Can only marred couples answer please.

[Richesme]

After my last posts about my husband wanting to go halves in paying bills rent etc when I start working full time, I’ve sat down with him and even though we had a disagreement about going halves, he eventually said, you can keep all your money to yourself and do your own spendings or savings from there.

He doesn’t believe that couples either put all their money in one pot or go halves in proportionate to their wages. His works in the bank therefore tells me that he has many customers come in to open joint accounts and they go halves.

I want to find out as married couples, how do you guys manage your money, bills, rent, mortgage, spendings, savings and investments?

Wages go into our own accounts and we transfer into the joint account for bills. Roughly 50/50, but I paid less when I had a spell in a min wage job. We don’t have kids though.

We pay 50/50 of our monthly outgoings for house / food / utilities into a separate bank account £1250 each

All one account, he earns vastly more than me. Savings mostly in my name for tax reasons, no mortgage and property in joint names. Everything paid for out of that account, big spends we discuss, day to day we just spend without reference. I do majority of house stuff, always have, he sorts most of the life admin. I looked after our kids mostly though they are pretty self sufficient now, and my SC when they came to stay( lived a few hundred miles away so came for blocks of time rather than weekly). He works like a trojan on any outside jobs (land, yard, garden etc) and turns his hand to nearly everything practical (despite his professional job being finance based) so we rarely pay anyone to do anything if we can possibly do it ourselves, I'm the glamorous assistant! Mind you, we never stop! We are a team in every sense of the word, each have our departments but operate together.
Refreshing to read so many have similar set ups. So often on here it's all about splitting everything up and keeping it all separate...each to their own but seems a funny sort of marriage to me.

All salaries, bonuses, inheritances fully shared in same accounts and shared savings, investments etc.

We pay equal amounts into a joint account for bills. We each have our own savings. My DP earns more than me but I have more in savings and investments. We married in our 40s and have no children.

One current account. Both salaries go into that. All bills come out of that.

We each have our own ISAs and pensions.

All savings in my name as we pay less tax that way.

All credit cards have two cards, so are shared.

Everything financial is transparent between us. Can’t see how you could do it any other way.

My first marriage, joint. Never had a single disagreement about money, ever. Raised a family, lived in three different houses over 22 years, no problems. Second husband, we each had our own established accounts and all. House is from my first marriage, paid off, so no mortgage to share anyway. No disagreements. He pays for a couple of household bills and food shopping, I pay for other household bills, property taxes. If something needs repairs, whoever gets the wallet out first pays. His name on my accounts, mine on his. I prepared taxes for many years and noticed that people with joint finances seemed to accumulate more together than couples who kept separate did. And seemed happier, too.

We do percentage split of everything based on income. It's the only fair way.

Don't know about anyone else but when we had less money , I would check with DH if it was a large purchase ( say more than £100 at the time ) but that was just so he could say if he planning to do the same as we might not have enough to cover both that month but generally no, I never checked with DH and he didn't with me. Nowadays we definitely don't bother checking as we have more money

DH and I have very similar attitudes to money though. On the surface it seems like he is more tight than me, and he loves a bargain and will haggle more than me but underneath that we are similar in that money really is nor a particular interest for us. We like having enough, who doesn't? But we believe it is for spending not for excessive accumulating.

Neither he nor I would dream of telling the other they can't spend on something, however frivolous so we just buy what we want mostly

Joint account just for bills which are split as rough percentage of earnings. We both individually pay for other stuff and for big purchases he sometimes pays and sometimes I do.

Both wages in one account, bills etc comes out from there, we give ourselves the same amount of ‘pocket money’ into own accounts for our own spending, then we have standing order to a savings account and a joint spending account for food shopping, outings, kids stuff etc.

Dh earns more than me but all money is family money and is equally as much mine as it is his. I wouldn’t spend ridiculous amounts without checking with him out of respect.

I wonder if it is couples who get together later in life who have been financially independent who want to keep separate finances and split 50/50?? To me it just smacks of not being fully in the relationship and needing an exit plan to stock pile your own cash while your partner struggles on. It’s very unfair and unequal, esp considering the career/pay sacrifices that many women make when raising children.

We get paid into our own accounts and keep back a previously agreed amount (equal). Everything else goes into the joint account. All spending for the house and kids and cars comes from there. We use our personal spending for hobbies and activities with friends that don’t involve the other. Works well for us. We have discussed and agreed saving plans and similar which all comes out of the joint account.

Separate accounts.
We do have a joint account for our child/household which we transfer into proportionally every month. My DH earns significantly more so he pays most of the bills, food shopping for now.

We have our own separate ISAs/investments accounts.

It's funny, I've always liked having my own account and spending my own money that I've earned. It feels like it's properly mine that way and I don't feel so rubbish earning so little compared to my DH.

All one pot. Each have a separate account and get the same amount of personal "fun money" each month.

Agree with the this, the fact that we already had the agreement to share money was very helpful when we had kids and apart from both decreasing our personal spending while one of us was earning less, we just carried on as before and used shared savings where needed. I put little in the joint account during that time and kept proportionally more back for personal spending. I already missed out on pension contributions for maternity leave, don’t see why I should lose out on personal spending money as well.

We do it so we’re both left with the same amount of spending money, only a small amount, the rest goes into our joint account

We've been married 46 years, have 2 children, 10 grandchildren, 2 great grandchildren, my hubby retired, I'm still working .. all our money goes into one joint account ... pay all our bills, food, everything actually from it and on my payday we transfer what we feel we can afford into a savings account. Sometimes it's minimal, sometimes it's a lot, depending on our extra outgoings like birthdays (a lot at the same time of year), Christmas etc ... we're a team, doesn't matter who works the most or who earns the most ... it's been that way since day one x

I can’t imagine you’re still reading but..

My husband and I have one checking and one savings account. Everything goes in and everything goes out. We have a joint life insurance policy, a joint mortgage and two children. We are both on our parents’ wills and if something happens to one of us before our parents pass away, it goes to the surviving spouse (for the benefit of our children inherently)

We obviously have separate retirement accounts but are each other’s beneficiaries.

The only issue is when we used to buy each other presents as there was no hiding it! To be honest as we got older we just decided to buy each other a few wee fun things and talk about anything larger as it’s all the same money so we were really just buying it for ourselves anyway (and he’s notoriously crap at gift giving anyway)

All earnings go into one pot and like PP we used to discuss spending but now we have enough savings it is no longer necessary.

We see money as just one kind of contribution and not any more significant than other contributions - so earning money isn't given a higher value than say cooking dinner, looking after investments, kid related stuff, house maintenance or housework.

We do have very similar money behaviour which makes things easier, as well as complete trust in each other and we have agreed goals so we aren't pulling in different directions.

To me marriage is joining your lives together and it makes no sense to me for one person within the marriage to be living a more comfortable lifestyle than the other. Is he contributing equally in other ways or only in the area that benefits him more?

Our pay goes into our own accounts then we transfer an amount each into our joint account and joint savings proportional to what we earn. Then we have our own money to spend and save separately as well.

50/50 bills
Rest of money we earn is in our accounts and is our own money.
We are both free to spend/save do whatever without consulting the other. It's bliss.
Money is control... And I like to have my own money that I have earned and so does my husband.
Id never do it any other way (unless I was a SAHM).
We both good to each other and look out for each other. Works well. Literally no arguments in ten years about Money.

We own two businesses, so funds go into accounts for each business and then anything we draw down is coded as wages and our accountant at the end of fin year will do his magic and we are allocated equal amount as earnings.

however when we were employed by others, at that point we had our own accounts and obligations. DH had a very long, drawn out legal battle (3 years) with his x partner, so when he moved in with me, we made sure our earnings didn’t go into a shared account as the other legal side had already tried to include my home in their property settlement (rejected by the court).

my Mum died recently and I had joint accounts with her as her bank would not acknowledge Power of Attorney. These are now in my name and I need to tidy those up.

@bumblingbovine49i’m really interested in how someone could determine what excessive accumulation is. For example, how much do you factor in saving for retirement when you don’t know how long you’ll live or what state of health you’ll be in by then? There are huge variations in the associated costs of care. I’m naturally cautious so just assume that whatever I can save won’t be enough!! I’d love to try and reframe my mindset.

Household tasks are split and I do the budgeting/life admin as I'm better at it. So all the money apart from some of his personal spend comes into my account and we have a joint credit card which is cleared every month. Husband struggles to spend money and I usually end up suggesting he gets new clothes, shoes etc. His personal spend often accumulates and will be used as holiday spending money. It works for us - he has few financial needs yet is always happy to spend on the house or holidays when I've done the budgeting for it.

Everything is joint, even seperate accounts for higher interest rates are joint money. We spend individually what we want but any home etc purchase is a joint decision, no agreement no purchase, even for little things like a Toaster so there can be no disagreement about it in the future.