I do a 100 mile commute each day as I can't get work locally. I live where I do so my wife can be close to her parents. I am not from the area which is very insular. I am friendly with two guys married to the wife's friends who similarly aren't local and can't get work nearby.
Now, after dinner on Saturday night we blokes were sitting around talking about the cost of our commute. Mine is currently running at £700 per month. I pay these costs myself.
What astonished me was that the other two refuse to bear the cost of their from their own funds.The cost is shared with their wife. Their logic is that this cost is forced upon them by their wive's insistence on living in that part of the country where work is almost impossible to come by.
I can't see myself getting away with that! Is their logic right or wrong?
How do you have your own funds if you are married?
Their logic is spot on. If you make sacrifices to live in a certain place for the benefit of the other then where is the payoff?
I presume that you also leave earlier than her, get home later than her? This also counts as a contribution to the household.
I'd suggest having a joint account where both salaries are paid in and from which bills, car expenses, food etc are paid - then you can both pull some money back to personal accounts for discretionary spending?
I'm confused how money is 'yours' or hers', perhaps we're odd but we consider it to all be ours and we have grown up discussions on how it spent. I signed up to marriage being sharing things, including money.
When my GF and I moved in together she decided that fuel would come out of our living expenses joint account. My round commute is 75ish miles, hers is 26, i wouldn't have a problem if it were the other way round...
but then I do ride to work with her, turn round ride home, shower then drive to work in the other direction!
On a side note i'm looking into options to seriously decrease my commute mileage as fuels seriously expensive...
Where's the danger? Are you worried she might knife you if you talk about money?
All our money goes into one big pot and essentials, which would include commuting to work costs, would be paid out of that. We get "pocket money" each month but that's purely for stuff we spend on ourselves i.e. bike stuff for me, pedicures and such crap for her.
If you commute 100 miles a day how the hell are spending £700 a month?
My commute is 60 miles a day and costs £50 a week even at 100 it's be around £65, what are you driving? Or is this aa public transport thing?
100 miles a day and £700 a month!!!!! You must be earning some serious money.
or driving a bentley continental at 100mph!
I think they're basically right - IMO if you're married then you're a team and your money is split fairly. That said, if they were keeping their money completely separately and the blokes earned a lot more than their wives then making them pay for the petrol would seem fair.
We just pay both salaries into the joint acc and transfer a fixed amount into each of our individual accounts each month which makes sense as my wife doesn't work full time so earns less.
Things like travel for work come out of the joint account. things like bikes or clothes (our respective vices) come out of the individual accounts).
That said, previously when we both worked and mini-clubber wasn't around, we both paid into the joint account in proportion to our salaries so the one earning more paid more.
Sounds like you might actually want to get married, you know, to someone you talk to and share things with?
If you work one place and live another it isn't "your" problem singular, it is "your" problem as in the two of you, especially if you live somewhere that was her choice.
Only problem now is that you think talking about it is a problem. It will be awkward when you bring it up because you are expecting it to be. Good luck though, I am sure you don't split the gas bill on personal heating preference, fuel to get to work is just another household expense (just don't admit what you spend on bikes, even if she seems to come clean about the shoes! 😉 )
OK. We don't have a joint account as the wife refuses to have one. I transfer the guts of a grand a month to the wife's account to cover mortgage, food etc. I also pay the phone, Sky and internet.
The £700 is made up as follows:
Diesel £300 per month (I also drive at weekends to see my own family who live 50 miles away)
Car Loan £250
Insurance £80
Road tax £12
Monthly average cost of tyres and servicing £60
I drive a 3 series. Average tyre cost is £100. Usually go through 2-4 tyres a year.
Average service cost £250 and I usually need two a year as the car has 140k on it and I need it to last!
Joint account for stuff like travelling expenses. I accept that each might want their own account for keeping treat money in (this is what we do and it works well) but all the normal living costs come out of the main account where my wages go. My wifes wages go into another account which is used for annual items like holidays and curtains THAT COST A THOUSAND POUNDS!!!!
what does she contribute then, if you cover everything??
curtains THAT COST A THOUSAND POUNDS!!!!
You could buy a bike for that!!! 😯
Carlphillips. She covers childminding, her own car costs (she works 5 mins walk from our front door so these aren't high), rates, electricity, heating oil, clothing for the kids, shortfall on groceries, buildings, content and life assurance.
Its always difficult to give advice on stuff like this and to be honest i never do, but, it doesn't sound like you've got a 'fair' deal out of this. I pay for all the house stuff which like you is in and around a grand a month, but the mrs then pays for the fuel in the car and food, whatever is left over we spend on whatever we chose (although i do run most things past her as she's very sensible/rational and i'm not lol).
Now obviously this isn't equal but we're both happy with it and importantly we both have enough to spend, doesn't sound like thats the case in your marriage.........
Your wife has it right how dare would you expect her to pay for YOUR commute.
What about when you going to visit your family at the weekend... assuming she goes with you, you could invoice her a silly amount for being a passenger in YOUR car to recover YOUR costs. Could even charge her for speaking??
Alternatively what I do on my 100 mile a day commute is just use the joint account to pay for fuel. I then might use the credit card if I need new tyres etc and we then just moan about the price of fuel and what we wont be able to afford to buy in the rest of the month... are we a weird married couple or some thing??
In our house all the money goes into a joint account, all living expenses come out and the months budget for food, fuel etc is left there. The remainder is spent as appropriate after a chat with the other half. I earn way way more than her but that is the deal with being married.
Never understood this totally separate bank account thing, unless incomes are very disproportionate or one partner has a history of credit card debts or gambling.
Myself and OH aren't even married yet and there is no such thing as "her" money or "my" money - all wages go into one joint acc from which all bills are paid, the remainder is split off into another account from which everything else is bought, including food/fuel/clothing. We check significant purchases with each other before buying them - if money's tight that can mean stuff over £25! If we both have stuff we want to buy but can only afford one person's, then the other compromises and waits til we have a bit more money. Always thought this was a fairly adult way of doing it tbh. She earns about 70-75% of what I do and have never begrudged her getting something she wants at the expense of something I want.
We don't have a joint account as the wife refuses to have one.
that sounds weird.
i'm not married though...
We have a joint account that both our wages get paid into and all out outgoings come out of the same account.
We then just have a savings account that we both put money into every month.
We don't have any individual pocket money that we transfer to seperate accounts, we both just use the money from the joint account to pay for treats.
My missus spends around £200 a month of fuel which come's out of the joint account were as I cycle due to working nearer to home.
I don't see the point or need to have seperate accounts or allowances as we see it all as being 'our' money.
Unless one of you has a spending problem, I can't see any logic in trying to split costs. All our wages go into one account, all bills and all spending come out of the same account. I think a bit gets syphoned off into her old current account so I don't see how much she spend on the horse 🙂
She needs a car for a 300 mile weekly commute, I'm two minutes walk from my company van but the car and fuel comes out of the main account.
Tiboy - MemberI'm confused how money is 'yours' or hers', perhaps we're odd but we consider it to all be ours and we have grown up discussions on how it spent. I signed up to marriage being sharing things, including money.
+1
Ever since we moved in together - 2 years before getting hitched - we had a joint bank account, as we considered the money 'ours' not 'each others'. When we met, I was working and she was still a student - so only one income between us.... didn't bother me in the slightest. It was down to trust that she wouldn't clean the account out...
We still have personal bank accounts, into which a small equal amount goes in each month. We save up to buy the other a surprise - last month I got some brand spanking new 5.10s (for no real reason, other than I wanted some - but could never quite justify buying some!).
I don't understand married couples who have separate finances - and probably never will understand.
Same as many on here, it all used to go in one pot even pre-marriage and kids.
Its just me working now though so I pay for everything, for others who maybe the only earner how much do you give to your partner to do whatever with?
As others have said really. Talk to each other!
We have a single pot to cover all bills etc then we spend more and argue at the end of the month... simples.
Serious point though you are allocating your car loan to the commute. I assume if you didnt commute you would still need a car? inflates the cost of your commute quite a lot.
Diesel £300 per month (I also drive at weekends to see my own family who live 50 miles away)
Car Loan £250
Insurance £80
Road tax £12
Monthly average cost of tyres and servicing £60
You have a car loan on a 140,000 mile car?
Surely you could trim down your costs somewhere? That car is going to lunch something big at somepoint.
You are paying almost a grand in insurance a year? Yes I know your mileage however do you have to be 'that' honest? Have you phoned up your insurer? My insurer dropped £100 off of their best renewal (beating everyone) when I gave them the 'oh come on' phone call.
Going back to the car, can't you self-service it? At 140k I doubt it'll be premium-resale? Why not learn a self oil and filter change?
"We don't have a joint account as the wife refuses to have one"
Every couple makes their own deal, but this arrangement for a married couple seems unusual to me. My long-term partner and I have a similar arrangement to you. A desire to retain "autonomy" is one reason why we prefer not to be married.
A delicate matter to try and re-negotiate though.
We pay the same amount into a joint account which covers everything is need for living, utilities, mortgage etc with the remainder of our own earnings left to ourselves.
MRs turin earns way more than I do, and this is probably a joint weirdness thing but I want to be reliant on myself and what I earn but thats just me. We both have properties, we lived in hers for few years and are now living at the flat I had before we met as its a bit bigger/nicer and rent the other one out. I bought my car from my savings and pay for the costs associated with it but have equal access to it, though I need it for working while she doesnt.
From speaking to friends this appears to be far from convention but it works for us.
Does your wife walk everywhere or never use "your" car at all?
Seriously ROFLing at how pwned you are.
How do you have your own funds if you are married?
That's exactly what I was going to say.
If you make sacrifices to live in a certain place for the benefit of the other then where is the payoff?
Jesus. How about her happiness? Or is that not important?
😯 , to be honest.
Yeh, we have a joint account where all the money goes in and all the direct debits and bills go out from, if there's any left before pay day that's a bonus. We did once set ourselves a spending money limits but the wonders of paypal and credit cards soon got me around that 😉 I can't see how people can have 2 separate accounts when they live together and are contributing to the home etc, I think it would just cause agro in our house, especially with my addiction to buying shiney bits of metal for my bikes!
Hmmm, everyone seems to think joint accounts are the way forward.
Personally I dont, I prefer my independance.
I earn more than she does and we work it like this.
We each pay 50% of the household costs, rent / bills etc. I pay minimum 50% shopping costs, more if needed (we arent rigid with this, very approxamate in fact. For instance if she mentions shes spent a lot on shopping and asks me for X amount, I transfer it without question).
We each pay our own commuting / car etc costs. We have cars each, shes had hers since before we met (years). I bought mine from my own money about a year ago.
My cost of living is considerably higher as I commute by car, she uses discounted public transport, my car has a bigish petrol engine, hers a small deisel, I like beer, she does not
We are each free to spend out own money however we want, whenever we want without question, provided we can afford it. We have our own seperate credit cards etc.
If theres an unplanned cost, such as something required for the house, 50/50 again. Unless one of us dosnt have the cash, then the other pays more. This is not remembered for future times or brought up again as its just one of those unplanned expenses life deals out.
If we decide we want something together (Holiday, carpet, whatever) we both agree to save for it. If, for instance this costs 5000, I may very well end up paying 4000 of that. This is fine with me.
Its the modern world, independance within a relationship is allowed.
You can have a joint account AND independence as many above have demonstrated.
We get our independence by having separate pocket money accounts, and also by being sensible.
People can have joint account AND separate accounts AND independence AND happy relationships as has been demonstrated
Yeah but with joint accounts you can't sly the Travel Lodge on the statement or the £45 withdrawn past your partner 😉
mrsdeadly and I are self-employed.
Year to year, one of us makes more than the other by a few grand here or there. We have one joint account. Both being self-employed means we have the freedom to do stuff for one another like dropping into work occasionally, picking up, meeting for shneaky coffees at lunch - the kind of stuff that makes it wonderful to be in a couple. And because of that we try not to think about money too much once the bills are paid.
We also have a stash for indulgences. Sometimes she indulges, sometimes I do.
Neither of us an account to which the other has no access. Neither of us has a credit card (oops, mrs deadly does but it doesn't get used).
I think we have a similar approach to mol - common sense and openness is the way forward. If you can't trust your missus with your money then as mol said, 😯 FFS
that's what the individual account is for, Hora 😉
I signed up to marriage being sharing things, including money
Totally agree. Even before we got married my wife financed my venture into setting up a business and for several months I earned nothing so she paid pretty much all expenses. Now we are married and have children she only works part time and term time so I bring home the majority of the money. All but £100 of that goes into a joint account to pay the bills.
I don't get the idea of 'independent money' We have a joint account for bills etc, but that is for convenience of paying bills. I have a rough idea of how much money comes into the house and how much goes out on 'fixed costs' I know we are not he kind of household who can afford a new BMW and also that we are not the kind of household who can afford a £3000 bike. Even if I'd managed to accumulate that much in my account, it would be irresponsible to spend the money on that. I can't imagine how you would balance the 'my money /your money' bit. If she is broke do you sit there on your wad smiling contentedly?
Another interesting thread and I'm rather surprised that the majority are still 'traditional'. I had assumed that both parties would be terribly independant and kept their own separate monies.
