£550 personal spending per month

[PersonalSpending]

I absolutely don't think I'm being unreasonable, but just venting - so I'll be shocked if people tell me I am.
If I am then I can look at adjustments.

My husband and I divide our money by each taking £550 a month spending money. This amount doesn't include work travel, household bills, family savings, mobile phone bills etc. It is literally our own to do what we like with - we can choose to save for bigger personal purchases, gym membership, hobbies, or blow it all on eating out etc. We do also buy work lunches out of this, but can choose to bring lunch in from home so we don't have to spend this.
All the rest of the money goes into our joint account for bills/savings/food etc.

I'm not here to discuss the merits of our arrangements. But for context, I was the higher earner for 10 years. He is now the higher earner (marginally). We've taken even amount of personal spending since we bought a house together - previously he had more disposable income than me because I had more bills, despite my higher income (previous house was mine, he rented a cheap room and then moved in with me - he paid towards bills/food but I still paid the majority/mortgage).

Husband has had a payrise and is irate that the extra money is going straight to the joint account and he's seeing no benefit of the payrise. I've said he is seeing the benefit as we can afford to pay our ever increasing bills, and he still has a hefty amount of personal spending. He says he's broke.

I've suggested we BOTH take extra spending money and reduce our budget for food shopping, or savings, or cut something else from the household budget, if he feels that strongly that he has no money.

My AIBU: Is £550/month spending money per person a lot?

YABU: you can't survive on that amount of personal spending, increase it.

YANBU: That's plenty, he needs to address his own spending habits before taking more from the family money.

Your set up is identical to ours. Almost to the penny.

I have months where the £550 feels tighter than others but that's generally because I've booked a special treat (took the kids to a west end show this month and the associated costs used up a lot!)

But it's absolutely enough. There is very little we have to wait to have and you've been sensible and reasonable suggesting either other things are cut or that he makes packed lunches to take to work - I know on days I forget to sort my own lunch in time I can spend a tenner easily in the work canteen on snacks and lunch, so if he's doing that 3 days a week it's £120ish a month that he could save with just a tiny bit of prep!

No, it's fine!

I'm I'm

What?

That's more than plenty!

We have £320 each a month. I would struggle to spend £550 each month but if you're in an expensive post of the country that will make a difference.

I do think a general rant about the cost of living and money not going as far as it used to is valid though.

I don't think that £550 per month is loads (I definitely spend more than that) but it's not a tiny amount either. Of course you can survive on it, but you can also survive on £0 spending money!

I suggest that you look at savings. Do you currently have a big enough emergency fund? Is there a reason why you need to be holding so much back?

If not, then I think it would be unreasonable to deny access to more spending money. He's not a child that needs to be allocated pocket money. It would piss me off if someone tried to tell me how much of my money I was allowed to spend.

@Bignanna do you have children?

I think the way that you've framed this is rather odd. You're essentially asking strangers on the internet to tell you whether £550 is enough pocket money for your husband.

He's a grown man, and he clearly feels that it's not enough, so surely the question is about whether you can afford to cut the household budget?

£50 spending money is enough if that's all you can afford, but if you can afford more, why deny him access to his own money?

I agree that this sounds very controlling. Why are you deciding what he can spend. Imagine if a husband came on here and said this, everyone would be shouting LTB financial abuse.

Well it depends on the rest of their budget. If they have tens of thousands in savings, good pensions and no mortgage, they can afford more spending money each month.

But it doesn't sound like they're in this position so to spend more on non essentials, they have to cut spending on something essential or save less, which will have an impact if they need to replace their car etc.

But seeing as he won't go through the budget with the OP so they can agree on what spending/saving to adjust and all he seems to want to do is have more money for himself and won't acknowledge the likely fact that all of both their pay rises have gone on increased cost of essentials, then he doesn't really get a say in him just getting more spending money for himself while leaving the OP scrabbling around trying to balance the books.

It's not financial abuse to argue against prioritising luxuries over essentials especially when the person who wants more money won't engage in the work of balancing the budget.

I agree that this sounds very controlling. Why are you deciding what he can spend. Imagine if a husband came on here and said this, everyone would be shouting LTB financial abuse.

surely most married couples have to come to some kind of arrangement on how much they are spending personally vs for the family/house/savings.

He's not approaching the marriage as a partnership. He IS better off as the joint account will be healthier. That said, my DH and I take the opposite approach. We have a joint account that we deposit into each month for shared costs and then what's left of our incomes stays in our personal accounts. The amount we put in to the joint account used to be based on our incomes, now we earn about the same so any discrepency doesn't matter.

£550 each after bills, phone, etc.? Heavens, that's a lot, what on earth do you find to spend the money on? It's another world!

For those saying it's controlling - I have openly given him the opportunity to decide how much spending money we have. But he needs to engage with the budget and tell me what to cut.
I'm not increasing our spending money by £100 each month and then having him moaning in a year that we don't have enough savings for a new washing machine etc. He needs to input into the decisions.

My argument is that I think £550 a month should be plenty, while he thinks it's nothing and he's broke.

Put it another way, you need to earn £15,000 to take home £1100 per month and that's what your fun spends are.

It should be enough unless he has expensive clothes habits or hobbies. It is all about priorities, but methinks he's wasting it on coffee and food.

Nah he's being a dick.

We have the same arrangement (€400 exhausted personal spending money) and DH is always saying we need to increase it or that there you should be an additional separate budget for x y z because the 400 isn't enough.

Yes I agree that would be great, but WHERE IS IT COMING FROM.

I recently had a really good payrise but due to tax and increased bills we barely saw it and the personal budget didn't change. It's depressing and so I see your DH's point of view that it feels like for nothing, but he can't complain about the budget if he won't engage with it

He should be capable of understanding that the cost of living is increasing more than salaries.

If you want to show 'something' you could make it £600 for the sake of a round number. Assuming you have reasonably high salaries to do £550 already, you could probably budget for that relatively easily.

Why doesn’t he want you both to get more spending money? Thats what my DH and I do when we get extra money.

My argument is that I think £550 a month should be plenty, while he thinks it's nothing and he's broke.

Depends what he’s into, that wouldn’t be a buy where enough for my DH.

I feel very different about things. If there's no kids, and both work full-time, why not just put equal amounts into the household account, and keep the rest as individuals?

We have the same system with £700 a month each disposable. However we do pay our own work travel and phones and any personal savings out of that so realistically are left with £350 ish each.

We redid our budget last year and my husband said he didn't feel he had enough spends, so i cut certain joint family things to cover the extra spending money and gave myself the same bump.

He earns double what I do and I could tell he was surprised that I gave myself the same uplift, but I see it as fairness. We both work the same hours, with me doing the lions share of housework/life admin etc (prob 80/20 division of labour). Plus like you, I see it as long term agreement. For all he knows he could get sick or need to retire early. Or my career could take off once the kids are older? Doubt he would be seeking a lesser split for himself then, so why should he get a bigger one now?

Anyway, I do think 550 is enough spending money but the most important thing is that you agree and are both happy with what you get - you need to talk it out

Yeah, this is my general outlook on things. No way would I want to pool my income with somebody else's and be told how much pocket money I'm allowed.

I was brought up to believe that women should always have their own money. My parents and grandparents were the same. I only realised that this was a thing from mumsnet!

We have kids.
If we didn't I would feel very differently about it.