How do you arrange your money? Couples

[catherinesian]

We are now in the position where after a recent promotion and pay increase I am earning a fair amount more than my lovely partner. We have always split finances equally and always had our 'own' money and transferred into a 'joint' account to pay mortgage, bills, holidays, cars etc. This worked when I earned less than him too but the disparity was never that huge so it didn't matter.

Now I am not too sure what to do, as he insists he wants to keep everything joint so we still share equally the cost of everything, but it leaves him with not much left and me with quite a bit. At the moment I am putting it into a savings account but I don't know what for really and I feel guilty that he can't save as much as me.

How do others in a similar situation manage?

[BevS97]

We have one communal pot. It is split into two accounts. One pays direct debits and the other is for general spending but we have no concept of my money and your money. At times I have earned more, currently DH earns more. It is irrelevant as we are a family so what we have we have as a family.

[Stardust5]

We are the same as Bev.

[DUNXandWILL]

We are the same as BevS97 and Stardust5 works well for us 👌

Dunx 😎

[mickey house]

We have seperate accounts, but my account pays all the bills and my wife transfers money over to me. We don't have a set amount of spending money each, but just use what ever we need from our current accounts so it's never been an issue. I would feel strange only having a certain amount of pocket money each like I was back at school😀

[Guest]

We have no concept of my money and his money, it is one big pot. For the majority of the time we have been married I have been the larger earner. At other times I have taken breaks from the workforce such as when I went back to study last year, so DH has been the sole earner.

When we moved overseas ten years ago, we got a new joint bank account that everything went into. I think we had a joint savings account too but we sent sizeable savings back to the UK to pay off the mortgage.

When we returned to the UK I wanted to stick with the bank account I already had as I had it for a long time, I wanted to make it a joint account but couldn’t with the same number. DH opened a new current account. We move money between us freely as and when is required, we are both allowed to spend what we want, although obviously we discuss larger purchases together.

[pinkbelle]

Originally Posted by BevS97

We have one communal pot. It is split into two accounts. One pays direct debits and the other is for general spending but we have no concept of my money and your money. At times I have earned more, currently DH earns more. It is irrelevant as we are a family so what we have we have as a family.

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Exactly the same for us

[Floridatilly]

Everything is joint in our house. No his or her money, we don’t have spending money either.
We have a bill account, current account and savings account. I do all the shopping so that comes out of the current account. If any of us need shoes, clothes etc we just get them but to be honest we are both tight as cramp so that’s not very often. Our money goes on the kids & holidays.

I think it’s a personal thing though because the way we do things does not suit everyone.
My husband is incredibly trusting because he has no clue how much money we have or how much our bills are! I manage all our finances however he is the bread winner.

[klr15]

We don’t see the money as “this is your money and this is mine” but we do have our money in separate accounts, just because it’s across different accounts it doesn’t mean we don’t see it as one big pot.

All the bills and the mortgage are taken from his account and I have a standing order that sends over some money for this each month (I pay less than half my share and I don’t pay for food, he is the higher earner and always will be unless something dramatic happens). But I do generally have a similar disposable income to him each month because of the way we pay the bills.
We are a young couple and it just works for us.

[PoohBears#1fan]

Originally Posted by BevS97

We have one communal pot. It is split into two accounts. One pays direct debits and the other is for general spending but we have no concept of my money and your money. At times I have earned more, currently DH earns more. It is irrelevant as we are a family so what we have we have as a family.

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We're pretty much the same as Bev although out pot is one account for bills and general spending. I have a spreadsheet so know how much is disposable and that gets put into our savings account. I also organise all of our direct debits so that everything that can comes out on the 1st of the month.