AIBU to ask how much your husbands contribute to household bills?

[Sugarplum5]

To ask how much your husbands pay into the family home? Does he expect you to pay half the bills, does he pay them all etc?

Would you be happy for a child of yours to fund everything for their partner in the same way?

Realistically, he pays all the bills. I pay 2 weeks shopping, all the kids stuff, our phone contracts, the kids activities, house insurance and holidays. However, I do 100% of the household,childcare and mentalload.

Why wouldn't I be? What are you suggesting is the issue?

Freeloading and taking advantage, maybe?

Are you saying you'd honestly be happy if your DS moved his girlfriend in and she never had a job and never contributed a penny to anything?

Well, no. We don't do 'moving in' scenarios. But, if that was his choice of wife, no problem.

We have one bill account for household bills, food shop, kids school lunch’s and gym membership, then our own accounts and do a 70/30 split, he earns double what I do. Out of my own account I pay my CC, phone, car insurance, from his own he has his car and a few other things.. what’s left is up to us what we spend on/save.

Same here. It's not "his money" and "my money" - it's "our money" and the bills are all our bills and all the money left over is ours

What do you mean you don't do "moving in"? Surely whether your son moves in with a future partner (or not) is nothing do with you

Correct. Moving in with a future partner would be nothing to do with me including caring how their finances are split which is what you suggested I should monitor and approve of or disapprove.

Glad we can agree.

Well he clearly is enjoying this arrangement. Why you put up with this is another story.

I pay gas, electric. He pays broadband, bins. We each pay our own car insurance/tax etc. I usually pay tv licence, he usually pays AA. House insurance, travel insurance - we discuss when they are due. I usually pay the annual chimney sweep as I organise it - and often am the organiser for the annual boiler service. We paid off the mortgage a few years ago. Whoever does the grocery shopping, pays for it. Holidays are usually “I’ll book the flights/ferry, you book the accommodation “ situation.

It used to be that I covered Creche and he covered mortgage - which mostly matched up. We have a look through the finances every couple of years to check pensions, savings, rates for insurance etc and also to see if the split is reasonably fair.

No. We combine all income, subtract bills and savings then equally split the remainder so we both have the same disposable income.

We are married.

Get a spreadsheet and add up all your bills and what it takes to pay them. Add something for what you want to save as a couple for annual expenses, savings, holiday etc. Pay proportionally into a joint account based on your relative salaries. What's left is your personal spending/saving money. Clearly, should only be 50/50 if you earn the same! I can't understand why any couples do it differently!

You’ve totally missed the point, but ok 👍

We both put the same sum into the joint account which pays the bills (mortgage paid off). DH pays for food as he earns more. We have roughly the same left over. We both save and discuss what we’re doing, and we agree all major purchases.

Morning!

You attempted to suggest I'm a "freeloader" even though you have no idea about me at all, and then suggested that I wouldn't accept my own behaviour in the "partner" of my DS, as a 'gotcha' moment within some sort of strange fantasy you created.

Your attempts suggest that women (freeloaders) have no value at home and should only be valued by partners (and the families they join into) if they work outside of the home.

Doesn't matter what their domestic responsibilities, including that of raising children are, I guess.

Pretty sure if a man said that domestic labour had no value, as this is predominately undertaken by women, they'd be accused of misogyny.

So, that was fun and I think the point is that you were way off target and it's fine for you to admit that and apologise. I'm a very tolerant person.

Alternatively, don't apologise but I sincerely hope you've learned a lesson about assumptions and the conventions of conversational propriety.

Here’s an idea - if you don’t understand what someone’s trying to say, don’t make up a whole load of nonsense.

I knew you wouldn't apologise for being wrong. It's okay. We can be friends on another thread! Have a good day!

Because life isn’t a spreadsheet.

We also pool our resources.I’m now on minimum wage, my husband is now on the higher rate of income tax.We’ve been together nearly 40 years, have just about paid off our mortgage, heading towards retirement and had financial ups and downs over the years but always lived within our means and avoided debt.We’ve always shared everything and could not be wrangling over spreadsheets and money. We’ve never really had a lot of money to fritter on personal spending so it’s been pretty straightforward. It has worked for us as we’ve never argued about money and are heading towards retirement with zero debt, a paid off mortgage and pensions.

Couples, finances and circumstances differ so it’s not one size fits all. We personally couldn’t live with spreadsheets or wrangling over whom pays what and how much.

That’s good, but a lot of people end up
posting on here because they don’t have a system or joint finances.

We have a joint account where both our wages go into and everything comes out of that.

We've always had a joint account and pool resources.
No stress, no arguments.

Equal "fun money" each, pool the rest.

All DH income goes in joint account and covers bills. My income goes in a private pension, which will be for both of our futures