To ask how you split your household finances?

[FlipFlopFairy]

My husband and I have separate bank accounts but split the outgoings to allow us to have the same ‘spends’ each month. I know that sounds fair, but what I challenge is what is classed as household outgoings.

For transparency, he earns about 2.5 times my salary, and his bonuses pay for holidays.

I suppose fixed outgoings would be a better phrase than household outgoings. Included in his fixed outgoings is payments for his 2 cars. I have a company car, so my car payments are taken from my gross salary.

Because he has included both cars in his outgoings, it means less ‘spends’ for me, and it feels like I’m helping to fund his cars, when I’m funding my own already.

On top of this, my outgoings include responsibility for variables, such as food and shoes and clothes for the children, so some months I have less ‘spends’ than others. It just feels quite imbalanced.

When I’ve raised this, he just cannot seem to see my point of view. He only sees that his total outgoings from his bank account far exceed mine, and not that his cars (at the very least, the second car) are more of a personal expense, in the same way mine is.

AIBU to think that our expenses need to be reworked to be more fair?

Not really. The personal spending money is technically equal (apart from months when I spend more on food and kids stuff than is allocated in the budget) , but if we were to just remove the second car from the “joint” expenses, I would have significantly more personal money

We don’t have a personal account so everything comes out of one. Basically all our income goes in, we budget for all our fixed costs & and we agree between us what we will spend the rest of.
Essentially for us if we want to buy little things we just get them. If we want something bigger we discuss it.
At different times each of us has earned more. Currently I earn more. I think it’s irrelevant though. We are a family and a team so we share. If we didn’t do that an alternative would be to agree to split what’s left at end of month, after all your shared household costs, into pots of longterm savings, short term savings for holidays/home repairs etc and then fun money that’s equally split between you. I’d tend to think that if you took that approach the second car is out of his fun money.

Ok, so how much money are we talking about for ‘spends’ each each month?

But if you were to separate finances entirely then you’re only left with whatever is left after you pay your % of the bills, without his extra salary to top your extra spends up?

Our cars are both ours same as any income is. Neither of us would spend money on something anywhere near as big as a car without discussing it. Nothing over about £150 probably.

Neither of us has more or less to spend. It's just one account that everything goes in and out of.

How much is this 2nd car costing?
If it annoys you that much then say that actually you car expense is a joint expense and add that to the spreadsheet to even stuff out.

Personally DH and I put all our money in one pot and spend from our joint account. Neither of us takes the piss

But I pay for my car from my gross salary, therefore it’s not a joint expense. His 2 cars come from the combination of joint salaries, so I am paying for his cars, by having less personal money, because the cars are paid for with joint money

All income gets put together, then all shared outgoings are paid from that (tax, water, gas and electric etc). The rest is halved between us to pay off our own outgoings (phone, any debts etc) and we spend what's left on what we want.

For things like day trips, restaurant meals etc we either split the cost in half or one of us treats the other.

Thinking about the current set up if you were to have separate finances would you be better or worse off financially than you are now?
I don’t think it’s that unreasonable him having an extra car payment come out considering he brings in a lot more than you

But the OP is married with children, so we aren't talking about people with partners and children from previous relationships.

It is sort of a joint expense as you put less in the pot as a result.

I don’t understand how you have more if the car came from his personal spends - surely he’d just have less? If there is extra in the budget to allocate to you to match any extra allocation to him for the car, then use that to fund extra spend on the kids? It doesn’t need to go to your personal account first?

We each take the same amount of personal spend and everything else goes into the joint account or savings. Anything that is a fixed bill that arises every month goes from the joint - including my Disney+ subscription, his iPad SIM card, my chiropractor appointments etc, so second car would be from
the joint account. But we’d only be getting an extra car if we could afford it AND everyone had enough money that they were happy with.

@Blueeyes13

No but every thread about domestic finance is primarily populated by bosom hoikers who are outraged at the idea of separate finances. It just is a bit blinkered and tedious.

& that’s pretty rude really

I’m trying to get my head around this, and probably need to do the maths.
The way I see it, is that I’m actually topping him up to allow him to afford the second car, by taking less personal money from the pot after genuine joint expenses are deducted

We have a joint bank account that all joint expenses are paid out of (mortgage, food shopping, kids’ clothes and shoes and activities, holidays and family meals/days out, plus my car, which is the family car that dh also drives).

Dh’s car is a work van for his business, which he pays for personally and from his business accounts, which we rarely use for family outings. Dh also has a Land Rover for off roading and a couple motorbikes, all paid for from his personal account as they are for his personal use only.

We pay proportionate to our incomes into joint account, but really Dh earns significantly more than I do as he’s a company director (and expenses a lot of things under the business that we do also use personally too). So he pays into our joint account more than his ‘proportion’ really. We each maintain our own personal accounts for personal use, hobbies, personal travel, meals out, etc. but neither of us would ever go without and he certainly covers any expenses I’d need personally so it’s never like I have nothing and he has loads.

We have always had separate bank accounts. I work part time. He pays for everything except for shopping and petrol for my car it's always been like that. Anything extra we have is ours to do what we want with. I am not worried what he spends his on and he is not worried what I spend mine on

All finances are shared here. We have separate accounts but we view it all as one pot. The pot pays for all expenses for the people in the house. Nobody has personal money, nobody checks what the other has spent. We don't discuss big expenses or ask permission to spend.

Yes, he’d have less because he’d need to use his personal money, rather than joint money, on an unnecessary second car. I don’t see it as a joint expense, particularly when I don’t drive it

We share finances (not via a joint account, just via our general attitude to it all) so this kind of setup would give me a headache! But could you not work backwards from the spending money - so agree the same amount of free spends for both of you, then everything else goes into expenses/savings? Then his second car could still be considered an "expense" but you are not short changed by it.

You have the same amount of spends (despite him earning 2.5x your salary), so that's fair. None of the cars are paid for out of personal spends, including yours.

Technically I guess he should pay for one car out of his spends if it's a luxury, but is that really a hill you want to die on when he's contributing do much more than you?

I'd suggest putting the food/child money onto a separate account if it's a variable amount, rather than mixing it up with your spends money. You can recalculate if it turns out it's not enough.

We have our wages paid into a joint account, we then have pocket each month that is transferred into our personal accounts. We treat transport as a family cost, so that comes out of the joint account. Our pocket money is purely for us as fun money to spend as we wish.

When we got married we trialed a shared pot and we trialed proportionate payment, we found a shared pot much easier so we decided to stick with that.

You’re really taking the piss here. Given how much more he earns than you he is being very fair and generous with his contribution to your joint life. In no way are you subsiding him. It’s by far the opposite and you should just cut him some slack over the car. I say this as the lower earner in my relationship. I appreciate how hard my dh works for his wage and his willingness to share and would not begrudge him an additional car payment from the joint account.

Oh... I've just reread and understood that's what you do. So I don't get what the issue is. He is a high earner and wants to have a lifestyle where a second car is part of that, and he can afford it. I'm not seeing why he shouldn't tbh.

We don't split.We have a joint account and separate accounts also but I don't control his spending (he's not a big spender) and he doesn't control mine
He earns 3x more than me