To ask about sharing bank accounts…

[stripeysquirrel]

Married last year and have our first baby on the way

I pay the utility bills and DH pays the rent, that’s how it’s always been. We are buying our first house and so will likely have the mortgage come out of our joint account instead.

Just wondering how others do it normally. Do you pay all your wages into the same bank account and just spend from that, or keep it separate?

We both earn similar amounts but obviously I’ll earn a bit less on maternity leave. Is it easier just to pool all money together or in doing so do you lose all your financial independence?

Totally joint accounts. I earn slightly more than DH but we have a side hustle that is a joint stress and account for nearly 50% of our income. If we really want to surprise each other we have separate credit cards which we pay off at the end of the month once the present is given. Alternatively we can withdraw cash.

I could be bothered with say having to ask DH for half of the cost of DS shoes etc

Pay goes into our own bank accounts, but we transfer it all into our joint account on payday (bar an agreed, identical amount for our own personal spends) whilst we pool everything, earning levels between us don't matter, I do think adults should have their own bank accounts, I would feel weird not.

We each get our salaries paid into our personal accounts, then transfer the same amount each into our joint account where all the household bills come out of.

We have separate accounts then pay the same amount each into our joint account which is enough to cover bills and food shopping

All money, from whatever source, inc. the odd legacy, has always been ‘ours’, with no issues, and we’ve been married for a very long time. Except for a few years, he always earned more than I did.

The only exception was savings accounts in my own name, because dh would have had to pay tax on the interest at the higher rate. But the money was still ‘ours’.

Torally disagree!!! A marriage is a "partnership" right!!

A “proper marriage”?! Ridiculous comment.

OP there is no hard and fast rule but as many PPs have pointed out having a joint account for joint expenses (the contribution to which should be a fair agreement between you and your partner) and separate personal accounts each strikes me as a sensible and mature way of fulfilling your shared responsibilities and protecting your independence.

the idea that it’s needed to hide purchases from your husband is also bonkers. I’ll buy what I bloody well like with my money, it’s got nothing to do with my husband if I save every spare penny or fritter it away, as long as the joint financial plans we have made are provided for.

there is also the bonus that should our relationship every go south - unlikely I would say, but these boards are full of threads from women who never saw a split coming - then I am protected.

I'm standing by what I have posted other than maybe the terminology I used required a bit more clarification other than what I posted

All to often you see people banging on about his/my money what should he/i pay etc - that's not a marriage that's like a business arrangement

Almost from the outset of our marriage over 40 years ago - no matter who earned more - we pooled the money for all bills, mortages when we had them - food etc and that is part of a good, proper marriage and I'm standing by that. No ifs, no buts but a fact

Some people earn enough where that sort of arrangement just isn’t necessary.

If you don’t really have to budget your daily expenditure then there really is nothing to be gained from pooling money.

The only financial discussions we have relate to investments and for a variety of reasons that is best structured individually.

Ours is very complicated but boils down to:

Joint account, all income rcvd and all bills paid out.
Joint credit card, all joint spending done on this.
Personal accounts, we each get £250pm from the joint account to spend on what we each want.
Joint savings, everything left in the joint account goes into savings.

This has seen us through Mat leaves/ his redundancy etc. Ie. Periods when he was earning more or I was. We're now earning the same and it still works well.

This is exactly what we do

I’d refuse to get married if it required pooling all of our money.

We split bills and joint expenses 50/50 and whatever’s left in our individual accounts is ours to do as we wish.

I don’t see how that makes us any less of a partnership. It’s just a different setup, that’s all.

Your prerogative as is everyones and that is a simple fact of life but I'm standing by my comments!!

Pay goes into personal accounts
Pay into joint account in proportion to salaries
Joint account funds our life - house, cars, food, children's clothes, allowances, pass times, presents, days out.
We also have some joint savings

Individually we can spend our money on whatever we want & we both have savings & pensions.

It’s a very narrow viewpoint. There’s more than one way to have a partnership and a marriage.

That doesn’t mean there’s only one way of arranging your finances within a marriage, don’t be silly.

Op you'll probably find there's many different ways of doing this and lots of different ideas. There's not really a right or wrong if both parties are happy with the arrangement. That's what's important (but also no arrangement should take the mick out of another person) but if i had to give my own idea across , i think partners in a marriage regardless to what they earn should see their money as family money rather then their own separate funds. Hubby and i haven't always earned the same, but we have only ever had one account and both our wages go into it. What ever bills needs to be paid get paid and who ever needs money to get something gets it. It doesn't matter who got paid on what day or what amount. It's all shared. And we haven't always earned the same. When he was made redundant and went to re train it was the same arrangement and when I left work to look after the kids it was the same. Now we are self employed both our wages go up and down at different times but it makes no difference. In all our years together we have never had one fight over money.

Same here, 40 years and have always kept our own separate accounts. He earns a good bit more than me so pays mortgage, bills etc . I pay for food, child related things. It makes me feel independent. However neither of us are particularly frivolous, and don’t worry about what the other is spending . I can see it’s a fairly unusual way of doing it here, but it just works! We’ll both be retired soon , we’ll just continue as we are . He’s very good at checking that I’m ok for money.

I think it will depend a lot what you earn. I wouldn’t see that as much of a partnership if it left one of you with very limited funds for fun/saving and the other with lots of disposable income, particularly if the one with less money was contributing more to
running the household. I think if you are both on similar earnings or you are both pretty high earners then I can see that it’s just a different way to do it.

Fair point.

DH and I are high earners which is a reason why it works for us as well as both of us continuing to work FT. I do agree that it wouldn’t be much of a partnership if one of us took time out of work for childcare reasons and the other refused to share their money.

Can I ask, do you earn the same amount?

We have our own separate accounts that our salaries go into. We then have a joint account where all the bills, shopping and living costs come out of that we each transfer our share of into every month. What remains in our personal accounts is our own money to spend/save as we wish.

We totalled up the all the costs of living then split it pro-rata so we both have the same amount of spending money left over in our own accounts each month.

Say I earn £3k/month and OH earns £2k per month. If our costs are £4k then I transfer £2.5k and OH £1.5k so we're both left with £500. We could of course split it %age wise, but then one would be left with less than the other and this doesn't seem fair to us.

Pay goes into our own accounts, then we each transfer money into a joint account for all bills, other household costs, and all child and pet-related costs. Child benefit is in my name but is paid into this account. The amount we pay in is split proportionally to our take-home pay so we have equal amounts of ‘spending money’ left in our own accounts to spend as we want.

We have a joint savings account for larger spends including holidays, and each have our own savings account for personal expenses (I’ve been saving for a new iPad , for example).

One thing I would suggest is making sure that all child-related costs (larger items like the pram and day-to-day costs like childcare, formula, nappies, clothes etc) are included in the joint costs. I’ve seen several posts on here over the years where the woman is paying for everything to do with the children from ‘her’ money meaning she has very little left for herself, while the man has more disposable income, which always seems very unfair.

joint account all the way in your scenario.