Marching into a miserly march with the mumsnet frugaleers

[Fluffycloudland77]

Newbies, helpful tips & lurkers always welcome.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1600030-Small-money-saving-habits-petty-even

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch/1543785-your-top-tips-for-money-saving-and-a-more-frugal-life

When we first lived together we paid slightly different amounts into a joint account. I think dh earnt 60% of our household income so paid 60% of the bills. Once we got engaged and decided our future was together we changed things so all our money went into one account and we both got an equal amount of pocket money. It's really important to us that the household income is ours. Dh earns it all but I raise our children and run the house which is equally valid.

That sounds a bit preachy but I find it odd the number of threads on here where a couple have had a child together but it's the woman that reduces her hours and pays for childcare. I feel the woman gets the raw deal here. Ultimately though it doesn't matter as long as it works for you.

Rare night out with dh but had some vouchers so only spent £3.50 between us.

I have never reduced my hours, other than periods of maternity leave. But periods of maternity leave, as I only get statutory, have cost me about £40k in lost salary. I work 9 -5.30 five days a week, but I earn more than DH.

DH pays the mortgage which basically takes most of his salary, I pay for the rest, which when we lived in our old house, even with FT nursery fees was manageable. Unfortunately after DH getting a pay cut and me not getting pay rises and three kids the balance is now that I should have made DH realise where we were financially rather than burying my head.

I have now done this and, as mentioned already, DH is helping, he just has to do it his way, which does mean I need to wear the hair shirt for a while.

Yes, nursery fees are madness (SW London) I have 18 months before DD2 starts school. Whether she does term time only 1 day a week at her existing nursery will depend on what they can offer, but obviously term time only gives them less income and prevents them taking a FT child so I can see that, for them, running a business it makes more sense not to accommodate me. We shall see

I hope it all works out for you audit. It's not nice being made to feel like you have done something wrong when you were only paying the bills.

Me and DH have a joint account where both our salary goes into and all our bills come out. We can take whatever we like out of it because we both know what is due to come out and how much we have. We are both quite sensible with money though and discuss it a lot so it works for us. We do have our own accounts as well though which we use for birthdays and Christmas. And we have an ISA each.

I have a theory that how you manage your finances can often be related to what life stage you got together. Me and DH met when we were both broke having both just left uni so we had to pool all our money to survive! We have had phases were I out earned him and currently he out earns me but we treat it all as our money and our bills. Different ways obviously work for different couples though.

Oh and no insertion fees on eBay for the nest 4 days

Interesting theory Ellis.

When I met DH he was actually unemployed. He'd wound up his business as the first wife demanded, then she buggered off with the boyfriend anyway. So DH was not only jobless but skint and forced To sell the house too. Hence him getting arsey about money when he's stressed. I wasn't going To touch him with a barge polé because his legal status was still MARRIED. When we actually did Get together it was me who funrished our first place and then only after the divorce was final.

Spent about £4, disinfectant, milk, large pot of yoghurt and some sweets for DD2 To share with her friends Tomorrow. DD1 has ended up sleeping at a different friend's over night so I didn't have another 30km round tríp To collect her She's now round the córner instead.

Saturday will probably be a little spendy as we are taking stuff To DH's office. His pay has been fucked up again. It was Due last week, no idea when it will come through now.

On the plus side, I'm a terrible food hoarder.

We have a joint 'bill' account and our own separate accounts. I pay in £500 a month a dp £1300 he earns way more than me though what's left is our own

DP and I contribute roughly the same amount into the household, although we pay for totally different things. He earns more than me but he does have DC from previous marriage that he contributes to (they are adults but only just starting their careers).

When we got together, DP was a student and I was going through a rough divorce and had only re-started my crappy job at the time. DP was "private" secretive about his money situation and I was completely open. It took a good 4 years before he was even able to talk about money. Now, he is completely open and comfortable talking to me about it. We've had times when we have both felt resentful about the other's contributions but it was part of bigger problems in the relationship.

However, even though we can't flash our money around and he works part time and I don't have a permanent job and work when I can, I think this is the most comfortable time in terms of our financial set up and how we get on.

DH and I have joint "bills/groceries" account and a joint savings account (ha!), then I have a small "e-smart Saver" account that I use for putting money aside for Christmas and birthdays.

Our wages currently go into our own separate accounts and we each transfer money to the joint account to pay for all the household stuff, but from our separate accounts we pay our own mobile phone bills, I pay my own union fees etc- DH pays the car payment atm as I can't drive and it is really only used for him to get to work. Once we are debt free we are going to change our system and have all our salary paid into the Joint Account from which we'll pay all bills, save and then have an equal sum of pocket money sent to our own accounts each month from there.
I'll keep the e-saver account then but send the money each month from JA, as I tend to buy all presents for our whole families/friends.

I know that if we had children (unlikely) we'd pay childcare equally, it gives DH the rage that most some men seem to think it is all the woman's responsibility to pay for it.

Topcashback are still doing £63 cashback for American Express preferred rewards gold card. It ends on Sunday.

Really interesting reading everyone's approaches to joint finance. I agree that finances can depend in what stage/circumstances you got together in and that this has to evolve as houses, jobs and children are added into the equation.

One of the things that prompted me to ask was me having mixed emotions about our dinner out last night. It was totally spontaneous, dh called from work to suggest it, and I would normally try to talk him out of it but sometimes I have to acknowledge that he pays into our joint account too so can also make spending decisions.

I've realised this morning though that the way dinner was paid for kind of perfectly demonstrates how our finances work. I paid for the first round of drinks from my personal spends, dh then paid for the food from his personal spends and the only money that came out of our joint account was 7.60 on a second lot of drinks.

I didn't realise until I checked our bank balance this morning that he'd paid for the food. Obviously its a lovely treat but I feel a bit guilty that he's becoming so indoctrinated to my control of the joint account that it wasn't a joint treat to each other. I'm up with dd this morning letting him have a lie-in though to say thank you!

Awww turnoffthelights. That's very sweet of DH.

But don't you talk about which account it's going to come out of prior to any event?

I've always found mn threads on joint finances fascinating. Dh and I have always pooled our money and always intended to have a pocket money account each but that's never happened as we've never really had the spare cash to do it! Initially I earned more than dh but that has changed now and we've just always accepted that our money is all our money.

Should be low spending weekend,, no major plans just jobs to be done round the house.

Kind of...we had a conversation at the table before he went up to order when he asked if is opened a tab for drinks, I said no I'd paid for them, then I did say open up a tab for the food and any other drinks, from our joint account, but when he came back he'd paid. I just assumed he thought it was easier than a tab. I then went up and paid for second drinks from ja.

Cadbury you raise an interesting point though. This isn't the first time he's paid for a treat and as I say, he keeps a larger proportion of his salary as he's more likely to do this. However, perhaps last night does speak volumes about how we communicate about money. Although dh is on board with my frugalness we still don't really talk about long term financial goals. Well, we do in vague terms like 'earn more money' or 'like to buy a bigger house' but not about the nuts and bolts of how that might happen. I actually realise that I like him to keep more of his salary as it means he interferes less with our joint account meaning I have a tight control of it . Hmm, something to think about over the weekend!

Turnoff I found it was a massive positive change to really make a proper financial plan with DH - when we first started tackling our finances it was more of a 'spend less, earn more' vague sort of plan, but a few weeks ago we really sat down, talked about where we want to be in 10 years (owning a house, basically) and how we would get there. It's definitely made both of us far far more focused on how to keep our debt down while I'm on maternity leave, reduce it as quickly as possible afterwards, and continue to live frugally so we can actually get that deposit together in the medium term.

DH has always out earned me (not always by very much), but we took a very definite family decision before we had our first that i would be a SAHM/WAHM until our youngest started school, so no big surprises there. My main challenge is to build up some more self employed active and passive income streams over the next five years so I have earning potential when all DCs in school.

Ugh, have just realised I haven't put last couple of big spends into YNAB (credit card with no online facility), so need to go through receipts and make sure everything is input.

It's what works for you as a couple though.

I love YNAB. It was YNAB that made me think about how I was spending frittering away my money. And it was the first budgeting tool that actually worked for me.

I wonder how many of us have it?

Argh just spent £10 at m&s on ingredients for the home made pizza. Argh. And just bought a big boys bike for ds. £115. Argh.

£1 parking
£30 petrol where I got road rage completely unreasonably and am now suitably embarrassed

Cadbury same for us - it was the first time that instead of going, for example, 'ooh, we need to budget £400 a month for fuel for DH's long commute' I could see that we were actually spending closer to £700 a month on fuel . We just observed for a couple of months and TBH were over on more or less every single category compared to the budgets I thought I had done pretty well using bank statements and averaging out etc.

NK5 I spent about £5 on pizza ingredients a week or two ago (a tenner though? What are you putting on them? ) but we made six pizzas and had leftovers of everything except mozarella and pineapple.

Nk5 it's very easy to spend a tenner in M and S - that's why I rarely go in there. It all looks so tempting too.

Spotty you got road rage at the garage?

Actually spotty you just reminded me of someone who got road rage at me in a m and s car park. I reported him to the police and he got cautioned. Tbfair, he did damage my car on purpose.

I'm taking advantage of the free eBay listings this weekend and getting rid if our pram/travel system, some changing bags, a bed guard, a bag of mixed Avent bottles etc.

Also got a brand new car activity centre to sell.

Having sat and looked at our Virgin Media bill, last month I paid £35 for telephone calls. About £5 was for foreign calls, but the other £30 would have been free if we had used our mobiles. Something's are just going to be changing habits.

Oh, and hoping to buy a set of navy buttons for DD1's school cardigan, which has lost them all, rather than buying a new cardigan which I probably would have done previously.

Turnoff that was really sweet of your DH, but you do seem a little concerned about it though. I was thinking that maybe what we do in regard to meals out might help.

Anything that is needed rather than wanted comes out of the joint account. Food is a necessity. In future you could use the joint account for meals out, as long as he's not suggesting the Ritz, because you need to eat somewhere.

Must dash now, will catch up properly later, hope those pizzas are nice NK