Husband's vinyl record shelves- should he pay for them or should we split cost?

[sunflowers365]

My husband and I have moved into a new house. He has a huuuuge collection of vinyl records and he needs to store them somehow. We have got a joiner to do a floor to ceiling inbuilt shelving unit so they can be stored safely and fully and, as you can imagine, it's not cheap. AIBU that he should pay for it all, or should the cost be split as we share a house?

It's a bespoke shelving system, which a pp has said costs thousands of pounds.

Its a household expense!

It's a household expense. You did say you were married and this is not a house share situation.

I think because it’s a large household furniture item (to all intents and purposes) I would pay for it from pooled money/house money.

My experience for context- I have a massive book collection. Avid reader. DH is not a reader. We paid jointly for all the shelving in “my” library. And there wasn’t really a conversation about that aspect tbh, it’s just the done thing for us.

I love cooking and do all the cooking. Should I have paid for our kitchen?

I could do with a gym, maybe I'll fit out a home gym costing £20,000 and tell my DH he needs to pay half because @IwishIcouldconfess says it's a household expense.

Does it need to be bespoke

i have this issue and we have a shelving unit from wayfare - it’s not floor to ceiling but close to it

What an odd way to live. In our house it'd go like this "we need some shelves for that corner for the records, ok get some quotes". Work comes out the account we share, shelves are built, job done. It doesn't matter who earns what, you are married. I can never understand married couples with separate finances, who can be arsed with this sort of thing?

Only if your DH doesn't ever use the kitchen or eat your cooking.

He pays or we pay just isn’t how we budget. The money has the same impact on our overall financial situation. We sort of make a mental note that he got indulged on something big and make sure that overall we don’t bias those kinds of things towards one of us.

Or, OP, you could bolt a few IKEA Kallaxes together and fix them to the wall. They hold records well.

No but id imagine that the OH also has need for a wardrobe... OP doesnt have need for a full floor to ceiling reinforced vinyl shelving set.

A lot of the examples here are where there is also a need for the OP

In a marriage where one's hobby far outstrips the other in terms of cost, they usually bear the brunt of the cost.

If it was a fancy shed outside to hold all the fishing gear, or a trailer to carry the boat, or the boat! Would you be all advising OP to share the cost? Doubt it - it'd be let him buy his own golf clubs...

Just because the vinyl is in the house - its still OPS hobby to finance, just as if it were a golf club membership

Yes, we would be sharing the cost of those. Because our finances are shared.

How do you split costs generally.

we bought a house together quite late in life no joint DC. We run a ‘household’ account for any costs on which we agree.

Anything else so long as it doesn’t have a negative impact on the other can be funded but personally.

works for us because it applies to everything g. Picking and choosing what you fund together v separately seems open to unfairness.

I suppose thats the crux.

as per @FinallyHere myself and husband married in our 50s, no shared children, own houses, seperate finances and seperate obligations.

We operate a joint household approach, but individual personal obligations (and hobbies) are dealt with separately.

This! What a depressing way to live.

How do you manage your finances normally?

In a decent partnership, money is pooled into a pot so that all the bills are paid and then both parties get equal spending money on their hobbies. So in that situation, I’d expect your DH to cover the cost from his hobby money pot.

My DH collects book so he has bespoke built in shelves in his study and they’ve spilled out into a couple of bookcases elsewhere. DH covers the cost from his own account rather than from the family money account.

It is an investment in the house, the value of the house.
Are you intending to reimburse him when you sell the house?
Do you have a row of envelopes labelled for different things like rent, elec bill or petrol and take just enough money out each time?

This.
Though mine sold his after we downsized.

I have a large vinyl collection and we're in the same situation. I feel a bit guilty about the cost however I would expect that we'd just buy storage furniture out of our joint money. It's just how my husband and I work.
My collection is in many storage cases in our bedroom currently but I'd consider the IKEA Kallax approach like a previous poster suggested as that seems like a compromise.

We had an entire room fitted out with bespoke shelving and it was expensive. 90% of what is in those shelves is mine but it was a shared expense because it was a general house improvement.

There wouldn't have been any way of splitting it anyway because it came out of the joint savings. I wouldn't know how to split the cost of something with DH even if we wanted to. Our salaries go into our joint current account and joint savings.

You’ve written husband. Did you mean flatmate?

You’re married and own a home together surely all money is just joint money and everything is paid for from that?

How would a poster know how much op has spent, I'm sure when op dh pops off then selling his vinyl collection will more than enough to cover the cost, how mean and petty.

If you are getting half the shelves split the cost. If hes having them all for his vinyls, he pays