How much money goes into the "family pot" each month and how much do you get to spend on yourself?

[Belikeyou]

We can't afford a family holiday abroad because we only save around 200 per month in the family pot- kids shoes/clothes etc come out of this too. Christmas is saved for separately.

DH is adamant that we each have 300 per month purely for ourselves to spend on whatever we like.

He uses his for hobbies and the odd long weekend abroad trip with his mates.

I use mine for clothes for myself, hair appointments, the odd evening out with friends and alternative therapies, mobile phone, union fees etc

I've told DH I think it's selfish that more money goes to us as individuals than into the family pot. He says we don't have enough individual disposable money.

What do others think?

How do other people balance their family disposable income and individual spending money?

We do everything in the pot. Household bills, joint expenses (including MOTs, insurances etc for our cars), costs relating to the kids come from that. If we are having an OK month - no huge unusual expenditure then we will spend on ourselves. There’s no “budget” for this as such.

We do put a certain amount into savings accounts - one for general “rainy day”, one for holiday & a third for DS2’s uni expenses. But these all come out of the one big pot on payday too.

Joint account here too. We budget all our main spends and each have £100 ‘pocket money’ to spend on ourselves. Save about £300-500 a month depending on other expenses that month. Things like phone bills etc don’t come out of that £100 and if one of us had something big we wanted to buy for ourselves then we usually just check with the other one and use some money from our main account or short term savings if needed

We put both our wages into joint account which all bills come out of. We put some into joint savings and just spend what we like when needed.

If either of us wants to spend a large amount, we discuss it first but as I keep check on our account, I can say if it’s do-able or if we should wait or take it from savings.

We both trust each other to be sensible.

If we want to go away, I usually put it on credit card and it then comes out of joint account as a bill over the following months.

£300 a month each sounds quite a lot to me. What are his hobbies? Do you both always spend it all?

I put £1500 a month into the joint account. £250 a month into my ISA. £250 into a separate savings account. The rest of my pay is for me. Though, I've not been spending so I put an extra £500 into my savings this month.

My husband has his own business part time while staying at home with our son so he puts £500 a month into the joint account. I've no idea how much he saves a month.

After bill paying we have around £800pm each pocket money. We'll put some away for holidays.

We don't have a family pot. No kids at home. Separate accounts.

Do you have savings?

We each get £120. We save around 500 per month after essentials

Obviously how much 'personal spending' is going to depend on your income, but we've always prioritised holidays over clothes, hobbies etc for ourselves.

But then, I love a holiday, and I love a charity shop bargain.

£300 seems a huge and ridiculous amount of money for your own treats, as a parent, to me. Fine, if that was what were left after other expenses, but I would say a family holiday was something I'd want to put money aside for before having that kind of disposable income for myself.

We each pay in enough to our joint account to cover monthly expenses (all household bills, childcare, holiday club, anything the dc need). It’s not necessarily the same every month, just depends on the month, but it’s proportionate to our incomes. Then whatever else is our own personal money to spend or save how we like.

It’s not a strict amount but I’d say maybe 50% goes to joint account and 50% to personal account. We each save as and when we feel like it. If we have a big expense, we then put money into joint account as needed, again roughly proportionate to our earnings. We really aren’t strict about any of it and I have no idea what dh spends his money or how much he saves. But we’re both happy to put money in when needed.

We have around £1000 a month for trips out, paying for parties, birthday presents, if we need to buy a new dishwasher or get the boiler fixed this is also used to pay for a holiday if we have one.

Posted too soon. I have £600 a month for me and the kids, DH has £300 a month for him.

How do you make £75 cover all those things? Unless you literally don’t buy any clothing, make up etc except once a year

Don't do alcohol based socialising, or much socialising at all! (Both out of choice not frugalness). Will go for coffee or meet at a house.

Clothes - only buy a few times a year, and generally second hand.

Books - use library or buy kindle deals.

Makeup - probably only spend about £40/year tbf.

Hobbies - this is probably my biggest expense, but my hobby is art and I sell some of it to recoup costs.

In my 20s I was unwell and DH and I were really poor for a few years, so we have never been used to having lots of spare cash and had many years with virtually none. £75 seems a lot to me when I know none of those things are necessary. I don't really like having loads of "stuff" around me tbh so that also helps!

The important thing here is not what other people spend their money on, but how happy you both feel with the way this is managed now. If you are unhappy with not being able to have a holiday with your dc while he prioritises his hobby and weekends away with mates then tell him.

I do think £300 per month individual spending is quite a lot (presuming a lowish income) but we don't know all the details.

Omg slightly shocked at all these people with £300 / £400 pm personal spend! But then again you may earn way more than DH and I. We both put everything into the Joint, apart from £150 each. Typically after all essential payments, that means the family account is saving around 2k disposable per month, so we manage to save up for nice holidays, weekends away and to really splash out on presents at Christmas. But our personal allowances don't stretch very far as we use them to cover our phone bills, hair cuts etc too.

We each put £850 a month into joint account to cover bills, supermarket shopping, music lessons, child’s saving account etc. No mortgage or any other debts so not as much needed in joint account. We each keep the rest of our respective incomes and save most of them. For holidays, when they come around, we each pay half from individual accounts.

Everything goes in the joint account and we agree on miscellaneous spends as we don't tend to want much for just us, we'd rather spend on meals out together and day trips and i don't wear make up and our hairdressers are quite cheap and we aren't big spenders on clothes as we only get them when something is worn out or for a particular occasion so it's about £100 a month between us on stuff that's bills at the most.

We plan to keep doing the same when baby arrives in October but will see how it goes.

Both sets of wages go into our joint account. We have standing orders to the kids’ savings accounts, and a couple of other savings accounts that we both have access to.

We spend what we want, when we want. If there’s ever anything left at the end of the month (rarely) we’ll put it in one of the savings account.

I could not be doing with his n hers money.

On mat leave but when I’m back - all wages into the joint account. Of the total pot it splits roughly as:

1/6th on our mortgage
1/6th to our savings
1/6th on our joint spending, bills, travel, car, groceries
1/6th on childcare
1/6th to him for pocket money
1/6th to me for pocket money

It works well but I’m aware we’re in a good position financially and have a small mortgage etc. Mortgage will go up when we move (hopefully next year) and we’ve agreed that savings and joint spends shouldn’t take the hit so we’ll make up the shortfall from our own personal spends.

Is the rest of the money in a joint account and spent on day to day things, then £200 goes to family savings, and £600 goes on individual spend for the parents? How much is £600 as a proportion of total spending?
I'm separated so I do mine differently but I have about £200 a month for my personal expenses eg petrol, union, clothes, going out. I usually save some of that for holidays as well so actually I spend hardly anything day to day on myself.

The issue for you really is that you want a family holiday abroad, he likes his boys holidays, and you can't as a family unit afford both?
Do you both earn similar amounts? Is there room to earn more? (One solution). If not, how much less do you think each of you would get monthly in order to fund the difference between holidays in uk and abroad (I found abroad was cheaper!)

We don't have a joint pot. Most bills come out of DH account and I transfer half each month. We have around 1200 per month each after bills to spend on whatever. We split things like holidays as and when we book and trips to restaurants we take it in turns or we treat each other to a fancy restaurant for special occasions. It works for us. Im currently putting money aside each month to take my dsis on holiday for her big birthday. If I had a joint account I don't think my dh would be happy with me spending £3k on a holiday for me and my dsis, but he can be a tight arse and wouldn't spend it on his friends or family- he's not that close to his ones. As we have separate accounts I can prioritise what I want to spend the money one. Neither of us is disadvantaged because we both earn approximately the same.

We put everything in a pay bills rent savings then take personal spends freely if we need it.
It wouldn't be 300 each a month l spend more than him on clothes shopping mainly due to boredom in lockdown.
In your situation I'd reduce personal spends for a family holiday.

We have just changed the way we manage our ££. We now both keep the same amount for ourselves and put the rest into our joint account which covers mortgage, bills and will now cover all food shopping/ baby purchases. This feels like a much fairer way of doing things (before we would both put a set amount into the joint account, which left me with a lot more for myself each month)

Obviously it depends where you live on how far money will go. We live just outside London (work in Central London) and each have £400 spends in our own accounts. This covers lunches when at work (if we don't bring in from home), nights out, hairdressers, clothes, days out etc, and if we get a take away, say, we'd both pay half from our spends.

Bills and food shopping come out of joint account and we have a standing order to a savings account to cover christmas and birthday presents etc. Whatever is left after that is split 3 ways in savings: me, my husband and the family holiday pot. At the moment that's about £300 each (i do feel very lucky to have that), but if we plan a holiday that would be more than £3600, we put less into our individual savings to cover it.

We pay for our daughter's clothes either half each from spends or put on the credit card and on pay day pay it off with money we would have put in our individual savings (so we put less in our savings).

I don't think either of you are wrong but it depends how much less spends you would need in order to have a holiday. I wouldn't want to scrape by and never be able to go out, just to go away for a week in the sun. So as long as you can still do things and just put a little bit more into the holiday pot, then I think it's worth it. Giving up some luxuries, like buying a pair of trainers that are not really needed, is a sacrifice worth making in my opinion.

We don't have a family pot or a joint account
Dh brings in just over 3k per month
I bring home 1.4k
I pay my phone and the electricity bill.
Dh pays everything else. (But we have no mortgage either)
I have my own sinking fund for my car insurance and tax and then my own savings account.
I can see all accounts whenever I like though, we are very transparent about what's there.