Do most married couples really pool all money, or keep some separate?

[Namewitheldagain]

Not really an AIBU but interested in what people have to say. I’ve noticed on mumsnet and particularly in a recent thread in which the op lent her dh a significant chunk of money and people were aghast she was expecting him to pay it back, that the consensus seems to be everyone shares all money in a marital pot. Is everyone really doing this?

I am on my second marriage to be fair and my husband is not my children’s father, with no plans to have children of our own. If relevant, he has none of his own. Maybe it’s different because my financial decisions are made with my children’s protection in mind should anything happen to me. My husband is aware and in agreement.

We bought our house each with the same deposit and we have a joint account into which we each pay half of the cost of the mortgage and household bills, subscriptions etc and an extra 400 a month each which is just extra and saved for things like holidays or new furniture / house stuff.

independently of that, we each have our own savings, current account and discretionary spending. I have more in savings and discretionary spending because I earn more. Sure if we want an extra holiday I cover it and I pay for the cleaner because I earn more and I can justify the cost but other than that money is separate and bills split.

We own our house as joint tenants each owning 50% meaning my half is bequeathed to my kids although he will have the right to live in it indefinitely. a life insurance policy would pay off the mortgage. I have c250k in death in service benefit that would be 1/3 his (I have two kids each getting a third) if I died and he’s welcome to what savings I have (not loads but a chunk).

we can’t be the only couple like this can we? We are both very happy with the arrangement. Even when I was married to my kids’ dad this was our arrangement. Although I was the lower earner then, I was happy with it. Am I just wholly unromantic?

iabu: all couples share everything and you’re the odd one out

ianbu: it’s normal to keep your own money in a marriage

DH is an higher earner than me so we pro rata. Our wages go into our own accounts. We both put 50:50 into our joint account for food, I transfer roughly 30% of our bills to DH (he had the house before we married so bills still in his name). We have our own savings accounts for holidays and our cars etc. Holidays are 50:50, household maintenance is 30:70. DH would absolutely help me out with any big unexpected bills such as my car if I needed it but I would want to pay him back.
2nd marriage for him 1st for me, we both had previous relationships where there was a lot of unfairness around money so we discussed it very early on and this is what works and feels fair for us.

Like some others we have a joint account that we both pay into pro rata of earnings that covers all household expenses. Bills, food, petrol, pets etc. There is usually around £200 ‘spare’ in there for one off things.

We have a monthly discussion about how much we can afford to put in our savings and have a joint account for that.

Anything else is our own and we will roughly take it in turns to pay for meals out etc. I earn a fair bit more so will pay more often but it is fair.

We have different thresholds for personal spending and it took the first 10 years of our marriage to realise we were needlessly arguing about what we each spent money on. Now we can each do what we want with our left over money and there is no conflict. We do both talk about large purchases before spending but on the whole we’re on the same page and it works for us.

As an example of our approach, I recently got a large redundancy payment and we have fully discussed and agreed how we will save/spend it. I definitely think of it as joint money (aside from a modest solo holiday!). It was the same a few years ago when DH inherited some money from his Mum.

How rude.

DH and I have joint finances and regard all our money as “ours” - we have ISAs, pensions, shares and various other things in our own names because that’s how it works best for us (mostly for tax reasons) but it doesn’t mean I think of my ISA as being my money or his pension as his. There’s a master spreadsheet that keeps track of what’s in what place that we both have access to.

Clearly joint finances doesn’t mean we literally pool all our money in a pile of £10 notes on the kitchen table 🙄

DH and I do find the approaches of other couples weird, but to each their own.

Personally, I'm the main, all but sole earner now - DH previously worked full time even though I earned more, and my salary paid the mortgage and utilities and his paid for the food bills and luxuries. Now he earns cash in hand for odd jobs but he has completely refurbished the house since his semi-retirement (we moved north to do it), and he does 90% of the cleaning, shopping and cooking. I work full time, my responsibilities are the dog walking and laundry!

Everything comes out of my account (it isn't joint), I put some cash into his account to cover a few of his personal bills like mobile phone etc. All disposable income is ours, he just uses my card and doesn't take the piss! In fact I wish he'd spend more on himself, he's very frugal. He has put all the work into this property and our lifestyle - I just happen to earn good money. As much as everything is in my name, no court in the land would award him less than 50% of my total worth if he divorced me (or I divorced him). We've been married for 23 years and we're in our 50's.

ETA - pensions and ISAs are in my name, over the next few years we'll use his allowances if accumulated cash allows, but in any event, my private pension will support us both in retirement (and I'll keep it in flexi-access so he gets the remaining pot if I die before him).

What are you talking about? We don't ever lend each other money. It's joint money. Every penny that comes into the household is ours. It's all JOINT money. All the income is pooled. If I need money/to buy anything, I use the joint account. Same with him. He needs something, the pooled money is there. No-one is lending anyone anything in OUR marriage.

A married couple borrowing and lending money off each other is batshit IMO.

Weirdly transactional, and cold. IMO.

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Everything is pooled. Late 30s, first marriage for both, joint kids. We obviously have ISAs, pensions, investments in single names but we consider everything to be joint.

We pool everything and it’s seen us through without any problems, including redundancy for him, career breaks for me but we share the same views on money and only have our own children, and didn’t have family help either with any expenses like house deposits. We’ve never had a single argument about money.

In other circumstances I wouldn’t. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way.

We’re exactly the same as you, OP, except we don’t have kids.

We have a joint account that all bills, mortgage and food shopping comes out of. That also covers if we get a takeaway, go out to eat etc. We also have a joint savings account that is for anything needed for the house or vet bills etc.

Apart from that, our finances are completely separate. Our house is split down the middle. Our pensions will go to each other when one dies. I’m on his life insurance policy (I don’t have one). I also have a death in service policy. My husband gets a third, my mum and sister get a third each.

We pay for our own holidays 50/50.

I earn more, but he has more savings than me. We have very different spending styles. I’m an impulsive YOLO kind of person. He will deliberate for weeks over buying a pair of trainers. Pooling all our wages would probably end in divorce.

The thought of having completely joint finances scares me. I’ve always been financially independent. If the worst were to happen, and we decided to split, we’d sell the house, split the profit and he’d keep what he has and I’d keep what I have. I have a better pension, he has more savings so we’d both be happy not to go for anything the other has. Nice and easy that way.

Gen X. Everyone I know who is married has joint finances. Salary paid into joint bank account. All DDs come out of that.

My guess is it varies according to age and stage. You probably get a different picture just asking married couples who had kids and/or substantial assets than you would if confined only to those who met really young and only have what they've acquired together.

The people I know are generally in the latter category and afaik the commonest model is one pot but both partners keeping their own bank account account too.

Everything we own, we own jointly but we have made arrangements for whatever my parents gave me by way of early inheritance to stay with my and our DC in the event of divorce. That’s my choice out of respect for my parents’ efforts, DH might do the same if he gets a pre-inheritance.

I can’t imagine the dynamic in a couple where finances are kept separate. To me, marriage means you’re all in our you’re not. I mean, I have a very strong identity and full life outside of being a wife and a mother, I don’t NEED DH for anything (although I’d be devastated to not have him!). But if I didn’t think I could trust him with my money I don’t think I could trust him to make the best decisions for our DC if I’m not there, or my health if I’m incapable. It would be like having a bag packed and ready by the door throughout an entire marriage.

Also, things change over the course of a marriage. In my case I was far and away the biggest earner at the outset, DH barely registered on the spreadsheet. Now, I earn nothing and he’s already overtaken my earnings at the outset. Neither of us knew this would be the case, life just turned out this way. Where would we be now if we’d kept separate finances from the outset? We’d both, separately and jointly, be significantly worse off financially and in every other respect. Hardly a partnership if each of us was always making preparations to be no worse off if we separated!

We don't pool anything.

Met in our 40s
He moved into my house
No mortgage
All bills come from my account and he sends me money to cover his share
No kids
We buy big purchases between us.
We've never felt the need to pool our money
Works for us

Aren't all money joint from the legal perspective? So having "your own" wouldn't necessarily protect you if things went badly.

From daily perspective, I don't understand people paying 50:50 in case od uneven incomes and find it disgusting when the uneven income is around maternity/part time to take care of sharwd children.

I find three sets of accounts - joint and personal each the best setup. That way both have access to shared money, payments and savings, but each has their discetionary spending options as well.

I have a bit of a theory…

1st marriage (especially if you didn’t already have your own separate homes) - all pooled. You buy a home together and you have children together and you are responsible for both. You also may have less spare cash to begin with so having money in one place makes it easier to budget and decide what is worth spending on.

2nd marriage - have already had to live a life as an adult with all of your own bills and costs, may have had children already, or new partner may have them. When you start out on a life together it is less ‘fresh’ because you already have the house and commitments, and so you start off by maybe pooling some for bills and keeping the rest apart, then it either gradually moves towards pooling all or it stays where it is.

This won’t be the exact way everyone does it, but I would expect that the first marriage people, especially who have not had a previous spouse that may or may not have screwed up with money or left them struggling alone, would be more in the pooling group.

I am in the first group because we got pregnant and then moved in together a little earlier than had been planned. I was at uni so my husband brought in more money for the first year, but I needed the money to keep the house while on maternity leave, before we both worked full time and continued to pool. It means we both have the same lifestyle regardless of earnings (tbf we do earn the same) and we don’t have to worry about who has paid what bill etc.

Now, 19 years after moving in together, we do still say ‘I’m going to get…’ when it’s a larger purchase, but it’s more out of courtesy than needing permission. But if I were in a 2nd marriage, after having to survive on my own, I suspect I would be a lot more reluctant to do this because why would I risk sharing again after having to take time to unpick shared lives in a divorce. Hopefully I don’t ever get to find out if that is what I would be like

According to this, the vast majority of married couples have a hybrid approach to finances. Some joint, and some individual. This is true for my husband and I.

12% have entirely joint finances.

www.tsb.co.uk/news-releases/were-not-so-romantic-when-it-comes-to-money.html

All our funds go into one pot then we are allocated the same amount of personal money which goes to our own accounts. Everything else, kids (we have no joint children), house, pets, savings, clothes etc comes out of the joint account. I earn about 1/2 what DH makes.

I thought joint tenants meant that if one of you dies, the survivor automatically receives the deceased's 50% ownership. You cannot give it away in a will - even to your children?

Well clearly it helps some people.

A joint account for bills and joint expenses, and a personal one for personal expenditure.

Yeh I meant tenants in common! Always confuse the terminology

We had ‘the pot’ and now we’re in difficulty I wish I could go back in time and have separate accounts, separate savings etc. I was a sahm for years so probably wouldn’t have helped me anyway

We have no joint account but I would describe our finances as completely shared. We each pay some bills. The one who earns more pays the mortgage but we don’t keep track and transfer money between us freely to cover bigger expenses or if the lower earner is running low. Whatever is left over goes into whoever has free isa space or off our shared mortgage. We have shared financial goals.

We discuss bigger spends but are free to spend spare income as we please. Neither of us are frivolous. House in joint names. Will share any inheritance. To me this is what marriage means. We are a team. In everything.

Married, no children. I earn more than my husband. We have a joint account for the mortgage and household expenses as well as a small amount of joint savings for holidays, etc. We both have separate savings and ISAs.
I put a little more into the joint account, but not proportionally to our incomes. I have a much more stressful job, longer hours, management responsibilities, etc., and we both agree that I’ve earned the right to keep more of my income. We’re both happy with this arrangement. Of course, if there was an emergency my money would be his money too.

Our money is all pooled. We have individual ISAs and pensions because that’s the law. But we still consider them jointly “our” money. Eg: my parents gave me some money. It was sensible to put it into a ISA. But my ISA was full for that year, so we put it into DH’s ISA instead. The idea of “lending” my DH 30k doesn’t make sense to me, because all our money is joint. I can’t “lend” him his own money, and nor can he pay me back for what is ours. Your situation is more complex because you’ve been married before and have DC.

Married 20 years with children, both our first marriages and still keep finances separate, and don't even pool finance for the bills, we each pay for different things relating to household bills, kids etc, never really worked it out to know if fair, but if one us is flush we might pay the bulk of big costs like a new car, holiday, home repairs etc. We both like our financial independence so works for us.