OH and I are expecting our first child in January. We have been together for 5 years and lived together for 4. I earn £1200pcm and OH earns £1300pcm so earnings are pretty equal. We have always split everything 50/50 (rent, bills etc) and had separate bank accounts. We have a joint account which our rent and bills go out from, and we both transfer our money from our main accounts in to this at the start of each month. This has always worked well for us.
I go on maternity leave next month and get 6 weeks at 90% of my wage then statutory pay for the remainder, and also £20ish per week child benefit. OH will still be working full time so will get the same amount as above. We are moving house so our rent is going down from £825pcm to £395pcm (yippee!) and we have worked out we won't be much worse off when I'm on maternity leave than we are currently paying the higher rent with us both getting a full wage, which is great!
Anyway, we have been talking about putting all of our money in 'one pot' so to say, but I am not sure how to go about this as we have always split everything down the middle. As he will now have more coming in each month compared to me, we need to work out who should be responsible for paying what. The thought of even starting to work this out is pretty daunting for me, but potentially it could be quite straight forward.
Does anyone have any advice on how we could work this out? I don't want one of us to be paying out a lot more than the other and making it awkward when it comes to disposable income. I think it's a case of thinking of the money coming in as 'ours' rather than just his or just mine.
Hopefully this makes sense and someone can help!