I want to merge mine and my husband's finances.

[MonBlu]

Married donkey's years. 4 children. Own a house together but rent elsewhere.

We have always had separate bank accounts. He is a much higher earner. He pays the big bills - rent, mortgage etc. I pay for kids stuff and groceries and weekly expenses. We have no savings and fairly shitty pension plans. Although it's in separate bank accounts, it's all 'our' money and I can cheerfully ask him to bung me $200 or whatever and he would. If we go out it doesn't really matter who pays.

I have a couple of concerns about our current setup.

1. If DH dies I'm absolutely stuffed, unable to access any of 'his' (our) money and unable to pay the rent. A friend lost her husband recently so it's on my mind.
2. DH can be a bit evasive about money. Given his high salary it's strange that we are always so skint. I think on balance it's more likely that he gets in a muddle rather than calculated deviousness, but who knows?

I would like us to have a setup where all the money is pooled and all bills go out of the same pot, we both see what's going on, we have set spending money, and hopefully a bit of savings. DH has agreed to this, but is not exactly forthcoming about getting it set up.

My question: Is this the sort of thing we just set up ourselves, or is it worth going to a professional (banking staff? financial advisor?) to help us? How do I do this?

Similar set up to us in terms of seperate finances and who pays for what. Although I’d be ok, at least for a fair while if my partner dies cos his work death in service would is at least named to me.

I imagine you just need to set everything up individually. Choose a bank account either existing or new and put both your names as account holders. Add the other to each bill and move to the direct debit shared account. I’m sure thermal be some account t types you can’t have 2 names on (ISAs maybe?) but just go through everything.

OP you just pick a bank and open a joint account. Your use of dollars suggests you might not be in the UK? But the principle is the same, even if the range of services is different.

Get everything paid into one pot that pays the bills, food etc, moves money to a joint account for savings and then pays some money to each of your joint account is the fairest way so you both have oversight of bills and joint savings, but also some privacy for personal spending but everything joint is covered jointly with no he pays/she pays, which oddly always seems to have the man paying the mortgage to buy an asset while the woman fritters her money away on 'bits for the kids' and 'days out' and other stuff that doesn't build up to an asset.

The following links give advice on setting a budget and minimising household expenses, plus also a life 'to do list' about what order to do things in.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/

ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/

@KarmenPQZ it could take a few weeks for a death in service payment to come through, in which time his account might be frozen and payments might start getting missed, should the worst happen. Plus if you're not married, and you separated, currently he might be able to argue that you've not contributed towards the mortgage so the house belongs to him.

Thank you, that's really helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to write it. Hmmmm - I hadn't thought about the fact that he is buying a house while I'm buying football boots and yogurts. But the house is in both our names and we're married, so hopefully that's not an issue. And we're not separating as far as I know!

Okay, silly question: Once we set up the joint account, presumably we both ask our respective employers to change the account that we're paid into, right? From our personal accounts to the new joint one.

Yup, just give your employers the new account number to pay into.

Are you planning on keeping your current separate accounts? DH and I get equal pocket money paid to separate accounts from the central pot. We use it for personal stuff like clothes and gifts to each other. Or you could just close them and have the one central pot.

its a nice change to read about a couple who both want to do this, there are so many worrying threads about separate accounts.

Yes, we'll keep our own accounts for a bit of spending money, gift money independence, etc

Right. Am going to get this done!

We have a joint account, joint savings, and then individual accounts and savings as well. It’s mainly because we don’t agree about where to put our money (ethics is more important to me than him so am fussy about what bank I use; his family have historically worked for one of the big high street banks). In terms of managing our money we consider it as one pot but dispersed in several accounts. We use YNAB to keep on top of what our outgoings are and doing so really helps us as it doesn’t really matter where the money is. We will also always have access to some money of something awful happens.