Living together costs

[AuntyBetty61]

I’d love to know how you all manage the joint living costs when one of you earns substantially more than the other.
For a bit of context my husbands take home pay each month is double mine but we split all house hold bills, food shopping and trips out 50/50. It’s becoming a struggle for me as just house costs are half my pay a month and a quarter of his. I also end up picking up and additional bits we need in the week such as milk, bread etc.
Pooling finances wouldn’t work due to my fuel bills for work travel being quite high and my husbands love of spending money on his car. I’m often not able to go out with friends due to lack of money, whilst he’s swanning about with his mates at the weekends.
He thinks this is a fair way of doing it as well both use equal gas, electric etc and whilst I agree with that, I’d love to know how others manage it.

I’m often not able to go out with friends due to lack of money, whilst he’s swanning about with his mates at the weekends.

I would divorce him.

If you don’t want to pool finances you should be paying living costs pro rata. I doubt he’ll agree to that though, he’s happy to see you going without while he lives the high life which makes him an arsehole. So yes, I’d LTB.

You’re married, so at least in my opinion, all money should just be joint, that’s how the law see it anyway and to be honest I don’t really understand why people get married if they don’t want to share everything. That’s how we operate as a married couple, it’s all money into joint account, all money out of joint account, all money is “ours” rather than being mine or his.

There are other ways to do it that are also much fairer than your current set up though, the most common two among our couple friends are:

1. Both put the same % of your income towards bills, so for example both contributing 40% of your income. Yes his 40% is going to be a higher amount than your 40%, but it is fairer in that you are both left with 60% of your income.

2. You do: his income + your income - household/joint bills, and then divide what it left by 2 so that you each have the same amount of money left over.

Proportional. If he earns the double that you he pays 3/4 and you pay 1/4.

We split bills proportionately. He paid for every single bill except food. I was the one that didn’t want a joint account.

I don't agree with proportional split. The bills you split jointly should come well within the means of the lowest earner, not meeting the standard the higher earner can afford. This is how it would be if you weren't sharing them with someone else.

Say , for instance , husband earns 2000 a month and wife earns 1000 .

For them to be left with the same amount of spending money , he needs to pay two thirds of bills , leaving him with £667 as near as dammit and she needs to pay one third , leaving her with the same amount of 667 .

If he paid 3/4 he'd be left with £500 and she paid 1/4 she'd be left with £750

The thing about marriage is that legally if you split you would be entitled to monies you did not earn ie some of his pension or his savings saved from his salary. That is because they are earned within the marriage. So starting from that point why on earth are your finances split 50/50 still? That is understandable if you are not married or if you earn roughly the same amount of money.

Currently I earn £0, does that mean I shouldn't have access to some of Dh's money? What you need to do is sit down and discuss your finances. When Dh's and my earnings started to get further apart we put money into the joint account to cover bills which would include your petrol costs and we were both left with the exact same amount of money for fun. Fun, which means you can afford to go out with your friends. Anything left over and built up in the joint account would be moved into our savings account for things like holidays, stuff for the house.

Every year we sit down and talk about money, where we spend it, what we want to cut back on, what plans we have for the next year. We have been married for 25 years. I can never understand how a loving partner/husband is happy to watch their spouse go without.

My husband pays out more, as he earns more.

I tend to cover the household bills and my car. He pays mortgage, food and his car.

Yes you are right 2/3 not 3/4.