How do I manage bills fairly with a financially careless husband?

[the7Vabo]

Together for 16 years. Two young primary school kids. Just breached my own standards by screaming at DH in front of kids. Feel bad but mainly utterly exhausted.

Im higher earner. I earn about 30% more than DH for 4 days. He works 5.

He is useless with money. He doesn’t know how much any of our bills are. He transfers me a certain amount each month. All our direct debits come from my account.

We have had several conversations over the years. He can often be dismissive with a “money is worthless” comment without really engaging with what I’m saying. I recently had both of us go through our income & outgoings, and it turns out his personal spends are much higher than I expected, and much higher than mine. He said he would do better etc but nothing changed other than I told him go up the amount he was transferring me which still isn’t 50% of our bills.

I need to do a big exercise where I do an education piece - set up a joint account and show him exactly how much is going in & out. But I’m utterly exhausted. I am the only one who plans anything when it comes to money.

Things came to a head tonight because DD wouldn’t brush her teeth. I got really stressed because I recently had to pay a huge amount to get her crowns. I told him how much the bill was. He never even asked how I came up with the money. He got really angry at me tonight for not letting DD skip brushing her teeth starting audibly saying it within earshot & I lost it. I asked him if he was going go come up with the money for more dental work and if he’d even noticed that he never asked me where I got that much money.

That’s just one example. I feel like his parent when it comes to money. Like he’s living at home and paying his mother rent money but completely switching off after that.

He never makes a plan. I’ve paid for holidays and he doesn’t acknowledge it.

He gets a company car with his job which costs him in BIK. I drive a banger and hardly spend anything on myself because I want to prioritise the kids’ futures.

He hasn’t gotten a pay rise ever in his job which he does work very hard at to be fair. He’ll moan but has never tried to get a better paid job.

He also works in credit - he approves loans. That to me is the biggest joke because he looks at other people’s spending all day and he doesn’t even know how much his own mortgage is.

Any advice welcome but please don’t tell me
go pool finances, there is absolutely no way I’d do that with him.

I have also accepted that he is never going to do anything at all proactively about money so I need to implement any changes.

I need advice on how go run a joint account - rainy day savings etc. in a joint manner. And how to move past someone being so bloody child like about money.

Open a joint account, transfer all bills money in to that splitting it however you see fit (we do it proportionally to income but so that we both have the same amount remaining, to do as as we see fit).

The amount we put in the joint account covers all household bills and joint savings. All direct debits and standing orders come out of that. Including to savings accounts (which are all in my name though are seen as joint savings). The savings are for household emergencies e.g. washing machine breaks or we want a new patio etc. the car maintenance and insurance, annual bills like house insurance, holidays, Christmas savings and things like that.

We then have a pot of money in which we can each do as want - I have 0 desire to know what DH does with it! I suspect I wouldn't approve.

I think as long as he is paying what you both agree is a fair portion of the bills, whether he chooses to know the details is up to him. As long as he doesn't then question whether you are getting the best deals - my DH has minimal input on the actual bills but doesn't get to question me when I tell him to adjust his standing order! If he wants to look at switching internet providers or utilities for a better deal he needs to do the leg work!

You have 2 choices, divorce him, or he agrees to pay his whole income into your joint account and you give him pocket money.
Explaining everything and showing him where the money goes won't help- you will just get frustrated.
It only works if he accepts he is irresponsible with money and lets you run it, or you split- otherwise you will forever be running around trying to work out what is going on, and always paying for almost everything.

If there is no chance of him getting grip....
Both pay all wages into an joint account for bills (that he doesn't have a card for.) Then set up a "spends transfer" of a set amount each month to your personal accounts (the same each, that leaves a little room for personal saving preferably) Any left over go into savings for holidays/cars/suprise dental bills.
If you are the higher earner he can't really complain about having the same amount of money someone each month.

have I understood you have a primary child who needed dental work on her crowns?! He doesn’t think that’s really really unusual and can’t see why you’d need to brush her teeth?

One comment that stood out is you say he doesn’t even pay 50% of the bills. In fairness - why should he? When the relationship is such DH wants more there are numerous threads where MN say “it should be 50/50 but a percentage” etc. I think if you earn 40% more it’s unfair to expect someone to pay 50% of the bills.

Having said that what he isn’t contributing to is the girls savings at all and he should be.

What me and DH do is work out our monthly outgoings. Then work out how much we both have to transfer to joint. We allocate X amount for food per months (it’s of course variable so sometimes we spend it sometimes we don’t and it rolls over into next month). Whatever we have left over we also agree an amount to transfer to my son’s savings each. Then the remainder we can do what we wish with but whatever is left again, we put into our own savings and invest how we want.

Note that both of our own savings we still consider ‘ours’. We both have stocks and shares ISAs so we can both invest however we want.

If unexpected bills come up we discuss them and how to pay them - ie who has the most money in their account that month.

Typically it is my bonuses that pay for family holidays. I earn more than DH. However he has a more senior job than me with more responsibility. Our disagreements aren’t about money rather who has to prioritise work travel etc. We resolved that by a shared calendar and who books works travel gets priority. After understanding the other persons plans we may cancel it and let them have the slot but it’s the original bookers decision. If push comes to shove we will find childcare with a grandparent.

I have a similar situation where DP is a finance professional and I am a healthcare professional yet I manage all of our finances! Things got out of hand a few years ago when I was on mat leave and obviously I was distracted and earnings were compromised and our finances ended up in a real mess so I have just taken control now. I once let him put money for a future tax bill into one of his savings accs and he spent it on personal cosmetic dentistry then completely forgot about it until I came looking to pay the tax bill! I won’t make that mistake again - I have oversight of all money now, all the time! He wasn’t being malicious he is just overly optimistic and thought he’d pay back the money but then made no plan to do that and never mentioned any of this to me 🙄

What we do: we have a joint acc with credit card, ‘joint’ savings accs (they’re actually in my name but it’s ‘joint money’) both have personal current accs and personal savings/ISAs etc. All income comes into the joint account. All household/family spending comes out of the joint account. I use the Snoop app to help me budget and keep track of what we’re spending money on monthly and then fill in a spreadsheet with the different spending categories and sit down with DP monthly to go through it, talk about whether we need to be more careful about our family ‘takeaway’ spend for example, areas we’re spending more/less than budgeted and discuss how much we have in savings. Monthly budget for each category is an average across the year that includes annual bills e.g. ‘entertainment’ budget includes annual TV license as well as monthly Netflix and adhoc cinema trips so we’re not supposed to max it out every month. The spreadsheet calculates the running monthly average for each category so I can see how we’re doing. There is another spreadsheet where we mapped out ‘known spends’ across the year (childcare, insurances, mortgage, subscriptions, professional registrations, car tax, parking permits, boiler service etc). There is a standing order from the joint acc every month to our personal accounts with our personal spending money which is the same equal amount for both of us. There are standing orders to some ‘joint’ savings accounts monthly out of the joint account and towards the end of the month after all the DDs have come out but before we get paid again I transfer all the ‘spare’ money into a savings acc.

DP is the higher earner and works FT while I work PT but provide childcare and do household work on my NWDs so we’re both contributing to the family all the time just in different ways and most of my ‘work’ isn’t paid by an external employer so I guess it ends up being subsidised by DP from his earnings. We don’t work off percentages but to give you an example, DPs ‘personal money’ is 12% of his salary whereas mine is 28% of mine but we don’t look at it like that. We both work hard for the family so we both get equal personal money. We are free to spend/save what we like from our personal money, I definitely save far more of mine than DP.

In terms of savings, we have a high interest instant access savings account where I keep most of our money so it’s earning something. We have a few other savings accounts with decent interest rates and ISAs. Basically I use chatGPT to help me find decent savings accounts and set them up if I see a good deal. We aim to have a 3 month ‘emergency fund’ in the instant access accounts (only I can access this). Then I have a stocks & shares ISA for us on InvestEngine for longer-term savings. We have a high interest savings account that the child benefit money goes into and that’s a savings acc earmarked for our son which we plan to top-up monthly when we can afford it. We reduce the personal spending allowance as necessary e.g. when saving for something big (we’re getting married) or income reduces (I’m going on mat leave).

I know you don’t want to pool finances and have him spending frivolously out of the joint acc but could his salary go to a joint acc and he gets ‘personal spending money’ back to his personal acc to do what he wants with? Would he spend your joint money on himself if he knew the money in that account is only for household/family and he has his own allocated personal money?

next things I have to get a grip on is both of our pensions!

Why not put all the bills and mortgage in the same joint account as spends and savings. Then he can see every time he logs in how much things are.

go 50:50. Without that what is the incentive for him to work harder? If he wants more personal money he needs to earn it. I’ve always done 50:50 with (both my) partners - ex and current. It’s fair that way.

also get him to start thinking about the future and can he retire. Would he like to retire at 58, 60, 68, or never if he carries on this way? There is a series on YouTube called Rebel Finance which covers everything from budget to pension and investments.

I feel like I could have written this post about my own partner! He earns a bit less than me but works more hours. All DDs come from my account and he send me his share each week (mostly, sometimes it’s late!). He then spends everything left he has access too without thinking. It goes on food that often gets wasted, vaping, take aways, etc whereas I will tend to cover our child’s activities and expenses and I also save quite a bit as I’m careful with money and don’t spend much on myself. He has no idea what any bills cost. It annoys me that my savings will ultimately be for the family/our child’s future but he doesn’t have any to contribute, and also that I’m the default parent as I work less hours, despite also being the financially responsible one, and he doesn’t seem to appreciate this! We can’t have a joint account as he spends more than me and wastes money! The only thing that I think may work is to ask him to also send money to me save for him, but as soon as something is optional in his eyes he probably won’t do it!

He also has no pension as I think he assumes mine is enough (if he thinks about it at all)

Open a joint acct
Work out outgoings for ALL joint/ family spends-
-mortgage
-bills/ council tax
-weekly grocery budget
-kids clubs
-sinking funds for dd dentist
-sinking funds for family holidays
-sinking funds for Xmas presents
-family/ household emergency savings
devide this total by 50% and he pays that in on pay day (as do you) then whatever is left over he can do as he wishes.

Longer term/ retirement savings I’m not sure. if he won’t pay into a savings acct, I’d tell him explicitly that if he’s not saving for the future he’s taking away your chance of retirement as presumably you’ll have to work longer to fund his retirement too.

We have always had our salaries paid into our own accounts and then agreed how much we each pay into the joint account for all the shared spending- and this amount / the proportions has varied over time. For years, DH paid more in than I did - but now I am back working full time (kids are adults now) and I earn more so pay more in. That left us each with some of our own money to spend how we chose.
You could reasonably include saving for the children for the future as a joint expense I guess.
My worry for you would be your DH spending joint money on the pub/ lunches if that’s not meant to be included- but you’d be able to see it so could call it out.
My DH is also a golfer and we have found a way to afford that even when money was tight as he really enjoys it (and it gives me a break 😉).
I admit to leaving some financial stuff to DH - energy provider switches, house insurance, phone contracts - but I would lean in more if he wanted me to (but I suspect he thinks I’d query the TV sports packages so he probably won’t ask😉). My point is that if he looks at finance stuff all day, he’s probably relieved you are so diligent and on top of it all - so it’s about communication really if you’re not happy to shoulder it all.
Maybe try and reframe it with him that you would like more support and input so that the financial responsibility and over sight is more shared.

@Sharingadrink

Me and my husband have 3 accounts, mine, his and ours. We each transfer an agreed amount in to the ours account. This covers all household expenses. What we keep in our accounts is neaither of our business.

We do the same, and in fact, we had a similar arrangement long before we lived together/got married, right back to our first holiday. Not bank accounts, but purses/wallets. In those days, you took cash or travellers cheques on holiday, so we had our own purses/wallets of our own cash, and then had a "joint" purse. We each put equal cash into the joint purse which we used for when we bought things together of near equal value, i.e. meals, drinks, entry fees, sun bed hire, etc., just for simplicity of not handing each other money all the time. For anything unequal, i.e if I wanted to by a T shirt and he didn't, I'd pay from my purse, and vice versa. Likewise if our drinks/meals were very different, we'd pay separately out of our own money.

That got us into a really good habit as we grew closer, did more things together, and ultimately was just "the norm" when we moved in together - everything we "enjoyed" jointly such as utilities, household food, mutual days out, etc., was paid out of our joint bank account, into which we both paid in the same mutually agreed amount, leaving us with our own personal bank accounts into which our savings went in and out of which we paid our respective "personal" expenses (hobbies etc) and took care of our own savings/pensions/investments etc. Despite our earnings being very different, we always went 50:50 - at first he was the higher earner, then it was me when I qualified, then him again when I had DS due to maternity leave and then being a SAHM for a few years, then I became the higher earner again when I started my own business, and ultimately still the higher earner now he can only work part time sporadically due to his cancer.

It never really occurred to us to pay for joint things any differently than a straight 50:50, but we also had our own savings/investments to cushion that when one of us took a wages dip, so even at times one of us isn't working/earning, we still put in 50:50 into the joint account, funded from savings.

Now we've been married 29 years and were together for 10 years beforehand, we're in our early 60s, and remarkably our savings/investments/pension values are pretty similar, without any real planning/intention for it to be that way. It's just happened, because for some time periods I earned more, for some he earned more, so because we've paid 50:50, it's kind of evened out over the nearly 40 years.

The big difference between us and the OP, is that we were both always motivated to work/study and develop our respective careers/businesses, so we both shared the same "get up and go" motivation/attitude. I think that helped when one or other of us were low earners/not working, as there was always a genuine reason for it, which has never been laziness or lack of motivation which sounds to be the case with the OP's husband! If my (now) DH had been like that back when we first got together, we wouldn't have stayed together because it's not something I'd put up with.

Agree an amount of.personal spends (including golf membership etc ) that you each get. Everything else he pays over and gets spent on the family

And yes. I agree with you. Unpopular opinion but I am unimpressed by people who want the nice life but won't put in the work

His wages come to your account and you can send him an appropriate amount for his own personal stuff until he learns to manage money properly. Why should you and your children suffer due to his stupidity. If he doesn't agree then you need to seriously rethink the relationship. I hope it works out for you

I think you should divorce - hear me out. I would put it to him that you don’t want to fight with him about finances. You want to accept you both see it differently so instead you would like to completely separate the finances side of your relationship and then each can do as they please. So divorce but remain a couple. Split
the house to 50/50 ownership as part of the divorce. From then on on you have a joint account for joint spends including mortgage which both transfer 50% into and then each does as they want. The reason I think you should do this is because he will never save for the future - you know this - but any savings you make for your children he can take a minimum of 50% of if you separate. You will also not build up as much as you are subsidising him. If you financially split, you will no longer feel such resentment and he will either live within his means or rack up debt - which you will have no responsibility for. It is not like he is doing more home care than you so you don’t owe it to him to subsidise him because he is limiting his earning power - if anything it is the opposite. If you don’t financially separate now, in about 10 years or so you will have finally had enough of his piss taking, you will divorce anyway and he will walk away with your children’s savings. This way you have a chance to stay together. I wouldn’t ask him about this approach, I’d tell him. He seems to leave all admin to you anyway. Make it clear it is a financial paper exercise to remove the arguments about finances and will not affect
your lives. You can make a first start by setting up the joint account and starting to pay in 50/50.