Should I pay for this from my savings?

[Mumtofour1]

Posting here for traffic really. Situation is I need to have 1.5k worth of dental treatment. Those who have had dental treatment recently know it doesn't cover a lot. It's for restorative work so necessary but not impacting.my health as such.

Question is due to cost my DH suggested I should use my savings but I disagree, it should come from joint savings. We are financially stable with good savings etc so no problem here.

What do others think?

It depends what each savings 'pot' you have is specifically for. I'd be inclined to take this from personal savings as opposed to household savings tbh.

Half from each

I would assume that would come from my personal savings as opposed to the family one.

Your teeth, your bill. I really don't understand why you think it should come from family money. Emergency treatment yes, anything else no.

I'd pay this from my own savings.

I recently had elective dental treatment (cost €4k) and I paid for this from my own savings, not joint. My reasoning is, this is something that I wanted to do for me, it's not a family cost.

I think it depends - if you have a missing tooth and need an implant or similar I think I would expect that to come from household savings. If it was veneers or something comparatively cosmetic maybe from personal savings. It would also depend on the ability to replenish those savings - if, for example, you were now in a position where you couldn't replenish the savings that would make it more important to me that it came from household savings.

Your own savings. We have joint savings and I recently paid £1200 for composite bonding. That to me isn't something that family money should fund. To be honest I put it on a credit card as that seemed the better option.

I think dental work should be a personal cost, not a joint one.

If it's elective treatment then from your own savings

It's a personal cost. I'm part way through £2600 of treatment, 5 fillings. I took out an interest free credit card to spread the cost

You're, why would it be joint?

Completely depends on how you have set up your finances and how you have agreed to use your savings and joint savings.

For DH and I went have joint savings to spend on things that are joint eg the house, holidays, the dog etc. Personal savings are for things that are just for one of us, which would include dental treatment.

I'd pay for it from my own savings, but we don't really have joint and individual savings, all our saving a and investments are in one of our names but we count them all as joint as we're married. So I'd take it out of savings that are in my name and I've saved but I'd consider it DHs too.

What are your joint and personal savings currently allocated for? Does your DH have an equal amount of personal savings?

DH and I pay for our own dental work, even hygienist etc. It's not a family expense.

I think half out of each would be fair but it depends on how much money you have.

We each pay for our own. Any treatment costs for DS come out the joint account

DH and I specifically agreed that necessary medical expenses would come out of our joint account, when we set it up. So, I'd say it depends on what you've agreed previously and whether the work is necessary/reasonable/health-related or purely cosmetic.

In our house, it would probably come from my savings.

I managed to get weight loss treatment out of the joint as I argued it was for health but cosmetic dentistry might be taking it too far.

How bad are your teeth- is it definitely just cosmetic - not impacting your mental health etc. I’d expect a missing tooth to come out of joint probably.

if he wanted hair transplant, would that come out of joint?

Personally I find it a little strange that a married couple would have both ‘personal’ and ‘joint’ savings. I know it doesn’t seem to be unusual here, but I never get it.

What way do you normally manage finances? Before we got married we would have used personal for something like this, once married we would use joint - but we would consider everything ours really so it wouldn’t come up as issue.

I disagree with many. Teeth come under health for me so that’s joint savings. Anything even if for just 1 person that is just part of daily living / needs is family money. Clothes / nails / weekend away with the girls then that’s personal savings.

Depends where the various savings pots have come from and what they are for. All our money is considered joint, so I don't know. Does dental work usually come out of the joint pot?

I do too to some extent. We have a joint account where all money goes into. But then we then each extract ‘fun funds’ each month. This was to stop me feeling guilty about spending money on myself. He contributes about 75% of income but we have the same fun funds amount. We are definitely in the minority though. We also got together very young though and each brought very little to the marriage financially- I think that makes a significant difference.