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.

Husband pays all the bills, cars, phones, insurances etc. His income is stable and stays the same. Mine can fluctuate so what I earn is in the joint account for spends.

We have our own accounts where our wages go into. Dh earns 30k more than me.

All of the bills come out of DHs. Whatever’s left is used on petrol and whatever else he fancies buying or we need.

I get paid 2 weeks later than this and mine covers food, days out, clothes, pet insurances etc and any left over goes back into the circle when DH runs out!

Bit random but works for us!

All our money - his salary, my rent income, child benefit, child's DLA and my carer's allowance - go into one account. All bills on DD's or standing order come out of there.

Money for shopping, kids expenses and general expenses gers transferred into another joint account.

Other amounts go into savings accounts, ISA etc.

We then have the exact same amount transferred into individual accounts as personal spends. Partly because we have different spending habits (he's a Costa/Starbucks most days person whereas I tend to go out with friends to somewhere nice once a month) and mostly because I was terribly bad at spending all of my spends on kids stuff.

We both had different ideas so we tried them both out, I wanted to be more proportional as I have a son and I didn’t want the cost of raising him being placed on my husband, he thought joint account that we share would be easier.

When we did proportional for a while, we earn a very similar amount so I paid 2/3 of utilities, food and all of my sons costs. We then paid the mortgage, council tax, cleaner 50/50.

We did that for a few months and then we trialled his, so all wages into one account that all costs come out of, mortgage, bills, food, my sons things etc, then we each receive the same amount of fun money into our own accounts each month.

Both have had their pros and cons, but the proportional would have become award when our child comes home as it would make the proportional aspect harder to work out and just hardwork generally.

Joint account for everything over here, works for us as we don't consider our salaries as "his money" and "my money".

Same we share it all

Married a long time to same man. Always had joint account - equal access regardless what either of us earned. Totally satisfied with that - couldn't tolerate any divisions in a marriage over money or property.

Any of proportional or 50:50 or all in one pot seems to work provided that there is actually enough to go round.

So my advice would be if getting a mortgage and planning children to budget for the mortgage as though you had children already.

So my advice would be if getting a mortgage and planning children to budget for the mortgage as though you had children already

Oooh, I really like this @ConfusedBear.