How to manage my ‘new’ budget

[Lauralemons]

Hello,

so I’m back to work full time now. I work in a school as a member of support staff term time only for 27 hours a week. My take home is £1460.

dh pays the majority of everything! We’ve agreed that I’ll pay the following each month-

£250 into bills account
£80 for all of our phones
£59 sky tv
£28 my car insurance
£12 union fees
£120 fuel for my car

total £549

this will leave me with just over £900 for ‘spare’ money. There’s no expectation for me to use this for anything specific as dh pays for food, clothes however some it will almost definitively be spent on stuff for dc’s and family treats.

my best friend thinks that my dh is being unreasonable and that as I don’t earn that much then I shouldn’t have to pay as much out

dh earns a lot more than me and has more ‘spare’ however he does use this spare cash for holidays and family stuff.

is my friend BU?

Start charging DP for school holiday childcare.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I would pool all money for both of you should have equal personal spending money.

Agree, pool all income then take out the same for personal spends. That's what we do.

All money in one pot that all expenses come out of, and then equal fun money into your own accounts.
note, kids fun money come from joint account.

your way sounds over complicated and will need rebalancing to ensure fairness at least once a year

So what I think we are all saying is we have no idea how to manage a budget like yours, as we just would not contemplate splitting our money within the marriage, like you and your husband are proposing.
so the only advice is to manage your money within a marriage, which assumes all money coming in belongs to the marriage, and is managed from one pot, with side pots for personal spends.
we also have many saving and investment accounts which we both have access to, and there is total transparency in to the accounts held in the other spouses name.
This is not possible in what you are proposing, so totally unable to comment. Other than to say, we would not do it like that

all the best

I earn a bit less than dh but everything goes into one pot and everything is paid from that pot.

Pool all money and agree your family saving/spending goals - short/medium/longer term. Especially the biggies such as pensions, overpaying mortgage (if you have one), sending kids to uni, holidays, cars etc.

We are more like you OP. We both pay an amount into a ‘pot’ that covers bills and then we have roughly the same left over for personal spends but we don’t have all money in a joint account. Neither of us would like that. I earn significantly more than my husband and pay more into the pot.

But in your case if I had 900 spending money a month I'd save 700 a month.

I actually think it’s fine. £900 a month “spare” when DH is paying for everything else including holidays and family stuff is pretty good.

I’d be saving a significant amount of that £900- you never know when you’ll need it.

Depends how much dh has 'spare'.

Agree with pooling all your money and paying joint costs out of that before splitting the difference for personal spending money. Make sure all DC costs come out of this money, rather than you spending your money on days out in the school holidays for example. Also save for your pension out of joint money as there's likely to be a big disparity in the value of yours vs his and a lot of this will be due to you earning less due to doing the lion's share of childcare.

I think your way is fine OP; you’ve got £900/month spare which is way more than most people have (hell, it’s more than some people’s income is!)

The only thing I’d keep an eye on is the murkiness around who pays what for children, holidays etc. you don’t want to end up in a situation where one of you ends up never really paying for anything for themselves and everything goes towards family bits; while the other is constantly treating themselves with gadgets/coffees out etc.

Sounds reasonable to me.

To be left with £900 spare to do what you want with and having all holidays off as well as working part time is what most people would dream of op to be honest.

You could save a good whack of that and still have spare every month to treat yourself.

How can anyone possibly comment unless they know what your DH brings in each month?
Also, having £900 a month ‘spare’ is pretty damned good.

Posters make a good point in referencing what the partner potentially earns. We've always found pooling all the money the best way for us, it depends on the relationship.

All the money in the top, all the expenses listed and plenty fun money allocated per person. We share a log in for the Financielle app for it.