How do you organise your finances?

[aubergenie]

We?re a couple who recently had a baby. Until now, we?ve kept our finances reasonably separate and each paid for things so that overall spending has worked out fairly evenly. This isn?t a system we?ve particularly chosen, but we never got round to sorting out anything else and just kind of fell into it.

Now I?m on mat leave, my income has gone and it?s come as a bit of a shock to have no money, as I?ve always been financially independent. DP doesn?t have a problem with me spending his money (within reason!) but I don't like asking for it, which I know is ridiculous. But we?ve got no other system in place at the moment.

So, the time has come for us to sort ourselves out and get some kind of joint account, but how do people do it? Do you have a household account and each keep a stash for yourselves, or do you pool all your resources?

I?m interested to hear people?s views on this.

We each have separate accounts, and a joint account which pays the bills and mortgage. We pay into the joint account proportionate to our incomes, so while on mat leave I have just paid a token amount and DP increased his contribution.

Having said that, it's a bit arbitrary cos we do consider all the money joint money anyway and there would never be any issue with one of us paying for something the other one wanted. But it's sort of nice to have a personal account each for us.

we have one account

everything goes into it and everything comes out of it

we don't have a stash for ourselves - if we want to buy something for ourselves we do

big purchases are always discussed though

We too have one account, both our wages go in , all bills etc go out, and like rubyslippers all big purchases are discussed first..

DH has a regular income and earns more than I do. We have individual accounts each and a joint account. DH gets paid then transfers enough into the joint account to cover all our bills and our budget for shopping. He also transfers me an allowance for personal spending.

My income comes in lumps here and there, bit more unpredictable, so to date we have just used it when it comes to pay for individual things, pay off credit cards, Christmas, other one-off expenses.

My money has started increasing and getting more regular now so I suspect fairly shortly we'll stop DH's allowance to me and I'll use my own money for personal spending as well.

We have a joint account. When we first set it up we set aside an equal 'allowance' that we could each spend without consulting each other, for things like clothes, personal stuff, just a couple of hundred a month (can you tell this was BC (Before Children)

We sorted out how much we could spend after the bills had been paid and basically put a bit aside, split the rest down the middle. DH NEVER spent his half, I always spent mine.

We stopped doing the allowance when we got out of debt. When I stopped work I did debate about restarting it, but to be fair, I don't spend much on me these days. We are talking about setting a budget for dd as she's a PFB/OC (only Child) but I haven't got around to it yet.

Different people work things different ways. I found the allowance thing worked well for me when we were younger as I felt guilty for spending money (even though I was earning more than DH at that time). So the allowance meant I was able to spend without worrying.

For other people I know the joint account for bills works really well.

I'm sure you'll find a way to sort things out in a way you feel comfy.

We each have our own account that our salary goes into, and then we have a joint one. All the bills get paid out of our own accounts, just wherever the DD happened to be set up. Now that I'm on mat leave DH just transfers money from his account into mine to cover the ones I pay.
We also have a joint account that we use for food shopping, meals out, things for DS, things for the house etc.

We have organised things so that we both end up with the same amount of spending money left in our own accounts each month for clothes, outings without each other and bits that we want for ourselves. It works well.

The key thing for me is getting over the 'his money, my money' thing. We always consult on purchases, we probably wouldn't spend more than £50-100 without discussing it, especially now we have DS there are always extras that crop up!

DOn't know what we'd do if we weren't married, but as soon as we got married, we got one joint current account and one joint savings account and share everything. I can't imagine not sharing everything. I'm not financially dependent on DH because I could work if the need arose. However, in our family we have found it will work best for everyone if I am the SAHP and DH brings in the money - we are both contributing huge amounts to the way the family runs, but in different ways. This is why I don't understand having separate money when you share your life .

However, like I say, I don't know if I would do this if I weren't married...but then I wouldn't be living with someone I wasnt' married to so wouldn't actually be in your position (sorry - assuming you're not married, cos you just put 'couple'). I guess it would depend on how committed you are ie. if you're just not married because you've made a concsious choice not to be, for example...

With love and peace, consideration and generosity. Fill your lives with flowers.

DH earns 4x my PT wage. We do as rubyslippers describes. Everything goes into and comes out of one account.

Small purchases are usually OK, but larger purchases that are not accounted for in the monthly budget are agreed first.

Wow that was quick! Thanks everybody. It's interesting to see what others do.

You're right Lindenlass, we're not married but we are committed to each other and see each other as life partners and will get married at some point (when the baby is older and I'm not so knackered), so it shouldn't be any different really. We got together in our mid-late 30s so we were both more used to living independently and handing our own finances, so this is a new situation for us.

I'll be going back to work later in the year, and dp may well be financially dependent on me by then as his job is very insecure at the moment so we need to sort this out.

what are you on this morning, hullygully???

I am afraid our arrangement is not exactly fair. Dh's wages go into our joint account and fund our day-to-day living. My (much smaller) part-time salary goes into my account and pays for holidays and treats. The reason for this is that it started out as my research account, before I had a salary; so it wasn't really for family expenses. It still pays for some of my research.

But as we take all decisions about holidays and presents jointly, it's not a major problem.

Eventually, if I start earning more, we'll arrange for the family part of that to go into a joint account.

One important thing here is not related to the mechanics of how you sort out your finances, but more to your joint understanding of how you both approach money issues.

Can you talk freely about financial things? Are you both open and honest about your bank accounts, credit cards, debt etc? Would both of you be happy to leave your bank / credit card statement laying around for the other to see? Do you know how much income each other earns? Do you understand each others attitude to debt/paying off cards/ etc?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then it doesn't matter too much how you organise your finances (assuming you have wills etc in place) - it is a practical detail - look at what other people do and choose the approach you are both comfortable with.

You might not have exactly the same approach to bills (he might pay off all his credit card bill, you might spread your over a few months). But these things can be discussed and negotiated, and understood.

If however your answer to all the questions was no, then some alarm bells might start ringing. If you posted the question because you have underlying concerns then your priority is to get those sorted.

I've tried most things - with my ex. But with my current partner, we plan to pool all money into one account and then take an equal, specific amount out each week for personal spending (not much!). Any spare money at the end of each month will go into savings accounts.
I earn more than my partner (although I am going on mat leave in a few weeks) but it was my suggestion to pool money. As a family unit, I prefer to work as a team and not think about who gets what money, who pays for what, etc. There'll be x amount each month in the family account and I don't care who got which % of it, as long as we're working well as a team.

Incidentally, if you're not married you should also make sure you get a will made. A bit grim but best to have it in place to be on the safe side.

Agree with notsoclever that it's the openness and agreeing an approach that's really important.

we have one account that both our salaries go into. We each have a savings account ( I call mine my "running away" money ) When we can, we take money out of our joint account and put it into our individual savings. This has worked for us for years, no probs

I think you're right notsoclever - it's about having an agreed approach.

I think our attitudes to money are similar enough and that we can easily negotiate our way through any differences and we're very open about how much we earn etc. I just wondered how people organised it practically.

Good point tinierclanger- We're in the process of sorting out wills and life assurance. Plus a savings account for ds too.

We share all of our money in joint accounts, with the exception of some long term savings which can only be in one person's name, but even these we view as joint money. We were fortunate in combining all our money when we got married, which was after university so neither of us had much money to begin with! We are also fortunate in that we have broadly the same priorities for our money and cash is not so tight that it is a worry.

That all said, one system we set up early on in marriage was to have a nominal amount of cash each month that we could individually spend on whatever we like, no questions asked. We nominally keep track of this on paper only, we havn't set up bank accounts for it. It works for us because my spending is small but frequent while DPs spending is infrequent but large (like spending next to nothing for 3 years and then buying a £900 oboe). The main benefit of our system is it stops us getting guilty when we spend money purely on ourselves when we know it is shared.

Cheers,

PV.

We pool everything but I know a lot of people who don't

You have to work out an arrangement you are both happy with

We both have our own accounts that our wages go into. Most of the money is then d/d into our joint account leaving the same ammount for each of us as spending money. All food, bills and mortage comes out of the joint account but we each use our own account for things like clothes, presents and luxuries.

we have a joint account where we both put the same amount in as we both earn roughly the same

all bill, mortgage, shopping, etc comes out of it - we also have a direct debit which goes into our joint savings account

we both have our own accounts as well

We both have our own accounts but both sets of wages get paid into my account.

All the bills come out of my account and I do all the shopping, dp takes my card whenever he needs to lift money (usually for petrol).
We go clothes shopping together for dp, only because he likes a 2nd opinion.

We don't really have that much money anyway, so no issue of one of us 'spending it all on ourselves'!

Oh and this has always been the case, during me working, being a student and being unemployed. Dp has always worked and i've always had the wages

seperate individual accounts.joint account for mortage(paid pro-rata to income),split bills and nursery fees from joint.have a reserve of money in joint account the just in case money

no shared money
mine is mine his is his

DH WOH, I SAH and we pool everything. The savings are in my name to use my tax allowance, the current account is in joint names. We have very similar spending habits, which I think is why it works.