Be Excellent To Each Other

How do you and your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/etc manage your finances?

Edit -- hmm, too many words. You'll need to make your browser window super wide to make it display properly, sorry.

Since we got engaged (6 months after getting together 10 years ago) we've had a joint account into which all our cash goes. We treat it as one pot of money, with no differentiation. Whilst it may work to have separate finances for a while, I'm not sure how you could do anythign other than joint once you've got kids and only one of you is working. The idea of handing over "housekeeping" is abhorrent, but I know people who do this.

Generally, we'll each spend whatever we want out of it, with an unspoken agreement that if we want to spend anything on something expensive, we'll at least mention it to the other one first. Then again we're quite thrifty anyway, so we tend to think twice about most expenditures in the first place.

All together, I do the majority of the earning & she does the majority of the spending

Joint account. We discuss all our spending and try to plan ahead. We've done this since we were engaged and applied for a mortgage together, makes perfect sense to us and I certainly wouldn't want to change it.

We both have a saving account each for bits and pieces (I use mine for eBay and stuff).

Used to be middle ground, but it's more asymmetric these days. I can't see us ever having completely joint accounts unless we have children.

None of the above.

We have completely separate accounts, but don't keep track of anything (not formally, anyway, we obviously know if one or t'other has recently dropped a ton of cash on a specific item/bill). If one of us is getting short on money,w e ask the other and they transfer stuff across.

This works in terms of effort and laziness. It fails spectacularly in actually ever having any money and not racking up massive amounts of debt.

Ho hum.

I haven't carried it out yet, but Miss Malabar and I plan to have a joint account for bills and any misc joint savings. Anything else will stay in our own accounts, and I don't give a shit what she spends it on as long as she doesn't get skint and expect me to carry her, and vice versa.

I strongly believe that what you earn is primarily yours, and detest the idea of a shared pot of money. If kids were involved, that would change, but we're both working professionals on a similar wage at the moment.

Joint account for housekeeping stuffs and the odd meal and so on, individual accounts until I get a salaried position, then I guess I'll just pay that into the joint account and close my individual account. Mind you, she earns significantly more than I do.

We haven't got any money

It's none of your business.

Butr since you asked. We have a joint account that all the bills come out of. We both pay into that and that leaves us with our own money to spend as we see fit.

Mrs T and I have separate accounts, although we are just about to start a joint saving account for holidays, wedding etc...

Other than that I earn significantly more than Mrs T, so pay for most stuff out of my account. She gives me a few hundred a month "rent". (Although she has quit her job last week and will be spending time trying to get her business off the ground, so it looks like I'll be paying for everything for a while! )

Asymmetric. I transfer an amount to cover the bills, plus food and all that. (She makes sure all the bills are paid and that.)

We don't 'manage' our money....We are entirely rubbish and run a completely retarded system that doesn't work at all. We have a joint account and Ramsea gets his salary get paid into there, I get my salary paid into my account and transfer over £xxxx every month and he transfers £xxxx into his personal account every month.

I don't have a card for the joint account, if I buy things for the children I usually pay for them myself and then I'd transfer the money back our of the joint account if I deemed it something that 'we' should have paid for. Like, birthday presents, the big Christmas present and money for school trips etc. I tend to spoil them quite a bit so if I choose to spend £obscene amounts on clothes and shoes for them, I will pay for that. I also give the eldest boy money to go out with, which costs me between £10-£30/week depending on what he's doing.

This is further confused by the fact we don't have a cheque book for the joint account, so school dinner money/school trip payments go out of Ramseas personal account.

It's all a massive mess and we don't consult each other about what we spend. His £600 monitors was a complete surprise to me and my monthly £300 clothes shopping bill would get frowned upon too, I think. Plus he has repayments going out for his bike, which was something else he bought without discussion. I decided that until we are debt free (except for 1 loan repayment) I don't want our money to be pooled.

Joint account for bills, each have our own accounts. MrsBobby earns more than me, so has a decent amount of savings, so paying it all into the j/a then redistributing it again seems a little silly. Plus she is more organised and put money into acct which pay (more) interest. But we really don't worry about it, we don't really spend too much on anything, the only downside is I can't spend her money on a new car.

Assymetric. We set up a joint account when we got married and my salary went into that to pay the mortgage and utils, etc. She was paid in cash (this was 1972 and not unusual for small companies) and used her money for groceries and the like.

When her company started paying wages direct to the bank, she set up her own account and still used that money to pay for the same things, and we've continued like that ever since. Generally, it works, although there was a period of a couple of years in the 80s when the joint account went into the red every month and we took out a loan to get us back on track as the interest was lower. All the major bills are covered but we've never had a lot of dosh to spare. Whenever we build up any kind of amount in either account, we've usually had to spend it on replacement white goods or occasionally a luxury item.

Theoretical for me, but I'd prefer a joint account pot if I were married/living with someone. Partly to simplify things and partly to reign in my own spending.

A friend of mine has totally separate accounts and his partner often struggles with her account from what I can gather. To me, it makes no sense - if you're living together, it shouldn't matter who earns the most.. you shouldn't let your partner struggle for cash when you've got 'spare'.

However, some people are fiercely independent and would rather retain that to some degree.

Well, I think that depends, maybe she struggles because she failed to rein in her spending. I worked with a girl who bought a pair of boots every pay day, then sold them for a third of what she paid for them about 2 weeks later because she had run out of money. Her partner refused to help her because she was an idiot.

Very, very badly.

What are you hiding?

I know, and to me it seems crazy, although I kinda understand their POV. But if they're living together why on earth shouldn't they be sharing the costs, relative to their income? If they want to be really independent, maybe the logical thing would be to add up all the costs each month and each pay half? But this wouldn't work in cases where one partner isn't earning enough to cover half their half.

(+ groceries from joint,and some adding up )

This, pretty much precisely. Except without the kids. And without the only one person working.

There's sharing costs relative to your income, which is fine. But that doesn't mean you can't have a pot of your own on the side which is almost entirely none of your partner's business as long as neither of you are struggling.

Separate accounts. We keep receipts for food shopping, meals out and exceptional purchases and semi-regularly tot them up and balance appropriately. Exceptional purchases (greenhouse, ginormofridgefreezer, holiday) are discussed. Cars (buying and servicing, though I made sure Hel liked the Twingo before I sprung for it) and the (her) house are individual items. Though I do chuck her half the mortgage/bills each month.

We may get a joint current account/credit card before too long. I'm still reticent about that level of commitment to be honest, because my head still isn't right and I still can't quite grasp that she isn't going to boot me out some time soon.

I Doc for raising this topic.

The old saying is true - it's easier to get out of a marriage than to get out of shared financial obligations. It's always going to be dependent on how long you've been together and what level of commitment you think you're operating at.

I still haven't managed to get my ex's additional credit card cancelled. The Clubcard statements still come addressed to me and her. At Hel's

I wouldn't really want to lump in entirely; I like to have "my" money to spend how I please; if it were one account I'd be riddled with guilt when eg spending£80 on stupid t-shirts from redbubble. I'm riddled with guilt enough of the time as it is.

Not that it'd happen; Hel gets really stressed when dealing with money - she's got plenty for her lifestyle, she just hates dealing with and talking about it.

Thinking about this a little more, I think how we manage our finances says a lot about us as people and how we see our relationships. I know a guy who got married and moved into his wife's house, but rented his own house out rather than selling it 'in case the marriage doesn't work and I need to move out.' WTF?

Finance is one of those things we don't like to talk about and it can lead to all kinds of problems, especially in relationships. Is it because we don't want to be seen as incapable of managing our own lives efficiently or because we don't want anyone else telling us what to do with our money? It certainly seems that a lot of couples don't discuss how they're going to manage their money before they get together, and then muddle through using a variety of half baked sharing arrangements plus doing their own things independently, then getting into a mess.

I agree .... as long as the partners both agree. Any arrangement is OK as long as both agree, but I do think that a lot of the time it isn't even discussed before they get together, and one or both may end up unhappy with the way things work out. My wife and I certainly didn't discuss it before we got married and it could easily have caused us a lot of trouble.

I was damn sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my girlfriend before we decided to buy a house together, get married and have kids*. Like I said above we do have our own 'pocket money' accounts but theirs no regular amount getting paid into those, the majority of our spending comes from the one pot.

*I know shit happens, but it's a shitty way of looking at a relationship if you have to factor in an escape plan.

I think that's a bit of a simplification. I know I want to be with my wife and daughter until the end of time, but I still have own account as I like to be able to retain a little privacy. that's just how I am.

Also, I don't think the wife needs to know how much money I waste on lunches/bars and general frivolity. Nor does she need to know how much her Xmas presents cost.

I pay for things and she keeps the envelope.

Once again, I agree, and it isn't just money that could be a breaking point in a relationship. There are so many things that could be major stumbling blocks, but they aren't discussed beforehand. Kids, for example. My wife wanted kids much earlier than I had been thinking about. In fact, at 21 when we got married, I hadn't given kids a lot of thought at all, it was just something that I thought might happen at some distant point in the future. This very nearly ended up in divorce, because initially I really thought we couldn't afford to start a family, and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to think about becoming a father. So I had to give this a lot of thought, because she already had, and it was causing a lot of trouble between us. In the end, I saw her point of view and relented, but if we'd discussed it before we'd got married we might never have had that difficult time, or maybe we wouldn't have got married until later, or not at all.

My whole point, really, is that there are important issues that couples often don't give enough thought to before getting together, and maybe there would be less divorces if they worked these things out first.

So we're agreed: finances should be treated exactly the same as blowing your load on her face.

Erm, yes, although I doubt that a Relate counselor would put it in quite those terms.

Do you mean I have to tap her on the shoulder 4 or 5 seconds before buying a new DVD?

EDIT: Oh no, that's a blowjob, innit.

No, they should be treated like your Mums arse. Throw everything in the one pot and split right down the middle.

When I was married:

Joint account. The total bills per month were calculated using a budget planner. We then worked out the percentage difference in income for the two of us, and both paid in an appropriate amount into the joint account to cover all the bills, plus some "emergency" funds in case of urgent repairs etc.

That way, we both knew the flat was covered, any other money in our own accounts was ours to do with as we pleased.

Nobody came here for a lecture on home economics communism.

Actually, well done, you're an example to us all.

Oooh, very agreeing with Zardoz and Warhead.

Not much more to add, really.

An example to calculator-heads.

You say it like it's a bad thing.

We don't like discussing money at all in the UK, it seems. That has its own benefits, i.e. we aren't Americans, but does mean money problems get hidden under the carpet as it isn't polite to discuss them. I think a fair few people would be in a better situation if there was less reticence to discuss money and finance in all walks of life.

Personally i'm happy to talk about money, how much I earn etc... with people. I treat it like my high score in the game of life...

Hai thar. I am people. How much do you earn?

I don't really need you to answer that, but it was begging to be asked!

Well there's a thread...

Just before I left the civil service I was earning around £30k.

Now I get a pension of about £11k p.a, but I haven't earned anything since the end of January when I started this business, as I've been working unpaid. If it ever makes a profit, I'll get 25% of that, after I've been repaid the investment I put in.

Not sure how much I'll be getting in the new job, as it's freelance and depends on how many people I interview and what the fees are, as not all interviews pay the same fees. I must remember to ask someone on my induction course for a rough estimate of how much I might expect to earn in the first year.

I knew it would be asked, i'll tick a box in the other thread

I've never really cared about divulging my financial situation to others, I don't see what the big deal is.

Mind you, I don't see what the big deal is about divulging anything to others. I don't just volunteer information, but if I'm asked a direct question I always answer it. You'd be amazed how few people are actually prepared to ask questions once they realise that you don't consider anything to be a secret.

Talking about your salaries is a great way to find out if you're being underpaid as well either compared to your colleagues, or your friends, or the industry.

My wife has a separate account and is a joint holder on mine.

I pay for everything and she saves money, this works as I'm a spender by nature

If I asked her for £200 for a PS3 then there would be some discussion and she would probably say no, if I asked her for £500 to fix the car I would get it no problem.