How do you manage income as married couple

[Richesme]

My husband earns above average salary whereas I earn minimum wage. I asked him once if I go full time if he can help me with the house work and he said we’ll go halves in everything. We’re gonna do joint account and £1000 each in it where our expenses are paid out from, and if any left for investments. Since he will have above £3000 after the £1000 he put in sharing account, I am left with £500. He sees this fair. I don’t know what to think about it.

Married for 5 years with a toddler

My husband earns £10k ish and I earn £2.5k part time. He has about £2.5k left after all our bills and at the moment I don’t contribute to the joint stuff, although we both spend on the kids/ eating out/ shopping. If I’m short of money I’d take from the joint account if the joint account isn’t plentiful he transfers from savings.

savings wise he has more, but he did before we met and will use saving for joint things like renovations etc. I don’t feel hard done by as I know I’m financially better off now than I would be single or with my previous bf.

Same here, we earned similar for a long time, now I earn a quarter what he does after having a child and going part time/taking a career hit. We are a team.

Everything in the joint account, equal fun money and equal ISA savings comes out to our seprate accounts. Anything left after bills in the joint account goes into a shared easy access saver for holidays/"shit goes wrong" emergency spends etc.

I asked him once if I go full time if he can help me with the house work and he said we’ll go halves in everything.

Really? Bet he won't. Will he take half the sick days when DC can't attend school? Do half the drop-offs and collections? Half the organising of after-school or before-school childcare? Cover half the school holidays or arrange for the holiday club childcare?
Or is all that left to you, seriously damaging your ability to have a proper career?

Will he do half the housework, do it properly, and keep doing it regularly for years to come with no "nagging" or reminding?
He doesn't sound like that sort of person.

We’re gonna do joint account and £1000 each in it where our expenses are paid out from, and if any left for investments. Since he will have above £3000 after the £1000 he put in sharing account, I am left with £500. He sees this fair. I don’t know what to think about it.

I'm deeply sad for you that you "don't know what to think about it". Because it is plain as day for everyone else to see that this is grossly unfair, verging into financial abuse territory.
He is your husband, supposedly your partner for life, and is treating you like a temporary room-mate.
He does not love you.
He may want to love you, he may think he loves you, but actually he is too mean spirited, emotionally stunted, cold-hearted, miserly, stingy and selfish to be capable of love.
He doesn't know what love is.

My advice? make plans to leave him.

How is it fair?

and how does full Time hours equate to £1500? It needs to be an equitable split based on income. Stop letting him bully you, he should be doing house work anyway the lazy sod

But what if you didn't earn anywhere near the same and he still expected you to pay 50%?
No need to be offended by the flat-mate analogy, no one is talking about a relationship like yours where you have separate accounts but earn roughly the same and are both happy with the arrangements.

Married couple means you share everything. I cringe every time I read or hear about mine, yours in a marriage. My husband used to be the main earner. He had two strokes and can no longer work, additionally has conditions from military service. I'm the earner. We share what we have, we're equal partners.

We have a joint account that I put in £1000 and he puts in £1500 (he earns more). Then we have our own money. He can spend £70 on a Xbox game and I can spend £100 on having my hair done and neither of us mind.

Why do you earn minimum wage? Did you not have a career before your child was born?
Personally hubby and I put everything into one account, bills paid, savings set aside and then we have an equal split for spends but we do earn similar amounts.
If hubby was on minimum wage I'd still do the same split but I'd expect him to be looking to increase his earning power at some point.

@WhineAndWine1 but you earn the same which is not the same as OP. That is the roommate situation, you might share a place and your salaries never come into it, bills are split 50/50. It has nothing to do with your relationship, yours is clearly different than the OP's.

The OP clearly states she has £500 a month compared to his £3k per month or £6k per year for her and £36k for him. I am sure if your Dh suddenly started to have £36k for himself every year you might address the 50/50 bill paying agreement you have now.

As I said I have been on both sides of this, the higher earner and the lower earner, I was still paid the same but his graduate job pay rises outstripped mine by a long mile. I should have said, Dh was a student when I met him, I had already graduated. He just chose a very lucrative career path.

One joint account since the day we married. DH has always earned a lot more than me and I’ve just had a large inheritance.Each to their own but we have both always been mystified about the idea of making contributions to the household and then keeping “our own money”

@sixeightfiveits still dismissive of married couples who do 50/50.

@WhineAndWine1 I have been on MN for nearly 20 years. The number of posts on here where a man out earns a woman, usually his wife who he then doesn't share the extra money with is too many to count. 50/50 is a great starting point for a lot of couples when they earn the same amount. When disparity of earnings means one person suffers a reduced lifestyle it is pretty much always the woman. I am trying to help protect women. Hence the transparency of salaries being paid into a joint account.

First hand seen in my own life. SIL cannot afford even a weekend break in the UK, meanwhile her long term over 10 years living together boyfriend jets off to Vegas with the lads for a 5 day stag "weekend." In fact this was the catalyst for them splitting for a while.

Group of women shopping, my friend is working out if she can afford a £20 pair of trousers. The husbands of the group of women, including my husband are all shopping too in the same city. Friend's husband is looking at shirts that cost £150 each which he can afford because they split bills 50/50 and he massively out earns her. He picks up two shirts, she checks her bank to see if she has £20 because we are all meeting up for lunch and she is not sure she can afford both. Dh said it made him see him in a completely different light.

Money, as repeatedly shown on here, on inheritance threads, step parenting/grandparent gifting threads can vastly affect how people are treated, even married couples with one person inheriting. It is brilliant when it works out fairly, equal pay and 50/50 I agree with. But when that shifts to a man having £3k more disposable income as in this thread, I question where the love and respect for a partner goes. He seems happy to see her poorer and probably struggle. He hasn't wanted to change anything.

Would you change from 50/50 if your Dh was bringing a net pay of £36k per year compared to your £6k? Would there be a point where it would tip for you? He earns £50k more? £75k more? Or would you happily wave him off on his holiday that you cannot afford to accompany him on because you couldn't pay your share?

We share our income.

@sixeightfivere the holiday, absolutely yes. Earlier this year I had a US trip planned. My DH couldn’t afford it, so he said he wouldn’t go. He was fine with that. As it happened, things changed and he managed to come along.

For June just gone, we discussed a summer holiday. He wanted to invest in a course for his career and couldn’t afford both, so he chose the course. I went ahead and did a semi-solo trip, which I loved.

Next year I have booked myself an ultra-luxury resort as a treat. When booking, I saw it was not much extra to add him, so I asked if he wanted to come. He is joining me, as my treat.

He has also travelled without me before because I chose to spend my money on other priorities. If it is a joint holiday we have agreed on, we always cover each other, no questions asked, if one could not afford it.

As for the split, I would never put myself in a position where I earned so little that I could not sustain my own lifestyle. I do not want to ask my husband for permission to buy myself something. That level of dependence is not partnership, it is financial control. If a woman cannot even buy herself a £20 pair of trousers without approval, she has handed over her independence.

To me, being partners is not about merging every penny. It is about respecting each other’s autonomy while choosing to share a life. Even if I earned £100k more than him or the other way around, we would still keep separate finances. Bills will always be 50/50, but we use our extra money to treat each other and pay for the fun things like meals, days out or holidays.

Flatmates split bills because they have to. We split bills because we choose to. That is not flatmates, that is equality. And if you think financial dependence equals love, that says more about your relationship than mine.

One pot. I earn nearly twice as much as him, we both have equal access to the same money. All bills out of the pot. Savings go into a separate account we both have access to
Can't imagine living any other way. We are a team

@WhineAndWine1 then you are very much in the minority as demonstrated on here. My friend and the £20 trousers situation was she took the 7 year degree route to train for her profession and he finished his 3 year degree 4 years earlier than her so he was a paid graduate and she was a full time student.

"I would never put myself in a position where I earned so little that I could not sustain my own lifestyle" I bet every single person who has a stroke in their 30s or horrific car accident or who is diagnosed with cancer and then sacked from their job whilst still having chemo or is diagnosed with a medical condition that affects their ability to work consistently also felt like this right until the point where they couldn't earn their own money. There is a whole board for Life-Limiting Illness here on MN.

This is a key point for me.

I have a bigger salary while my DH hasn’t made any effort to increase his salary or his job security. I pay more of the bills but we don’t have a joint account.

I do all the paperwork, planning etc. My husband when it comes to finances behaves like a teenager living with his parents. I’ve accepted it but no way am I sharing a joint account with him.

Our arrangement enables me to save, and the money is for the kids eduction, house etc. It wouldn’t even occur to DH to plan for any of it, he just lives day to day.

Thats roughly the arrangement we have.

I dont know how much my dh earns but I know its more than me. I know its more that me because he worked abroad when the children (one with sen) were tiny and that seriously curtailed what i could achieve at work.

He tends to buy the whole family treats lik takee out and he pays some subscription for all of us, more petrol too. He just does it without thinking.

But a couple of times, a few years back, I've been pissed off to not be able to afford my new glasses prescription and come home to find he's bought himself a toy.

Does the person who put all the effort in at work not deserve something for it?

Surley the OP’s husband can’t be expected to do 50% of housework and make sure she is financially equal to him.

50/50 finances, 50/50 labour, 50/50 time off - that doesn't mean they do equal amounts of work at home - clearly a SAHP is going to be doing more there, but the parent working outside the home has to do some or the SAHP gets no breaks.

They are both putting effort in at work - looking after children at home is also work. They agreed to partner up and have kids. They deserve equal benefits.

@Fearfulsaints

It's not OK to be in this position, and I would call time on it if I were you - that might be a bit of a process, but if your husband doesn't want to loose his marriage, he'll come round.

No that’s not fair

all our money - minus a bit for personal use - - goes into one pot. Dh earns far more. I happen to do almost all the kids-related spending but that’s because I am part time so have more time to organise it all

we recognise all the cash and savings as “ours”

We each have the same amount of free money

effort at work isn’t related to how much you get paid.

You will know if his role is more stressful and demanding and in that case I would do more of the household stuff

It all goes into one pot, then you DD to both of you the same amount for spends.

Thank you. Im not sure how to tackle it really, but I will as I am desperate to know if he has been paying into a pension or not. Ive made my own arrangements, but obviously if he hasn't, we are going to struggle on what I have saved.