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?

I mean how much are we actually talking here? Surely there are things you spend money on that he doesn’t think are strictly necessary joint spending? Lunches out on day trips. Extra kids clothes because they’re cute. A takeaway. Running the heating more.

There’s surely a degree of give and take in family expenses.

The annoying part is that my car is the one most used for family outings because it’s the only electric one, so cheaper to run

We’re talking £850 for the second car, which is far greater than what I spend on beauty treatments and clothes.

Ok so how much does your car cost you per month on your tax/benefit-in-kind? He should give you that money plus the inevitable repairs?

Why?

About £100, as it’s electric

The notion of there BEING a "split" if you're married is always bizarre to me. One joint account (no secondary personal ones) and everything goes in there and everything comes out of there. That's part of what marriage means. Why does anyone get married if they don't want to share everything? And how do arrangements like yours even get started? Why does anyone agree to it? It's just so weird.

Ok well I would broach the subject of proportional payments.

Just out of interest, how much do you holidays tend to cost? I'd say it might even out throughout the year?

you need to sit down with a spreadsheet and work it out. Put in all your incomings and outgoings as a family- don’t worry about whose account they go into. Then you put in your allocated social spends (eg £200 each) as a non negotiable expense. Also put amounts for savings. See if anything left over. If there is then you claim your spends and you need to work out the proportion of income that goes into the joint pot.

if there is nothing left over you go down the list and look for cuts. His second car is a luxury not a necessity so is first to go. There is no way he can argue your going out money sits higher than his car.

you need to have this all worked out ahead of time rather than just argue about it. You need to have the cold hard numbers to run through

Joint accounts. DH has a second car which I am supportive of. I have interests he necessarily doesn’t share, but doesn’t query me on the cost of supporting those. I pay all bills/cost of living from the joint accounts. Anything major we discuss before purchasing or budget to buy at a later time.

annual expenses such as insurance and rates I leave them on the dinner table for him to read before they are placed in our ‘bills to pay’ pigeon hole.

we are self employed with 2 businesses. I do the books/tax for the main family income one and other office type duties. Our secondary one I do the daily physical basics, but anything majorly physical he does those on the weekend..

it only becomes tricky around my birthday and Christmas gift times. Early on I could see where he was using his eftpos card. Now our DC are adults, he generally organises them to buy my gift and afterwards one of us will reimburse DC.

I’d be driving his second car op. If it’s a family expense you can drive it. It is obviously not a family expense!! He knows that, he just doesn’t want to admit it. Because he thinks his working means he deserves more than you.

God the bloody judgement on this site sometimes! Marriage does not have to mean giving up financial independence - a marriage can be the bringing together of two individuals who have the strength of character not to morph into a single homogenous glob. That may even mean they have their own bank accounts.

OP, it sounds to me like you need to reassess what goes into the shared account. We do this sort of annually as, like you, I end up paying for all sorts of stuff. Days out often end up being me tapping my phone - that can add up quickly. I am always the one sorting out new shoes, school bits etc... so I just make sure I factor in those extras or I actuually do have lots less than my husband. That may balance things out a bit as he'll then be contributing a little more to the shared pot, giving you some personal spend back. You may then feel like its evened out a bit?

This. Her car is a joint cost.

It may be weird to you, but yours is the first comment I’ve seen on this thread that describes this scenario

That’s a fair point, and something I hadn’t really considered. Holidays do account for a large amount of expenditure

All income is pooled into joint accounts that cover all recurring bills, household expenses, and anything related to children or joint activities. Money is transferred to our savings and investments (joint, individual, children) from there according to the family budget we set together and review every 6 months.

Then we each have an agreed amount that is transferred to individual accounts. Mine is slightly higher due to needs; these amounts aren’t based on individual income, it’s looking at our joint income and expenses, deciding what’s left and dividing it based on reasonable spending needs. We each use those accounts for individual discretionary spending including clothes and grooming, eating out or traveling alone/with friends, fun gadgets/hobby equipment, etc., so it’s basically the adult-sized version of pocket money. No child or family expenses come from these individual accounts and they aren’t used for bills like phones or cars, so we can each leave each other to manage this spending as they see fit.

Our lifestyles are equal and based on our combined income and we’re making family budget decisions together while leaving us both independence around the spending that doesn’t impact the other person (or the DC).

Marriage is LITERALLY about the merging of assets. Feel free to assign another meaning to it if it suits you but don't get frustrated by those who want to adhere to its literal function and meaning.

I said the same! Technically we still have separate account but we don't use them other than for salary to go in. It all gets transferred right away to the joint and everything comes out of it.

I'm not married but many women want to main control of their finances. It's not unusual and not an overly difficult concept to understand? I understand that marital assets are considered shared in the event of a split etc but surely in a marriage day-to-day you can understand that many people might want to be responsible for their own spending and saving? That they want an emergency "rainy day" fund or just to have some financial privacy?

I get that part of the point of marriage is to protect the financially weaker partner so there shouldn't be financial abuse or major secrets between spouses but why shouldn't there be a degree of economic independence within that?

If you have two parents working and sharing domestic costs equitably why should one partner's spending needs be entirely dictated by the other's approach to financial management?

See, we did all of this when we remortgaged last year, but it was more top down, taking into account what he and I were each currently paying for, and whether one needed to take on an expense from the other. We didn’t, but that’s because the second car was included in joint rather than personal expenditure

That's odd, I make it 8 comments on the first page saying the same thing (way before I came in on page 5). Blueeyes13 was the first.

@PhilomenaPunk

Marriage is LITERALLY about the merging of assets. Feel free to assign another meaning to it if it suits you but don't get frustrated by those who want to adhere to its literal function and meaning.

You can adhere to what you perceive to be its literal function and meaning but it's not up to you to dictate how other people organise their domestic finances.

Whether your car comes out of your salary via salary sacrifice or the joint pot is a red herring - you contribute less to the pot the former way but would contribute more then take it back out if you paid it out of joint funds.

I think the two issues are
i) some of the joint costs paid out of your account vary, so sometimes you might make a ‘profit’ on them but other times have to sub them out of personal spends
ii) his second car is an unnecessary frivolity that therefore should he a personal spend not a joint pot expense.

you could solve the former by having a joint pot for all joint expenses (including both of your main cars) so mortgage, food, kids activities, bills etc

then you’d have a separate pot each for personal spends, out of which he should take car costs for car number 2

Surely it’s the only consolation at this point? 😆

It's not my perception. That is historically its literal function.

Fair enough if people want to approach their finances differently but the faux incredulity that most people expect to adhere to the traditional function of marriage is ridiculous.