How do you do your family money?

[booklover164]

I'm sure this has been asked countless times but I can't find any posts on it.

I'm going back to work after mat leave and will be working part time. My hubby will be taking home significantly more than me. How do you all arrange your finances to pay bills, socialising money etc? How do you work out contributions to the mortgage etc?

Thank you!

As an add on we both earn similar amounts.

Everything goes into one pot from which all bills are paid, anything left over is divied up to savings/investments etc. Over the years both mine and OH income has dropped (and thankfully risen again) for various reasons, the other party just picked up the slack when that happened because that's what married couples are meant to do, you're a family, a joint enterprise. It matters not who put it in the pot only the total amount in the pot matters. Life has enough problems without stressing over a spreasheet showing who should pay what percentage of each bill.

I guess if you are in a second relationship where one or both of you has assets/liabilities/children from that previous relationship or one of you are poor at managing money then I can see a reason to keep money seperate to protect yourself at least initially.

In answer to christmaschristmaschristma, no I don't feel constricted at all. It does help that both of us are of similar mindsets and I trust his judgement as he does mine.
Although big purchases are discussed neither of us asks permission to spend on day to day stuff that we want or need, we just do it as long as can we afford it.

DP is financially savvy and works it out in fine detail. We contribute proportionally. So when I went back to work part-time his income was roughly 2.5 times as much as mine so we split the bills and expenses so he paid about 75%, sometimes a bit more as I wasn't earning much for London. Now I'm working full-time his income is roughly 60% of household income and we split the bills accordingly.

My wage is for bills and DH is self employed and is on a lower wage so he does the shops and tops up the joint account when needed.

I earn considerably more than DH at the moment (not so when we first got together) and this isn't likely to change. For both personal and tax reasons we decided to keep our finances separate, but we do talk about money and are roughly aware of how much the other one has. We pay proportional to our incomes: I pay housing and he pays council tax and utilities, I pay 67% to childminder (33% pre-tax) and he pays the rest, we discuss larger expenses and longer-term savings goals/progress. Personally, I would feel a bit anxious not having my own account as I'm a wee bit anal more careful than he is, but we're mostly on the same page (eating out too often is our only financial vice, really). But it has been interesting to see how other people manage this. As long as it works for you both and you're happy and not arguing about money all the time, that's surely what matters most.

Having a similar attitude to money / saving / spending, a willingness to be generous to one’s partner and earning enough to cover the basics plus a little fun are what makes the «one pot» approach work for us. We’ve had all variations of both of us earning, me being the main earner, while DH studied / took some time off, DH being the main earner while I look after the wains... one pot throughout. We make sure the basics are covered, we make sure we have a bit of fun money. Neither of us has expensive hobbies or expensive tastes.

if we didn’t have the above I can see why separate accounts might work better.

One pot. Discuss purchases/expenses. We both get an allocated amount of personal money each month to spend or save however we like without discussion.

One joint account. Big purchases discussed. It works easily.

We are not very organised ! I earn about £500 less per month than dh but have the child benefit go into my account. We have seperate accounts. We have no mortgage. Dh pays most of the bills , I pay a couple of small ones. We both pay for some food shopping ' stuff that our four kids need etc. I tend to pay for holidays.

One team one pot for all incoming/outgoing...chat before making any purchases over £100.

We’ve always done it the same way from buying a house together when I was full time, maternity leave, part time and SAHM.

All money goes into joint account and DH and I take out the same amount of monthly pocket money.

Joint account

Joint account.

All spending down to £2 coffee goes onto a credit card (avios) and is paid in full each month (each week in reality).

Don't discuss any specific spending- spend what we want although we roughly know how much money we have- I know in exact detail but he doesn't have access to online banking as not interested. Have a linked deposit account and top current account up and down if we spend slightly more 1 month.

Sole accounts and a bills account we both put money into every pay day to cover all bills. Only joint account is one of the savings accounts for car/holiday expense.

All into one account
All bills on direct debit out of that account
Savings by standing order out of that account
Neither of us question the other re spending.. I spent about £500 last week on clothes, shoes, hair etc
Dh spent about £400 last month on a trip away to see a rugby match
Works for us

All into joint account and everything joint paid from there. £x spending money each transferred into our sole account. That way, I don't need to feel bad spending £80 on a cut and colour when his costs £12 to cut; he doesn't need to feel bad having kebabs/doughnuts with his mates at work, when I take a packed lunch.

Ours are a mess tbh.
I have some small savings in my name, DH has the majority in his. We have a joint account that DH pays money into but he pays bills separately, if i need more in the joint account i just text him, ive never been a big spender so it's not like there's 2k handbags coming out of there. I also have a random current account in my name with some cash in.
It works for us so i havent bothered to sort out something more cohesive

Now I'm working full-time his income is roughly 60% of household income and we split the bills accordingly.

So he has much more money left each month than you do?

One person earns £100. One person earns £200. They contribute proportionally to the shared bills of £150.

One person is left with £50 and the other with £100. This seems the most unfair way possible.

So he has much more money left each month than you do?

I must admit I hadn't thought of it like that but I don't think it's a bad deal for me. It's for all bills and expenses, so includes nights out, holidays and weekends away. Clothes and make-up are my only expenses he doesn't contribute to. I don't pay towards his. He pays for his sporty stuff.

we have separate accounts. he pays the mortgage, I pay coucntil tax and other utilities. We take turn with shopping so pretty 50/50 DH earns twice my salary (I am part time) which means he has some money left to spend/save - I don't but not too bothered.

We’ve got one pot, I earn about 900 more than DH a month but it all goes into the same pot. All our debts bills credit cards everything comes out of there. We’ve got our own credit cards.
It works for us and has done for about 8 years. We keep track on how much is left each month and due to saving for next maternity leave we have v little left each month for treats.

Separate accounts. We know what we each get in and what bills we each pay, and what we aim to save. Rest is for spending. When I was on mat leave I got money from him, vice versa when he was unemployed - currently I give him a couple hundred a month as bills have gone up.

My dp is terrible with money and doesn't save. I wouldn't do joint income in one account for this reason alone.
We pay towards the house equally and keep what's left. I generally do all the saving for holiday, house repairs etc as he spends his spare cash very easily. I have more spare income than him but also do the only saving for the children eg future expenses like driving lessons etc.

Our incomes come into our separate accounts, we agree on an amount that we keep (same amount for both of us) and the rest all goes into the joint account which then pays for food, petrol bills, mortgage etc. This makes it fair because there is a difference in our incomes.