Separating finances - under same roof

[freedomsoon]

DH and I have been married years but recently decided to separate know it's the right decision but still painful, acrimonious and full of worry.

We have always shared finances, joint accounts everything. He did earn a lot more than me at one point but now circumstances have changed and we are now both on a similar, low to average wage.

Until we get the house on the market and sold neither can afford to move out.

My question is how we manage/separate finances until we can formally separate. Thankfully no debt apart from mortgage but DH is so useless with money he has always relied on me to balance the books.
I am so old skool I have only ever know joint finances plus we have 2 teens who manage to suck every last penny out of us!

My fear is that if I suddenly separate our money we could end up in financial trouble because he won't have me to manage everything.

How can I do this?

2 main ways really.

1, you both have your own personal current accounts that you pay your salary into and roughly split who pays what in terms of direct debits and costs such as food etc and uses their account for that. In your circumstance I'd probably not do that as he might run out of money and default or there is no money left for groceries. You could have all the responsibility for the DDs and food etc and he sets up a standing order to you for his share on the day he gets paid. You'd have to trust that he wouldn't stop it though.

2, you do as above but retain the joint account and you both pay in your share by standing order and remain jointly liable and have equal access to the joint account. Advantage is that you can see what is going on but again you need to trust that he wouldn't default.

If he can't be trusted then he needs to move out and manage himself.

You both have your own accounts which you use for personal spending.

I think the biggest challenge will be getting to open and manage his own bank account (I know!).
Whilst he has always happily had all his salary paid into our joint account he has never shown any interest in checking the balance or where the money goes - always been down to me.
He's not a huge spender but equally spent money without any thought of we could afford it

You start to separate finances by both of you opening personal accounts and saying the joint account is for bills only. That is a starting point to managing your own finances. So you can keep the joint account for now but any spends he makes comes out of whatever he has left after the bills money has been left in the joint account. Make sure he has no card to spend on it.