If you are a SAHM, how do you organise your finances?

[ThisOrThat]

I've been surviving on my savings which are finished now. Lately I've been dipping into the mortgage account from time to keep me afloat. This just makes me feel horrible and DP says I've been paying off the mortgage and I can't believe it, I looked and it's gone up again.

I do 80% of the food shopping and all the family clothes shopping. Buy presents for family members etc. We are really pretty well off, but I'm short of money. I feel like a chattel who's a drain on the family purse.

What do others do?

DP's wage goes into a joint account and this is used for household / kids expenses. We each get a monthly allowance into our own accounts for personal expenditure.

This is the only practical thing to do i.m.o.

DH and I have a joint account, everything (inc tax credits etc) get paid into this account and I just use it as and when (within reason). DH takes care of all bills and my credit card bills etc, I usually do all food shopping, present buying etc and just let him know what I've spent so he can keep track of it.

I'm crap at finances which is why he deals with it all. We are not well off though so we have to be careful.

We have a joint account and everything goes in there, with all DDs coming out of it. I do most of the daily spending on a credit card though (his account but I am an extra cardholder) but this is all paid off monthly with a DD.

I was a lone parent SAHM on benefits when I married DH so it was always agreed that he would cover all expenses and have full access to funds, as marrying meant I lost all my benefits/child tax credits. I was used to managing my own budget and being sensible with money but I didn't want to have to ask him for anything like a 50s housewife.

It sounds like your finances are kept very separate, which I find a bit strange when you're in a LTR. I don't really identify cash in our accounts as mine or DH's, it is all 'ours'.

You have been using savings to pay for family food and clothes. Where does your DP's salary go?

I am not a SAHM, but since my first maternity leave all our money goes into one joint account, and we spend from that account and on one joint credit card. No allowances. We're a family and our money is family money. Whoever did the employment that earned it, we are all part of the unit that enables that employment to take place.

We have a joint account.

Everything goes into it, any spare money at the end of the month goes into a separate savings account in my name only as I don't pay tax.

I don't go spending a load of money without talking to him obviously, but day to day spending isn't discussed and never has been. It's family money, not mine and his. He may earn it, but he couldn't have got where he was with the job he does if I had worked when the children were small.

If we need something big, we decide together what to get.

I don't want to to give the wrong impression. I'm not kept short or anything. I have completely free-reign to dip into the mortgage whenever I want to. But organising things like that makes us good cop, bad cop. He reduces the mortgage, and I increase it. Especially when he says: I can't believe the mortgage has gone up, again. It makes me feel really shitty but I know I am definitely NOT a net drain on family finances.

Wew I can't get my rad around dipping into the mortgage for things such as
Family shopping!

In my head they should be separate

I'm confused, does your H not earn enough to cover all the bills?

Do you have an "all in one" account where mortgage etc. is all pooled together and more is now going out than is going in?

You haven't really explained things too well.

I also can't really understand what you are doing - why are you dipping into a mortgage account?

We have always had a joint account since we married - 23 years ago , initially we earned the same sort of salaries but I have been a SAHM for the last eleven years; we have very similar frugal spending habits and fortunately never argue over money - we take out what we need and I never feel I have to 'justify' what I spend even though I don't 'earn' the hard cash.

Since we got married we have always put all our money into a joint account.
It doesn't matter how much we put in individually - it is all our money.

We pay what we need to. We buy what we want within the knowledge of how much we have available to spend. I would never spend a stupid amount we can't afford because I would screwing my own finances.

I can't get my head around totally separate finances resulting in your dipping in to the mortgage.

I'm thinking (hoping reallly as nothing else woudl make sense) that they have a one account which basically treats your mortgage as an overdraft and all your savings and borrowings come under the same umbrella which reduces the amount of interest you pay and knocks years off your mortgage when used correctly, it's basically a fancy offset mortgage.

Other than that I'm stumped because with a normal mortgage, you can have payment holidays of you've overpayed but you can't dip in willy-nilly.

I'm assuming you have an offset mortgage account?

Your problem seems to be that your DH can't see past the fact that the mortgage goes up as household expenditure is covered. Maybe you'd be better off with a regular account and mortgage as this constant monitoring of the account in terms of the "mortgage going up" seems likely to cause problems.

In our house we have a joing account. All DH's money goes into the joint account. All DD and househols, child related expenses come out of the joint account, a set amount (same each) goes into our own personal accounts and an additional sum into our joint savings account.

Sorry about poor explanation. He's currently the sole wage earner. I'm currently project managing major building work (to our jointly owned home), hence no income.

He often moans about bills. He only just earns enough to cover the bills as he only draws a small salary from his company and invests the remainder in his own pension. He also only works 2.5 days a week (which I fully support but I'm abit when he then says we're short of money). I've suggested we downsize house just as soon as the building work is finished We would then clear the mortgage and have quite a bit of money left over. But he doesn't want to do that either.

Last night he said he definitely did not want to move, but he would if I really wanted to, if I really thought it was a good idea to move our children fromtheir home. (My suggestion is to move to a house about 100M away so it's not quite the ordeal he describes.)

Why not ask him to increase his hours
Or why don't you get a job on a couple of days he isn't
Working

Saves ever increasing then decreasing the
Mortgage

Which IMO seems like a
Pointless exercise

No the mortgage is a separate account. We have separate individ current accounts and separate individ savings accounts and then we have a joint mortgage.

One joint mortgage.

And then we each have our own current and savings accounts, in our sole names.

And then I keep withdrawing big fat lumps from the mortgage and paying it into my individual account to keep me afloat.

All money is joint. We pay bills, rent, savings, allocate so much for food and dd, and then whatever is left is divided 50/50.

Sounds awful and chaotic the way you are doing it! If your dh doesn't want to do fully joint money I would seriously consider going back to work because I think it will be pretty unpleasant for you. And create a really unequal relationship. My h doesn't see it as giving me money because he truly values what I do and see's us as a team.

Im not a sahm but we both work around the minimum wage mark but he works more hours so makes more. All money goes in to one account including cb and tcs and if my husband wants things he asks me if he wants to buy anything or take anything out as he doesnt care about the financial side and we have to be careful with penies. Neither of us goes without though we just calculate what we want and I budget it in.

We have had the joint account and no other accounts since we got engaged at18. Its by far the easiest, fairest and best way to ensure no one goes without and nothing gets overspent so you go overdrawn/owe money imo

We have a mortgage facilityand we can draw on it or pay it down, up to a certain limit. The LTV of our mortgage is less than 20%.

Got it

But still... What's the point? Why not just
Slightly
Reduce DH pension contribution for a while, or ask him to do a few more hours, or as suggested get your own part time job on the days he isn't working

It's hardly ideal
Drawing big fat lumps off the mortgage

If you have such a massive amount of equity and your borrowing is at your mortgage rate then it's not dissimilar to being overdrawn but why doesn't he just work an extra day a week to cover the food bills?

I assume it's some sort of tax dodge that he's putting lots into a pension?
He must be on the equivalent of a huge hourly rate of pay if he thinks he can afford to do that, which he cant if he's actually not covering the basic bills.

all of our finances are joint...joint current account and joint savings account. We used to have separate accounts but we closed them and opened joint ones when we had DD1. There's no point in me having my own account because I don't earn anything to pay into it!