Maternity leave - split with DH

[Dominikaa]

Just wondering- how do you split finance/ bills with DH while on maternity leave? What you think its fair?

All money shared.

Everything in one joint account. Both our incomes, and every single bill/subscription (whether personal or household). We don’t have any other bank accounts.

I buy stuff, he buys stuff. If I run out of money, he buys stuff and vice versa.

we don’t have joint accounts, but we don’t keep track of who buys what.

All income shared, joint account with both incomes going in and everything else coming out

Joint finances, no different

Both salaries into joint account, all shared family expenses out of joint account including car fuels, insurances, food shopping, buying for child, joint meals out when out together with friends/family, clothes that are fairly essential. Both get the same amount of 'fun money" transferred out into our Monzos. This pays for his smoking, my girly meals out, saving to buy bday/Xmas gifts for each other... any other big purchases discussed and usually come from joint account.

This, otherwise the woman gets shafted depleting "her" savings whilst on maternity, meanwhile the bloke keeps all his money.

We planned our children so had joint savings to cover my reduced pay. Also when Ds1 went to nursery "I" wasn't paying out of my part time earnings but instead it came from the joint account.

We paid everything into the joint account, kept the same amount back for ourselves for personal spends. We had a standing order to move money into savings for holidays etc. But it was all re-evaluated once Ds1 was here. Still kept the personal spends.

Any big purchases discussed before spending. Yearly talk about finances, what we spent, anything we think we should cut back on, plans for the next 12 months ie holidays, house etc.

What is your H suggesting? I bet his suggestion eaves you shafted and having to ask for money while he's not impacted by having a baby at all.

Your baby. His + you =joint responsibility.

All money should go into a joint pot. All the bills should be paid. All of them including childcare because its his child. I'd also get him to include your private pension contributions in the joint outgoings. Then anything left over should be split as fun money.

Remember your at home caring for your joint child. You career will take a hit. While he will carry on as normal getting pay raises and potenion promotions. Your pension won't be paid into. You are making a big sacrifice. Don't get screwed.

Also, make sure you always have an exit fund. I wish I had one.

Pooling all incomes and expenses into a joint account during maternity leave seems like a fair approach.

I too want to know what your and his current thinking is.
rule 1- the two of you are having a baby and need to support the baby. If you’re home looking after it then he’s paying for that. Men don’t get a baby for free, women shouldn’t take the time off to look after the baby full time and pay into the finances like they are working full time.

we budgeted and cut back so we lived on 1.5 salaries during my leave, the 0.5 was my mat pay at half rate then savings when that stopped.

We paid in proportionately to our income. We did an annual reassessment as our salaries/ incomes fluctuated quite a bit in the early years.

The minute I found out I was pregnant, I set up a joint account for me and my DP and insisted both incomes were paid into that going forward so that I wasn't unfairly penalised for carrying and staying off work for a year with our child.

Our child is now two, I'm part time, and this is still our set up. Everything in and out of one account.

When I went on maternity leave he paid all the bills, and said if I had any spare money I could put it in the main account, but if not he'd pay for it all as I was doing the harder job looking after our joint baby. As it is, we both put in whatever we have and try to make sure we share whatever is left over after essentials.

I usually pay £600 a month into our joint account and once I dropped to half pay I put £300 a month in and my other half paid my missing £300.

Once SMP started I kept all of this plus I kept the child benefit to cover my bills and my other half took over all the household bills and the mortgage.

We saved enough between us for me to have the equivalent to my full salary for a year and then just continued as usual with contributions split based on earnings. I ended up taking an extra three months which I funded out of my own savings because it was entirely my choice and DS was in childcare by that point (I was studying for my masters).

He paid all bills, because my mat pay was about equal to his remaining pay. He also added to both my savings and his and paid for things like holidays

Shared finances with an equal amount of independent ‘fun’ money each. That’s equal as in the same, not a proportion based on income.

Joint account, all money shared.
Not just for maternity leave but for the duration of the child raising years of your relationship. Anything else results in the person doing more of the care of the children being ripped off financially.

Pooled both our incomes then split what was left.

Eg. He made 2000, I had 500 from SMP, 2500 altogether. 2000 put into joint account to pay bills and we both got 250 for personal spends

We put everything into the joint account and worked out an equal amount we could both keep as our personal money for socialising etc. The joint account covers all bills, food, kid stuff, cars and phone bills. We did this during mat leave and when I returned to work part time. It works for us. DP always puts more in but no issue with that.

All our money is shared. We have a small amount left in our own current accounts but the vast majority of our salary goes into a joint account.

Normally we split total household bills spending 60/40 because I earn more than her. Before maternity leave we both saved up money in savings account, then whilst on maternity leave she drew money from that savings account to top up her maternity pay, and then we re-calculated the bills split using her income as the amount drawn from savings + maternity pay. Now she is back from maternity we are back to a straight 60/40 again.

I was only off long enough to still get full pay - 16 weeks incl some annual leave. So we kept things as normal - he paid mortgage etc for his account, I paid food and some utilities from mine.

We worked out the shortfall off mat pay and half pay both of us saved before baby arrived and then wife had same money as when she was working