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?

Wow £850 a month for 2nd car sorry misread as £850 a year. Very expensive hobby.

Really? As I understand it, in many cultures for centuries, marriage didn't have anything to do with the sharing of assets but the transfer of asset ownership from one man (dad) to another (husband). Women could be left destitute by a man who didn't have to share a thing with her, and could quite easily argue the case she didn't deserve a share of any available money, for any number of fairly spurious reasons. While women legally relinquished the ownership of whatever they owned upon marriage. The only time they got anything was upon a death. None of these scenarios involved any 'sharing'. That's just affixing a new definition to suit your view

@GravyBoatWars That's interesting, thank you. Do you just ensure that the recipient of the present isn't looking at transactions that month? Or do neither of you look at the transactions? I'd be worried about not realising something was amiss (eg Direct Debits not being taken when they should be) if neither of us were checking the account.

£850 a year would be far more palatable! And probably not worthy of my moan 😂

I've seen in friend's divorce with no clean break - inheritance is counted as marital assets for splitting. Another friend is telling her elderly widowed mum not to pass on her properties yet because her marriage is going south.

Marriage is a legal contract that mainly protects and benefits the financially weaker party. Whether it is earnings, business, inheritance or the lottery. Usually the poorer person is the woman, but likewise for men.

Cohabiting is the social contract requiring mutual love and respect and considerate - especially in a shared living space!

No - morally it's joint I agree, but not legally. My DF inherited some money from a relative and signed it over to me as a house deposit - my DM was totally on board with this and it was a joint decision, but if she hadn't agreed, it wouldn't have made any difference. Legally, it was his.

Thank you. Yeah it won't state the item, but some retailers (like a jewellers) will give it away somewhat. If you don't really check the transactions I can see it wouldn't be too much of a problem though. I check my accounts every few days to ensure everything's in order, so would definitely notice new transactions.

But in practice for it to be considered a non matrimonial asset it would have to be kept completely separate. As in you can’t use it for any joint purpose in the marriage- no co-mingling of the money. In which case- what is the purpose of the money if you are just going to have it sit in a bank account untouched? Obviously you can pass on to someone as in your example but then it is no longer your asset!

Oh, sweetheart. I’m not trying to be ‘harsh’, I am just (along with many others here) trying to show you how unfair your current set up is. Please have a think about it all.

How is the current set up unfair?
The partner pays for the vast majority of the family expenses, which is reasonable as he earns more but he’s hardly leaving OP penniless and covering half the bills.

I didn’t mean that to sound arsey, so I’m sorry if it did.
I agree the setup is unfair. Now to tackle it!
I appreciate all the comments, advice and ideas. I’m going to get busy with a spreadsheet!

We don’t have to worry about it because we each categorize our transactions based on our budget categories - this takes two clicks per transaction and we don’t use crazy detailed categories to overcomplicate things. It’s easy to spot unexplained or duplicate transactions because neither of us has categorized them. Then once they’re categorized neither of us is looking unless a) we’ve found ourselves completely overspending our budget in that category somehow and need to figure out what happened or b) it’s time for our six-month sit down to review and set our budget and one of us thinks we need to talk about increasing that category or reigning in spending there.

Budgeting together for our family means we really don’t spend much time watching or discussing what each other are spending on a day to day basis.

Would it really give it away? You'd know you'd been bought some jewellery. There's still a huge range of things that could be. Would it really be that significant in your enjoyment of the present if you'd noticed what shop he'd been to? I can't imagine it mattering that much to anyone.

Yes and no. So while you are still married, as long as it’s kept separately, it’s yours. If you divorce then it depends on whether or not your marital assets leave enough to meet both your reasonable needs then inheritance you’ve kept separately won’t be considered but if your marital assets are insufficient then it can be included when splitting your overall assets. Technically what that might mean is you get to keep 100% of the inheritance but you only get 20/30% of marital assets rather than the 50% you would have got without the inheritance.

We have two cars. We both use both of the cars, we don't have a his car and my . All petrol and bills relating to the cars come out of the joint account.

He's not her partner, he's her husband. Treating her like a flatmate. He'll be labelling his food in the fridge next.

It's not the 1950s, where it's the husband's role to choose, according to his own whim, what he will or won't "leave" the wife with.

Exactly the same as us.

Both pay in the same % of your income to the joint account that pays everything, mortgage, food, children, holidays, bills, etc. The rest is personal spending and savings. So 50% each if that covers, if not 60%, etc, increase or decrease to get a balance with some left for joint savings and incidental expenses.

That's what we did for years, now we've given up with the joint account, we each pay various household things (has just sort of evolved) and keep the rest ourselves. Whatever works for you really.

What on earth are you on about?
How is he treating her like the flatmate though? He pays for the majority of things and it doesn’t sound like he brings that up or points it out. He earns 2.5 times the OPs income and they have the same left over money, which means he contributes a significant amount more then all his bonus goes on family expenses on top.
The whole issue is OP doesn’t think one of his expenses should be joint. Thats literally the opposite of what you’re suggesting.

It wouldn't impact my enjoyment of the present but I would prefer it to be a complete surprise. Likewise for my gifts for him. Being able to surprise someone is part of the joy of gift giving, for me.

I suspect it's the case that if he has to pay the £850(!) for the second car out of his personal spends then he couldn't really afford it because he'd have to 'give' you the same amount to spend. And if you're regularly having to spend your personal money to cover the kids stuff then there isn't enough left in the joint pot after personal spends so actually he can't really afford the extra car.

It's not really fair on you.

But there shouldn't be any concept of "he pays for this, she pays for that". They're married. With children. And her paying for stuff for the children, and resenting what he spends on other stuff. Everything should be shared - what goes in, and what goes out, with no keeping track of what came from where. Why do women agree to arrangements like this? Why are so many of us so pathetically servile?

I agree with you OP. Your car should be classed as a fixed outgoing even though it comes out your salary. So you should pay less to the joint. Funds for children's shoes clothes should also come out of the joint, even if that means you both pay more in to cover it. Leaving you each with expenses that are the same. One of his cars should come from the joint and one from his sole as it appears to be more a hobby ( who needs 2 cars ?). Personally we have a joint account for all our bills and a personal account each for our own general expenses and we both have the same amount to spend. We both earn very similar amounts and have 2 cars that we just both use.

This is exactly what I think! It feels like I’m ‘paying’ half of his car payment, by having £425 less in my spending pot. And he doesn’t have enough in his spending pot to afford that car payment and everything else he spends his spare money on

I’m not sure anyone would agree to it. It’s just kind of evolved over time, with maternity leave changing our % split, then his earnings increasing at a faster rate than mine. And before I knew it, I was funding another car