Higher earner should pay more of the bills?

[TTM123]

What are peoples opinion on this? If your partner earned more than you, would you expect them to pay more towards the bills?

Well, women have always been and will be more vulnerable then men. It is not an equal playing field.

I feel like you're on a different thread to me. Most people have agreed that the higher earner pays more. And the few that arent in that situation have been challenged.

There HAS been discussion about the importance of equal contribution. As a rule, I think it's pretty clear that the reason the term cocklodger exists is because the issue of one party sitting around doing fuck all, while earning fuck all, is too often a man. In the case of a woman earning nothing, she's usually the one doing everything else.

First of all, I don't ''make'' my husband do anything. It is something that we agreed on because if he wants to earn more money for himself, he can.

When it is the other way around it is usually a different scenario such as it is common for a woman to go part time and sacrifice her earning potential to take on more childcare responsibility. In that case, I would agree that the higher earner needs to pay more.

This is what I was getting at.

Finances should be joint but it's a bit cheeky to sit back and take it easy and expect your OH to pick up the slack.

Not sure I agree with this.

I think it's just much more acceptable for women to cocklodge. Loads of women never return to FT work or really try and push the career once the kids are at school and their husband is earning the big £££, and often they have cleaners etc so it's not like they're cleaning the house all day.

There's no such thing as a 'lad that lunches'. 😂

Life doesn't work like that
You pay for what you use no matter your income
You wouldn't expect to pay less for a pack of fags cause you earn less
Why would you then expect to pay less for energy, water, sky, council tax etc..

It should be proportional

I earn more so I pay more. I would feel differently if we didn’t have dc’s because then it would feel like I was simply subsidising an adult.

We are married so all money of family money.

We calculate the net income, subtract the bills and split the remaining money equally so we each have same disposable each month.

DH pays a far higher proportion than me at the moment. However, I earned more than him at the beginning and my pension will be higher at the end.

It works out over a lifetime.

I am the higher earner and all money is family money. I can't imagine a situation where one spouse has more money to spend on clothes, hobbies, holidays, etc. and the other is going without or on the cheap. It helps that neither of us are big spenders and we try to ensure equal time and opportunity for hobbies etc. If one costs more than the other it doesn't matter, we don't keep count. So long as we can afford it in our budget we support each other to make good decisions on how we spend our money. If we need to save, then we agree how we cut back.

I’ll be damned if I work way harder than my lazy DH and pay more for the privilege.

if you're living an entirely shared life, then yes, especially if you have children.

We worked out monthly outgoings +15%, then we each put a share of our salary into the joint account for all "family" outgoings (so bills, kids, food etc etc), leaving us both with the same amount left over in our personal accounts.

I could have written this word for word. Can’t imagine living any other way, it’s how a good relationship should be.

Yes, absolutely! Me and my ex split everything 50/50 but he earned a lot more than me.

But... he'd taken the initiative to career ladder climb and worked really hard for that extra money so I wouldn't expect him to share it. I wasn't lazy, but I was more plodding in my career at the time. I could have gone for promotions but preferred the less stressful life!

I'm the same in a way.

I earn about £45-50k, which is a decent salary but I could've been on much more had I stayed in my fast track graduate job. However, it was just so tedious.

I never really wanted kids so between me and my partner (who can't have kids) who earns a similar amount we just don't need the money enough to take on more responsibility/stress.

Sometimes I'll do longish days (get paid decent O/T though) but atm I'm just sitting waiting to pour one last load of concrete and I've been on mumsnet for two hours.

We met later in life (mid and late 40s) no kids. Used to doing our own thing. He moved in to my house that is mortgage free. All bills in my name because that's just how it was all come out of my account and he just transfers a set amount every month. Works for us.

There's more than one way to have a good relationship though.