Blended families

[Justpeachy88]

If you’re in a blended family how do things work when buying things. Do you buy, say clothing items for your child only and let your partner buy for theirs?

Food and treats, eating out etc I’d expect all to be the same and bought for all children at the same time.

When visiting family, do you just take your child over for visits, for example when they’re just back off holiday and the grandparent really wants to see their grandchild as they haven’t seen them for a couple of weeks and missed them and leave the other kids with their parent at home. Or do you take them all so none of the children feel different?

Just interested how people navigate things.

I imagine everyone will be different. It’s whatever works for you as a family. Peoples grandparents etc will have different views which you can’t control.
For mine, it is quite separate at times. My DP’s children will go and see their grandparents and my children don’t go. And vice versa. Except family meals etc. Although if we’re just dropping in on grandparents when we have all the kids then we will all go if it’s for a short time.
Money wise me and my DP just pitch in for everyone for general stuff. With the exception of activities like clubs they go to, school trips etc which will be sorted between bio parents. However we don’t view our money separately so it’s still both our money really. So it will never be a case of ‘I can’t afford to pay for half my child’s school trip so they can’t go’. Unless we genuinely both can’t afford it

We have a joint account and everything goes in and out of that. We both work. I have more of a handle of the finances. But neither of us are fancy spenders. We don't need to run things past each other generally as we can see what we have and work it out if we can afford something. It just works, no issues at all. We are both very similar, in morals, values, what we want in life, how we raise our children. I think that helps make finances work smoothly.
We visit grandparents with whatever kids are with us at the time. We don't generally leave one behind unless there's a specific reason such as they have another activity planned. We have 4 kids between us. I have 3, however one is 23, and he has his dad involved so it was a bit different with him. I then have a 12 and 10 year old who don't see their father and DH has an 8 year old so grandparents on both sides treat the younger ones the same. It didn't start that way of course. We've been together 8 years, but over time it's just naturally evolved to the younger three being treated the same.
Every blended family will have different ways of doing it. This is what works for ours.