Cohabitees - how do you split finances?

[houstonspca]

All money into one pot?

Each put a set sum into one "household bills" pot and keep the rest of your own salaries?

Each put a fixed percentage of respective incomes into one pot?

How do you deal with savings and holidays? Do you each organise your own savings and budget a sum for holidays from the bills pot? Or something else?

It's making my head spin 😂

This was really a question aimed at those with no DC or no shared DC as I think the dynamic is a little different there...

Separate money.

But I get paid monthly, and him weekly, so I pay all the bills, then we have calculated his share that he pays me weekly.

Holidays are split between us. Food is ad hoc, depending on who goes to the shop, seems to work out ok.

I would say it depends on why you are moving in together.

If you are going to be living together as a kind of "trial marriage" to see if your compatible before actually getting married then yes, all money goes into one pot and everything gets paid from that.

If you are living together for financial reasons then separate finances, both pay half of everything and each person keeps whats leftover.

With cohabiting ex boyfriends, I had separate finances. Only briefly did I have a shared account with one: we paid in the same amount monthly to cover bills and groceries. Whatever was left over got spent on date nights.

With DH we had a joint account quite early on (not long after we moved in together and before tying the knot). We just get equal spending money in spears accounts and everything else is shared and managed together.

Mortgage together, no kids.

Same amount each month into a joint account. This covers mortgage, all bills, all our pet food, with a little bolster should we need it / occasional treats.

Absolutely everything is split 50/50. Food shop, days out, holidays are all 50/50. The rest of our money is our own.

We're also due to get married and this won't change anything about our finances. We'll still split everything equally but will have separate finances apart from anything to do with our house / pets.

He pays a set amount each month for bills and food ( I own home), holidays we share costs, him slightly more probably. We earn similar amounts, spending money probably about same, I spend more on myself he spends more on his dc as he has more dc than me, works for us but that is because we have similar incomes, similar pension provision and both own our own properties

We haven’t got a joint bank account, mainly because we haven’t got round to it.
DH pays most of the household bills and I usually end up paying for the food shopping, because the Sainsbury’s account is in my name and we have deliveries. Day to day spends are usually on the joint credit card, which DH clears every month. Big purchases we sometimes share, though they often go on the credit card to get the loyalty points!
We’re in a fortunate position pre children (and during Covid) that we usually have money left over at the end of the month for savings. We chose not to max out our budget on the mortgage to leave us with some disposable income.

I realise we’re not the norm though! I suspect our set up may well change if/when children come along

We have a joint account together for food, cat, and shared subscriptions which we contribute equally to.

We live in his house but I have my own flat that is rented out. I transfer him money to pay the utility bills each month and he pays mortgage - works out that he pays about twice what I do but I have to pay tax on the income from my flat and obviously he pays for any property expenses as I do for my flat.

For out and about we tend to take turns eg I might get the Uber’s and he buys us dinner. Usually he gets the more expensive thing of the night as he makes more money but this is his choice, we would go to cheaper places if sticking to my budget. Holidays we split 50/50 but he sometimes chooses to pay to upgrade us.

Joint account for anything household related, both pay a percentage into it based on our salaries and we have roughly the same left each after that as our own money for the month

Pre and post marriage, we both deposit into joint account a percentage proportionate to earnings to cover all bills and shared expenses. One of us earns 3x as much as the other.

Pre-DC, we paid the same amount each month into a joint account (we were on the same salary, so paid in around 60% of our monthly income). That account was for rent, bills and food shopping, with the occasional meal out thrown in if we could afford it. Then we had our own accounts for personal stuff. Holidays, trips out or joint gifts would usually be split 50/50.

Now we have a child, we have pretty much the same system but he pays much more than I do into our joint account than I do (I now work PT), and obviously any DC-related costs (clothes, nappies etc) come out of our shared account.

It works for us, but I think it's dependent on earning roughly similar amounts and neither of us having significant personal debt. Don't know how it would work if one of us was paying off a massive credit card bill, for example.

A while ago but we both put in proportionately to a joint account for food, mortgage, bills etc. I earnt roughly twice what my partner earned so if there were big expenses like holidays I’d tend to pay most of that as otherwise we would only ever have had a cheap holiday and ‘nice’ holidays are very important to me, less so to him.

Now we’re married we also have a joint savings account that we put into equally for holidays and big purchases. We’re many years further down the road, and have paid off the mortgage so its not as critical any more. He’s a spender, I’m a saver so I wouldn’t feel right giving him free access to my bank account and all my money, but equally if he wants a big purchase I tend to fund it and he pays me back rather than give money to finance companies. It works for us !

When I moved in, DP already owned his home (mortgaged) and I already had DD.

As DP was already used to paying the mortgage and all utilities he said that he would carry on doing so. I pay for childcare, DD's activities and anything she needs (uniform, clothes, shoes etc), and I usually pay for the food shopping.

Holidays; one of us pays to book the holiday, the other buys the currency for spending money (usually works out that we both put in about the same).

Days out / leisure: I pay for annual passes or memberships, plus anything where we book tickets in advance. DP pays for most things while we're actually out (meals, spontaneous activities etc).

DP usually earns 50-100% more than me (depending on overtime availability). We have separate accounts and manage our own spending money.

I'm now on reduced pay (SMP) so am trying to reduce my spending, fortunately not paying childcare while I'm off work has been a huge help.

Before we had DD...

We set up a joint account very early on. All household outgoings come from this account (and still do).

We each put in half to cover these, and then I would put in an extra £500 to cover other expenditure (this included food shopping etc) as I earnt a lot more than him. We both ended up with similar amounts in our own accounts when we had transferred the money to the joint.

Same applies now although he is currently paying more as I am furloughed and will be going back part time, but as soon as I'm full time again, hopefully in January, the same will apply as previously.

He then also treats us to meals out, 'treat' purchases etc (although I do as well but less frequently than him).

I think a joint account is a great idea if you're planning long-term, but that's just worked for us. I see/saw it all as our money anyway, so me putting in more to the joint really made most sense.

Oh sorry and in terms of holidays or other big expenditures, we'd see how much we had leftover in the joint and then use our 'own money' to top up.

Also forgot to add that within my outgoings I budgeted in a certain amount of money into my own savings each month (this is taken into account before we worked out how much each of us would have leftover in our separate current accounts) so we also tend to use that (again - my money is his money, it's all kind of the same pot really, but I put it into savings to accrue interest if we didn't use it).

We split mortgage and service charge, I pay for food and he pays for everything else
No idea what the split is, we don’t really keep track

All one pot

Joint bills account for all household bills and shopping (we put in £100 a week which more than we need). We worked it out by a percentage. Our monthly take home pay and what % bills and food was. So for example the money we need monthly is for example 36% of our connived take home then we each put 36% of our wage in. Anything left at the end of the month in the joint account goes into joint savings. We then have our own accounts for spending and saving. For holidays we both pay 1/2, or sometimes one will pay on credit card and the other deals with spending money.