To ask you to help me understand marriage & finances.

[sparklealways]

I've realised I always thought about getting married like this....

"What dress would I wear? How many guests? How would I have my hair? Tear jerking speeches!"

I know, In the cold sober reality of adulthood/ parenthood, see that what im actually doing is contracting myself into a love and life with someone.

The part I want help understanding is the financial element. Does everything really become "shared"?

For instance, I have a property, some savings, an income. Passionate about my independence and the fact I can do/ buy what I want.

My partner and father to DD toddler is also property owner. And earns own money.

We don't have any shared accounts. Don't know exactly what's in each others account. Split everything 50/50.

IF we were to get married..... suddenly everything is just "ours"???

And theoretically if we married and then a year later he cheated, all my savings and house would be 50% his to walk away with...?????

I hear of couples having joint bank accounts where all money just goes into and I honestly cannot wrap my mind around this.

Surely you'd need to consult every time you buy clothes/ book a trip/ get dinner/ get nails done etc.

If you have joint finances... how did that happen? Did you one day just throw it all in one big pot or was it more gradual??

Help me understand.

Like others we didn't have assets when we married so the issue was probably simpler. Our attitude was that marriage is a long term contract that gives security and stability for all involved including children if and when they come along. Everything is shared .You choose to marry because of shared values and in my case not for the bottom line of income. One partner might have a better paid job, one might be working and contributing within the charitable or public sectors, one might fall ill or be needed for family duties and thus earn less ; this is all part of for better or for worse.

I’d say the most important thing is that you talk about it - and keep talking through life as things can and do change. And having a reasonably similar outlook on spending / saving.

Big difference between no kids both working to kids and a need for some time/ earning potential to be sacrificed. Also redundancies - job changes - relocations- business start up- house buying- investment opportunities - need to support extended family etc are likely to come up at some point over a life time, and if you are a unit there will be consequences of these decisions for the other person, so they have to be jointly
made and owned.

for what it’s worth we moved jn
together pre kids, but already both owned property. had joint account just for day to day spending and bills and gradually everything became ours. We do still have individual accounts and savings, but both hold the view that everything is really ‘ours’.
same as others- below a certain threshold we each just buy what we think is sensible.
Big spends we discuss and agree.

I used to be adamant about keeping our money separate. Even after marriage our salaries went into our own accounts, and then we transferred a set amount into joint account for mortgage, bills etc. I think this works well pre-kids.

Once kids came along, and I was on maternity leave, we switched to using the joint account for everything. It felt really weird at the beginning and I hated not earning - I never got used to that. But once I did go back to work, we just carried on using the joint account. We don't check spending with each other unless it's a big purchase, but in general terms we might say, oh it's a bit tight next month because X, Y, Z, and try to limit our treat stuff. It works, especially now we are a family. And we've been together a long time so we trust each other.

Everyone seems to have a different solution but it really comes to a head if you have kids. Fine to keep everything separate now but if you have kids you need to make sure you are paying equitably (not necessarily equally) for that. For example if you go on unpaid leave will he make up the balance ? They are your (plural) children not yours singular. I'm shocked at the women here paying for childcare or kids clothes out of "their " money. We did a family pot as soon as we had kids so there was no arguing over who did what. I can see us separating finances again now kids are grown and we are doing different things but basically no one partner should be financially disadvantaged by the choice to have a family

We married quite young and I just thought of marriage as a big party for our friends and fam, and the fact we were committing to each other romantically. Only now (25 years later) when we suddenly have friends starting to divorce, has it actually occurred to me the legal implications of that party! Like others on here, we started with nothing and only have one joint account and share everything. We just kind of respect the account, buy ourselves things when needed but are not really big big spenders on clothes etc as too many bills to pay!

most important factor is having the same attitude to money. Dh and I have separate accounts, both current and savings, but we share the same strategy and have an agreed budget for everything. Which pot the money comes out of is irrelevant.

We do not have joint finances in the MN sense, we are like yourselves and have quite a lot of individual assets.

Women often go PT, take a career break or become a SAHP for a while which is why MN is very much get married. I acknowledge some women earn more, this was me at one point.

We do know about each others assets and income streams though and have the Mother of all spreadsheets that we both have input to but DH as ultimate data cruncher has tweaked to work out multiple scenarios. We both started investing as teenagers, before we met. I’m not asking permission to do x with my money though we do discuss what we are doing and run things past each other.

I have a friend who married later in life and owned two houses, he owned nothing and earned a third of what she did. She was almost 50, no children on either side. In her case I thought she was mad, he is steadily enjoying the fruits of her labour. Even DH doesn’t like him, it is incredibly rare for him to comment negatively about anyone, twice in 27 years about people.

I would say marrying is usually good for women financially but occasionally it isn’t.

If you are married and you divorce the starting point for dividing assets is 50/50, but there are plenty of variations and nuances in practice. Within a marriage couples can organise their finances as they see fit.

I think the 50/50 thing tends to work best in partnerships where the man is the sole or main earner or where the couple married young and the assets in the relationship have been accrued together.

I’m not married in my current relationship and this is because I am the highest earner and have a child from a previous relationship so in my case being married would be a risk as opposed to a benefit.

My personal view is that in relationships where a woman is financially independent marriage is not a good idea because the risk is a transfer of value to a man who has not pulled his weight financially. But it’s horses for courses.

We have joint accounts and have done since before we got married. Day to day we spend what we want. Bigger spends like a new laptop, holiday, car clearly discussed between the two of us.

The allocation of assets of a married couple only happens if you divorce. Within marriage you can do whatever you like. It suits some people to have everything in one pot but I would hate it. We have one joint account for bills and joint expenses, into which we pay in proportion to our salaries. Then we have our own current accounts and savings.