived together two and just got engaged. He earns considerably more than me, has always paid for most things and is happy to do so. We’re buying a house (both names) and he’ll be stumping up most of the deposit.

We both work full time in fairly intense jobs, but hours aren’t crazy. We’re pretty even on housework (we’re both a bit rubbish, he possibly does slightly more, we have a lovely cleaner). No kids, but we we want them and I’ll probably stay home for a bit when we have them.

DP wants to chuck all our money (after savings and investments) in a joint account, have equal access and just not worry about it. Having read threads on here, it seems like there’s reasons not to do that? There’s lots of comments about making sure everyone has their own money, ‘ducks in a row’ and is contributing to the household according to income? If you’re long term married and happy with your financial arrangements, what do you do/would you recommend we do?

I can’t imagine ever having money based rows, but as it seems so common, I thought getting ahead of it might be good. All advice gratefully received.

Before marriage- we split everything 50/50.

After marriage we kept separate finances for a number of years then combined for ease.

I earn a bit more than DH and we do the following-
My salary in its entirety goes into our joint savings account
DH’s salary goes into our joint current account but £700 also goes into joint savings, plus £500 into each of our personal accounts.

Our joint current account is used to pay our mortgages, groceries, insurances, all household bills, fuel, entertainment, subscriptions, charity standing orders, meals out/takeaways etc.

Our personal accounts aren’t very strict and we dip into the joint as needed. I like these accounts as I can buy DH Christmas presents etc and he won’t see the transaction on our statement.

On pay day, I usually transfer the joint current account balance from the day before into savings.

It works for us.

A range of options here. Thanks, everyone.

We do this, full access for both (some exceptions - i have a credit card, got it a year ago and haven’t gotten around to putting dh on it, the shares are in his name because I made him open the account as I refuse to be the only one having anything to do with our finances, I have his logins though as I’m the one who does anything with it. I’m going on mat leave soon, I do the budget for that, just like I do for everything else but all accounts are joint (we have lots of accounts all against our mortgage to make it easy to bucket funds). No concerns re sharing finances.

I think at the just engaged stage we probably opened a joint account and at first used it to put the savings for our wedding in it, and were each paid into our own accounts otherwise. Then we made everything joint.

We have a joint account where most money goes in. I have a savings account which child benefit goes in but I'd have no objection in changing it to a joint account if my husband wanted to.

All our money is joint. My DH earns significantly more than me. About 5 times what I earn.

I have chronic illness so my career options and capability are severely limited.

I think everything joint makes sense when you have children.

All joint. I've just had a promotion which means similar split to you and your fiancé however we are 30/31 and have been together 8 years. When we got together I earned more than him and brought our first house deposit to the table. DH always credits the fact we never fight about money to the joint pooling system, however I'm sure couples who don't pool may say the same!

We use YNAB to track how we spend money. For instance we both get equal amounts to spend on clothing, going out with friends etc.

Don't agree with all finances pooled for anyone.

Account for monthly and annual expenses - yes
Account for shared savings (holidays, deposits. Etc) - yes

Monthly and annual expenses should include everything essential, from cars, to shopping, to kids, to clothes to hairdressers and so on - everything.

But I'm a big supporter of having your own discretionary funds and personal savings once everything else is covered.

If someone is a much bigger earner. Then they should input a relative % to the shared pots. However...I'd draw a limit on the split if both parties are good earners.

We have completely separate finances, so I have my own account and credit card and my partner has hers. Since i earn a lot more than her I pay the bigger bills and she pays for smaller stuff. It works because I am very very veeeeery organized with money (i am a saver and love a good budget) and she is more spontaneous and a "go with the flow" type of person. We are both very generous wirh each other.

We both put all our income into one account, pay bills, put equal amounts into our respective retirement accounts, and the remainder goes into a savings account and debit account. We talk about big purchases and are fortunate enough to buy everything we need and many things we want.

I make about 3x DH's salary. Both names on the house, all money is joint as in - we don't keep tabs on each other on spending after all the bills are paid. However, we don't have a joint account and most of the bills go out of my account, he covers his personal bills and one or two smaller ones (club memberships, storage). But if he needs money - he can transfer from my account whatever he wants. Savings is in my name as well but it is our savings - he transfers money into it at the end of every month from whatever he has left in his. He knows to a dime what's in my accounts and we plan all major purchases together. We didn't go for a joint account because there was just no need for it.

@BasicDad

Don't agree with all finances pooled for anyone.

Account for monthly and annual expenses - yes
Account for shared savings (holidays, deposits. Etc) - yes

Monthly and annual expenses should include everything essential, from cars, to shopping, to kids, to clothes to hairdressers and so on - everything.

But I'm a big supporter of having your own discretionary funds and personal savings once everything else is covered.

If someone is a much bigger earner. Then they should input a relative % to the shared pots. However...I'd draw a limit on the split if both parties are good earners.

Our savings are all in offset accounts against our mortgage so more use to us there than in individual accounts that dont earn anything. This really does work for many people, obviously never if a relationship isn’t truly committed and equal.

We effectively put all money into a joint account, take out some and put it into savings and have equal access to the rest to do whatever we want. I say effectively because although we had joint accounts for part of our marriage (when we went to live overseas), we currently use old separate current accounts, however we very much share our money and freely transfer between us upon request if one account needs topping up.

We have never argued about money which I am sure is because we have always freely shared.

However you mention “DP”. I think I might be more mindful of mine and his if he were a DP and not a DH.

Ours is as your DH suggested, all in one pot. We have a joint account our wages are paid into and a joint savings account. In addition to this we both have our own accounts that we transfer a nominal amount into each month for “personal spending” - we started this about 15 years ago so we could buy each other Christmas and birthday presents without it being seen on the joint account statement! We also have share portfolios and investments that are in our individual names.

@GirlOfTudor

My husband and I have been together 10 years. We earn around the same amount. We opened a joint account together when we bought our house. We have our own personal accounts where our wages are paid into and any personal bills are paid out of (such as phone bills or car insurance). We both pay the same amount into our joint account each month and only joint bills/expenditure is paid from that account (such as the mortgage, utility bills and any big house purchases). This way, the joint bills are taken care of and neither of us can complain what the other does with the rest of our money. We've always split bills equally and have never argued over money. I would never advise anyone to pool their finances 100% with someone; married or not.

We also take this approach and I think the key reason why this works here is that our earnings are broadly the same, always have been and always likely to be.

The joint bills are covered, we each have our own money to save, spend or do as we please which is lovely and I'm more than happy with this approach.

Both of our earnings paid into Joint account, bills paid and then we both had the same amount as 'spending money' to do with whatever we want. Over the years DH earned more than me, then he started a business and I earned more, then business took off and he earned more - throughout all this we both had exactly the same amount for spending money.

To us this was the only fair way - we are a team.

Long-term married here. I'm consistently a high earner; my wife has fluctuated over the years between earning an average amount and not earning. We have almost entirely joint finances; earnings all go into joint account, and all spending is from it. I don't have a current account in my sole name. My wife does, in case she ever wants to spend on something without me seeing it 🙂 and she's at liberty to transfer whatever she wants from the joint account into it, I trust her. (Don't have the reverse problem because although she COULD see what I'm spending from the joint account, in practice she just doesn't look and just leaves it to me to manage that one.)

So I am your DP in this scenario

I'm with @GirlOfTudor

We go 50/50 and pay x into a joint account each month.

In a given year I mayyyy pay for some "extras". Holiday, larger contribution to cars etc.
Savings are totally separate but I top up his ISA every year once mine is maxed so we stay tax efficient.

Our take home pay isn't soooo different as I am paying a shocking amount into pensions to stay tax efficient (we are talking 70k pa right now... again this is a mutually agreed financial plan)

We share most things but by design have this system to keep our outgoings on the lower end ie worked to DHs salary. This has worked really well for us and means mat leave and £2.1k per bloody month nursery fees are manageable with very little stress.

We have a joint everything goes in and out of and don't worry about who earns more/ less. (I used to earn more but now he does and it has never been an issue which ever way that divide goes)

We have similar income to you and all goes into one pot. Things aren’t tight, we couldn’t care less what each other spends money on and we have similar spending habits - neither of us can be bothered to buy stuff so only buy things we really need - so it works out. There’s an excess every month that goes into a joint savings account. I’d recommend it. It’s very simple.

We got a joint account for housing and living costs when we moved in together which we contributed 50/50. But as I earned less I was struggling.

We merged all our finances before we got married. All income in, joint credit cards and joint savings. It has worked for us as neither of us are big spenders. It has seen us through 2 maternity leaves and his redundancy. We've both at different times been the breadwinner and not having to ask to borrow money made a difference.

We get paid (in DH’s case it’s his self employed income) into our current account. I transfer 2.5k a month into the joint account which covers all the bills. All spending for everything else goes on a joint credit card which I also pay.

Neither of us are particularly spendy (except on our enormous bloody mortgage) so it works fine. Depending on what DH has been up to he usually has enough built up to pay for things like holidays or works to the house. I earn about 10 x DH salary so we stopped splitting things years ago. He’s built up a reasonable savings pot even on his small income. I’d say we have about the same each in savings.

I feel very lucky that we completely trust each other around money. I don’t think we’ve ever really discussed personal spending or the like, we just buy whatever we want and luckily we’re both quite frugal!

Pre-marriage DH put 1/3 more than me into our joint account which roughly reflected our earnings. It covered bills and generally holidays too.

Now we have everything joint. Also have an offset mortgage like a PP.

Have you thought about how you will own your house- specific shares or completely joint?

We just have shared money in one pot. Married 23 years. Sometimes dh has earned more than me and sometimes I've earned more than him.

Everything is paid into one joint account. I was a sahm with no earnings for 12 years so I'd have been a bit fucked without access to dh's wages!

If you are both happy with pooling the money then it’s probably easiest. S long as you both have ready access. Have a chat about money and just see if you have the same attitude.

I’ve a friend who writes everything down in a book that she spends and gets really annoyed her partner doesn’t do the same….I’d advise her against doing the pooling thing.

My partner has 2 kids from a previous relationship who are grown up but he still pays out a lot for them. We have separate finances as I didn’t want to get dragged into that as I knew it would annoy me. But we are finally after 15 years going to get a joint account to put money for bills in.

But other friends whose attitude to money is similar, who are open about what their financial priorities are, sure pool money.