Please tell me about your joint accounts

[NameOchangeO1]

My DH and I have been married a long time and have mostly separate finances, with a shared joint account covering mortgage, (most) utilities, childcare, school fees. For various reasons I think it would be better (including that we would potentially be better off) if we pooled our money more.

So I've proposed to DH that we pool the majority of our money each month- eg 90% and that we should agree what costs will be met out of that pool. But I'm wondering how about other people deal with joint accounts where both of you earn a decent amount. Do you pool the lot? If not, how do you decide what you keep separate, and what things do you spend your "own" money on? Women tend to have higher necessary personal expenses (more expensive to get a hair cut, need to buy toiletries etc) than men, so do you factor that in?

Thanks

I'm not going to play ping pong with you on this but if your husband is saving part of his income in his business, in an account that you have no access to, then you do not have access to those savings. Your resources are not pooled. And obviously most people in the country are paye workers and not self employed.

Pre marriage when he moved in he took over paying everything. I was a lone parent prior with WTC. Which was stopped when he moved in. He said from day 1 me nor my dc would have less than when i was single.
And its ridiculous as i was far better off then.
So his wages shared for all house bills and food etc . My wages for me and my dc, days out, school trips etc

We then had our dc and i was a sahm for 4 years, he continued to pay everything and opened a joint account that i had full access over spend as i wish.

That continued now married, another dc. Joint account. Both wages go in. I deal with all finances. He doesn't even know whats in there or what goes out when. He says hes not bothered as long as me and kids ok and bills paid and he hasn't even bothered to download banking app.

We have a joint account and everything goes in and out of there. We are both very similar in our attitude to £ thought and always have been.

Joint account for everything coming in and then we split all money from the joint pot into separate accounts- bills, education, dc bank accounts, groceries, savings, and an equal amount of spending to each of us in our own private accounts.
All expenses are accounted for from the joint pot including health related, hair cuts etc
DH is terrible at forward planning with money so while he has access to all the joint accounts I run the budget and generally manage the accounts (after some near misses and numerous discussions). We're in a much better position because of this.
He earns much more than I do but his position requires lots of travel at the drop of a hat so I work part time and we both see it as a joint effort.

@Quisquam its really not like PAYE and asking your employer to keep hold of some of your salary each month to give it back to you 10 years later.

We just pool everything. He tends to spend little on himself but then I earn twice the salary. Anyway it all works out.

We pool everything. Some months I spend more. Some months he spends more. We discuss big purchases in advance whether they are household or personal.

its really not like PAYE and asking your employer to keep hold of some of your salary each month to give it back to you 10 years later.

Why not?

We have joint accounts and separate saving accounts but mainly for tax purposes. We know how much we have as a family and all of our money is shared. We've been through times where my husband has earned more than me/ had shares gifted through work and when I’ve earned more than him/ had redundancy payouts. It works well for us. We never argue about money. If we want to buy anything expensive obviously we discuss but other than that, we can ( within reason) buy whatever we like

I'm going to add a middle of the road perspective. We have a joint account and we use a budget to work out what we need to pay in. We use Starling that is easy to tag data in but before this I manually worked out each year what our costs were on:
Bills (Council Tax, Elec,Gas, Water,Broadband, TV Licence, insurance, mortgage), subscriptions we both use like Netflix, groceries, eating out together, entertainment, children's costs (clubs, pocket money, school meals), household costs like cleaner or window cleaner or DiY supplies, garden costs, transport (car fuel, parking MOT, insurance etc), and a sum to go into a linked account to save towards a holiday/unexpected costs.

Then we would split all that lot down the middle, divide by 12, round up to add a buffer and that's what we put in a month. Sometimes it needs to go up, for both of us, to cover inflation.

Our situation is I earn regularly and more than him,as he is a theatre freelancer, but he inherited money to allow him to buy our house and put savings aside so we are equal in terms of savings. I also inherited some money and bought a flat and some of the monthly income from that also goes into the joint account as extra income, alongside child benefit, to honour the fact we don't have a mortgage because he invested in the house we live in. As I work from home I also pay in a working from home allowance into our joint as I use amenities and eat food whilst he works away!

In this way we feel Iike we are equal contributors and the reason for any extra contributions I make are rationalised and would change eh if I sold my flat or worked in an office.

It also means we can save or spend all the rest of our money as we wish...I do both!

We pay into a joint account all household bills and mutual spends - he earns (conveniently mathematically) double what I do so he pays in double. Everything else is personal spends

I would find a situation where there is personal money very uncomfortable.

When we first got married I earned more than DH, then we earned about the same, now he earns more. All along we have pooled literally everything. We spend whatever we want since we are a partnership and we trust one another to make sensible spending decisions (although if we were talking about purchases over about £250ish we would obviously discuss).

If we had personal money DH would currently be rolling in it and I would be scrimping and saving. How is that a good foundation for a marriage?

We use our joint account for everything and all money goes into that. We have always done that since we lived together, even before marriage. At times I earned more and at time she did.
We DO have a personal account each but just with £1000 in for if there is ever an issue with the joint account or we want to buy eachother presents etc. Its rarely used and gets topped up once a year if that.
My joint account card was cloned once so it was stopped and DH was overseas on business but I still had access to money in my personal account.