Couples money split

[zinky]

Hi, DP earns £150k and I earn £61k, we have 2 children. DC1 goes to nursery (£1,300 pm) and DC2 will start nursery in Sept/oct of this year. We rent the flat we live in and DP owns a flat he rents. How should we split the cost of the rent, food, nursery etc? Thanks

70:30 proportional to your earnings

I'm married, but we did this before marriage too. We have shared finances, all wages in one pot, pay for bills, food etc. The rest is "ours" to decide whether to spend or save. This has worked well for us for many years.

Proportionate to your net incomes?

You have two children together. Pool the lot, pay what needs to be paid, save an agreed amount and then equal spends. I can’t see any other outcome as fair when you are meant to be a team. (I say this as somebody who earns around 10x more than my OH and do the same.)

When you're married and have kids, this is what's fair. If you absolutely want to pay as per income, his rental income should also be taken into consideration.

Agree with @CuriousGeorge80 . I'm the breadwinner too and we do similar. Agreed personal spending money each then all the rest goes to joint costs or savings

Thank you everyone for your reply, I think we have to review our current finances and split.

We’ve always just had a joint account and considered all the money in it to be ours equally. I’ve earned a lot less than my husband but that’s mainly because I worked part time for years while the children were little whereas he concentrated on his career.
It concerns me a bit in your situation that he has a property in his name but you don’t, despite being a relatively high earner.

I never get the proportional split, surely that just means one person gets much more disposable income. How can that be fair in a family.

DH earns nothing so would get bugger all if we did that.

I don't understand why people get their knickers in a knot about splitting finances when they are married and have children. How can you have a family unit where one person has loads of cash and can afford fancy hobbies and the other can't even afford a haircut? (Not in this particular situation but I've seen similar on mn in the past).

Just put it all into one joint bank account and pay all expenses out of the same, unless one party has financial issues e.g. a gambling addiction or serious debt problems of course.

They OP says ‘DP’ so I think they’re probably not married.

and if you’re not married you really need to be more cautious about the financial aspects of your relationship.

What happened during your maternity leaves OP? Were you compensated for your loss of earnings? What about the hit to your career?

I wouldn't ever have just a joint account. I'm all for pooling money, if you want but also keeping your financial independence by having your own bank account.

This! We put everything in a joint pot. Both our salaries come in and then mortgage, school fees, home improvements, car, food, meals out, holidays, everything comes out. We each get a discretionary spend - the same amount, £150 a month paid to individual accounts, but this is for us to do what we want. Given 90% of our outgoings are from the joint pot £150 is plenty for coffees and individual spend, we’ve found. I would say one thing. Because we’ve worked this way for a looong time, our savings pot was big (we recently moved so it’s now tiny again). We split that 50-50. He had 50% of the savings in his name, I had 50% in mine. This was mainly to get the best out of our money at the time, but it’s also comforting to know that you do have a chunk in your name still. Downside is that no matter how much I earn, I still can’t buy myself an LV or channel bag…! £150 a month won’t buy me that!

Everything pooled into family money for bills etc.

Hopefully you have similar financial outlooks and are financially compatible so day to day spending is not an issue, large spends (and what constitutes a large spend) should be discussed.

Savings need to be considered as you are not married, while any savings "belong" to the joint family money it makes sense any savings from the family pot are split 50:50 in accounts in each of your names, so if something critical happens - illness, death, separation or another emergency you both have the same access to funds.

I wouldn't accept anything less (I say that as the higher earner). But bit late now, to rearrange two children in, it should have been discussed before making that commitment to each other, especially if there was less of a disparity between salaries back before children.

Keeping your financial independence is crucial - that means retaining your ability to earn well enough to support yourself if something critical happens.

Pool everything. Or contribute to a joinT account relative to your take home pay (not salaries, as your DP will be paying a lot of tax). Use that for all joint expenses including childcare and children’s purchases. Assuming you’re not married, the second option is best so you can retain some independence and have your own savings in case you need. And are you planning to buy a joint property? Seems a waste to pay rent if your partner could sell his flat and you could get a big mortgage on your incomes.

Split all household and child costs proportionate to earnings. I hate the idea of only having a joint pot so I wouldn’t personally advocate it.

Your not married are you.

So this means if he left you would be in spot of trouble...

I think being fair here he earns a lot more., could you have upped your income if you had no children?

So it says his take home is about £7500 a month and your is £4600 ish...

So ask him to pay the children's fees and you will then go halves on all other bills.

Once the children are in school he gets his money back, but pays the children's expenses from that money.

Maybe have an account you put it in and both of you can use a card, but only for the children's expenses....