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?

Husband has died but everything went into a joint account from which everything went out: bills, mortgage, food, clothes - just everything. If we had personal purchases we wanted to make for ourselves it all came out of the same account and no quibble. If there was a major expenditure proposed we consulted each other. Otherwise we just did that thing called trust. All savings were joint.

We were a team. The idea of having individual accounts simply never occurred to us.

We have always had a joint debit account for mortgage, shop, family stuff, that we both pay equivalent amounts into along with personal debit accounts, personal pensions, personal savings accounts, personal ISAs etc. We manage our own money and keep the joint pot topped up.
I don't know anyone in real life who has the setup most claim to have on mumsnet where there is just a joint pot, but most of our friends met at work like us and had individual lives already established. When we had a mortgage we both contributed equally except during my year of mat leave. Our finances except for the joint pot are completely separate. Married 15 years, together 20.

Everything is joint.

Both our salaries go into the joint account, all our bills and expenses go out from there, as does a standing order to a savings account that is equally shared, then anything left at the end of the month is transferred there as well.

He earns more than me, because I took a hit on my salary reducing my hours for childcare reasons. We are a team. Once a couple has children, I can’t understand why you’d do it any other way.

We have individual and joint account. Married 13 years. We did this when we were renting and when we got our house.

Wages are paid into our individual and then we both move a proportional amount over. Approx 65/35. I earn more and he also has more commuting costs. Similar with savings, it’s about 70/30 contributions at the moment.

We each get the same amount of “fun” money after paying our own small bills. Car insurance etc.

This works for us, we were 50/50 for a long time but once my salary started increasing it wasn’t fair that we still paid the same amount. We check our finances and situation after every pay review, if we can pay more into pensions or save more etc. usually about every 6 months.

All wages into joint account. A standing order each month into our individual accounts which are useful at time like Christmas and birthdays when we don't want each other to know what we are buying. We both have ISA's.

Wages into our own account. We pay a certain amount proportional to income into a joint account from which theoretically all joint expenses should be paid. In practice though apart from regular expenses such as mortgage and utility bills we pay for most stuff especially one offs from our own accounts and happily transfer money to each other if the other person is running low in their current account. It's a bit of a chaotic system but it works at the moment because we both earn a good wage and apart from big or regular expenses don't really need to worry too much. At the moment. I'm happy with it. I'd hate to pay wages into a joint account as I wouldn't want to feel as if I need to justify any of my expenditure. I want the freedom that keeping most of my income for myself gives me.

We have separate accounts. All bills and running costs are paid from my account, DH pays for the unexpected such as new appliances, cars, holidays and his personal spend. I have always earned at least 3x his income. We are now both retired and our pensions are vastly different.
The set up has always worked. I still work part time ( supporting DS through uni), but have always been self employed, so my income fluctuates.

We have a bit of a reverse of traditional rolls, and it has always amused me that the only people who have ever commented negatively have been SAHMs, particularly when DH had a spell of being a SAHP. DS was a teenager and DH wanted to be more available. He took on the household stuff and school run so that I could go full time. We were both lucky to have good pensions meaning we could retire in our mid fifties.

I feel that contributions should be proportional because it is less likely to breed resentment when one partner is left with less disposable income than the other. It works for us, running a business means that the income I took is not always final, unexpected expenses mean that there can be a lot of variation month to month and the business account has to be ring fenced.

So allowing generally access to this money can complicate finances. Moving money from linked joint accounts is risky. Unfortunately, a linked account with my DSis ended up with my business account being investigated for money laundering, a long story but we have discovered recently that it was the result of her ex-husbands involvement. My account came close to being frozen as a result of his actions. DSis and I were totally unaware of what was going on and as a result, we are both self employed, we separated all our accounts by closing down a number of joint accounts. I couldn’t believe how my business account was made vulnerable by the activity in an account that was linked through two joint accounts.

All income into one joint account, jointly owned house. Longstanding marriage been together over 30 years from young. We both work but this has varied over yrars, sometimes me pt, sometimes him self employed.
Before we married we used to have own accounts and contributed to a joint account too.

We have always had a joint bank account into which all income is paid. My parents did the same so it never occurred to me not to and its worked for us for 30 years. I am the higher earner and also the one who keeps tabs on the account but only because I'm interested in doing so and he isn't. We also have a joint savings account with the same bank and he has a card on my credit card account. We have some separate savings too.

As far as I'm concerned all money earned by a married couple is equally theirs as we share a life. I can't understand people who want to mess around with percentages etc. Though we're not bothered by each other buying personal items- neither of us are extravagant and we discuss all larger expenditure and agree that.

This

All wages go in joint account, when husband gets paid we transfer the same amount to our own accounts as fun money. Everything in the joint account is for bills and anything left at the end of the month goes into joint savings. If we want to buy something personally but have no more fun money of our own we usually agree to just buy it out the joint account. This works for us and that's what is important.

We have a joint account for all household and child related outgoings. Our wages go into our personal accounts and we transfer money into the joint account each month. We both keep the same amount of money for ourselves and the rest goes into the joint account. I earn more than my husband so contribute more to the joint account - but we find this way is fair as we both have the same amount of money left over each month.

We both get our salaries into separate accounts. We transfer an equal amount into a joint account which pays for mortgage, bills, groceries and shared ‘fun’ money (like going out to eat together).
We both keep what’s left in our separate accounts to spend on our personal costs (gym membership, phone etc and separate ‘fun’ money).
We both save whatever is left into shared savings account. DH earns more than me so he saves more - but this goes on joint things like holidays, home improvements etc.

Everything into and out of one pot. His and hers money is ridiculous after marriage.

50/50 would only make any sense if you either earn identical amounts, have no joint children, or are just flat mates.

Us too. Married 30 years, always a joint account. Big purchases / expenses discussed and planned for in advance.

Joint account for joint bills. We don't do half, but proportionate to our income (so me 70%, DH 30%) whatever we each have left us ours to save and spend as we wish on our personal bills.

Married 25 years. Joint account. Everything goes into there and is ultimately paid from there. Marriage to us means that’s it’s all our shared money and bills. I’ve never worked.

Credit card is in his name with me as a secondary card holder; savings account is in my name. No individual accounts apart from them but we both have the passwords to them anyway.

Major purchases are discussed beforehand, small ones aren’t. Major would probably be $100-$200+. When finances are tight DH will check with me regardless of purchase amount because sometimes we won’t have a spare $50 available because a bill is due or we’re waiting for pay day. I manage the money and bill paying.

One child. Didn’t make a difference to how we deal with money. All joint income and joint expenses.

In your opinion

Have a joint account

We can spend what we want from own account but I tend to pay for holidays/extra curricular activities/house things and repairs from mine. Husband pays for all household food from his.
We tend to just put a certain amount each into joint account to cover bills, then we put rest in savings and keep whatever we think we'll need that month for other/personal costs.

Husband tends to keep £1000 (for household food and personal expenses in his)
I keep about £1000 in mine but borrow from the joint account if I'm running low.

Sounds complicated but works for us. We don't split anything down the middle as all money is family money to us.

Salaries into personal accounts and set amount into the joint account. I pay in significantly more than DH, as I earn a lot more.

Ours is the same as this but we carried on with it when he changed to employment. Works for us been doing it for 30 years.

My DH earns a significant amount more than me (6 figures to my measly 14k a year)
So only his salary goes into our joint account and he pays all the bills and holidays & school trips.

I pay for Christmas, birthdays and days outs. Then the rest is mines.

Both our salaries go straight into a joint account where the vast majority of our spending comes from. He used to earn more, I now earn more, but nothing has changed.

We both have a bit of extra income that goes into separate accounts and is largely saved, but that's just for convenience really. We move money between those accounts freely and see it all as joint money. We've been married 25 years.

We have been married 26 years one joint account which everything goes in and out of. There have been periods I haven’t worked because of the children and it was the same.
Several joint savings and over the years the odd thing in my name for tax but generally everything is ‘ours’.
We have our own credit cards but they are only used occasionally. If we want to buy something we do.
We have never argued over money and worked through various life changes and different financial scenarios. He has always earned way more than me, it just happened that way and that never been a thing.
If he had been in control of the money we would definitely have more savings now but on the other side we wouldn’t have had as much fun :-)