Married Finances – Separate accounts or fully shared?

molgrips – Member
Anyone’s partner not work? Not including disability etc.

Mine doesn’t. We have separate accounts and a joint for bills/food. Every month an amount goes from my account into the joint that covers all the household expenses and the food. An amount goes to her which is her money and the kids money that she manages. I pay the mortgage, the cars and the savings, and anything else major. Whatever is left is mine, in actual amounts she generally has more ‘personal money’ than me.

My wife pefers this as she feels she has independence with her money and doesn’t need to ask me every time she or the kids wants something.

Why would you feel that way anyway?

Because…we do?

As I say, we’ve both been married before and have no intention of recreating the conditions.

The only reason we are together is because we love each other. Not because we promised God in front of all our relatives, and not because we depend on each other financially. If either of us decide at any time that the relationship no longer makes us happy, we can end it.

Share a bed, share your money, quite simple really

Anyone’s partner not work? Not including disability etc.

Yes, my wife retired a few months ago, but has yet to start talking her pension. The joint account works as before, with the same allowance going to both my wife and I.
The allowance does vary; it went down when I didn’t have a job, and went up when the mortgage ended.
The joint account works for us, partly because I’d spend more on useless tech that would end in landfill. It means that we’re in a pretty good position financially, mostly because my wife manages all the money.

Share a bed, share your money, quite simple really

I think there’s an old profession set up along those lines.

We pay both our salaries into the JA, then we pay ourselves an equal allowance into our own separate accounts to spend as we wish.

we’ve an individual account each, and a joint. The mortgage, and utilities, come out of the joint. Everything else comes out of mine. I (we!) spend all ours , save hers. She pays less tax, so…. If we overspend mine, I get money off her. Obviously she uses my credit card; the only exceptions are her haircuts (the price gives me a heart attack, and if I’m lucky, my birthday/xmas presents. An element of surprise is good!)

We’ve been together 22 years; there is a vague element of trust, but it’s been like this for ~19 odd years, since travelling I guess. She cares more about money than I do (dad was a bank manager). She looks after my investments, and squirrels stuff away I know nothing about.

I like it like this. If I knew we had 10k sat somewhere, I’d get an urge to spend.

Separate here. There’s certain things i don’t want her to find out the true cost of things. “How much was that new dropper post?” “…it was about 15 quid” 🙂

I’m taking from this lots of people who are on their second marrage / relationship keep it seperate>

Not making the same mistake twice, or proving they’re not really suited to co-habiting?

I’d bet the former.

Separate accounts. What’s mine is hers, as is what’s hers. I’ve no idea what ‘managing household finances’ is, but don’t like the sound of it.

Separate accounts here, with joint account for house stuff. Except Mrs Daz now uses the joint account as her main bank account. We’re both shit/lazy at managing money. Every now and again I ask her ‘how much money do we have?’, to which the answer often is, ‘I don’t know I’d best check the joint account’. 🙂

j5kol – Member

Share a bed, share your money, quite simple really

If that were true I’d need a full time accountant in my 20s. Holla.

Salaries go into joint account.

Then a monthly direct debit from joint account into our personal current accounts.

I earn twice my partners salary but we both still thought it made sense to have the same disposable income, hence the salaries going into the joint account.

Everything joint here, and my wife (as an ex-banker) keeps an eye on everything (shuffling stuff in and out of savings accts, making sure we have enough to pay the bills at the appropriate time etc…).

Too much hassle to do it any other way, any big purchases (e.g. new bike… 😀 ) we just have a sensible chat about beforehand. I must spend more on bike stuff than she spends on anything, but I earn more than her, so it just works. Might feel differently if she was prone to frittering money away on ‘stuff’ though!

@Cougar – envelopes.

Ye gods, really? Suppose if it works for you that’s cool, but that would drive me insane.

Enveloping has helped us save well over the years.

Where do you keep the savings? In a pillowcase? In a chamber pot under the dresser? I mean who is going to look there?
I hope you have an envelope for Tiny Tims sixpence too?

@Cougar / MrSmith

It does work well. It was amazing how much money was frittered away without any real idea of where it went (~£500 pcm!). At the start of every month it takes (my wife) about 30 mins to fill up the envelopes. We rarely need to use the debit / credit card aside from that monthly cash withdrawal. It’s all much easier than having to remember to go to a cash point for whatever reason.

Savings are all automatically transferred to pensions, off shore account etc.

It seems a lot of people here are moving money between theirs and their spouses separate accounts. It’s just adding an unnecessary extra step, am I missing something?

(to save reading back as we have join account for household bills we pay equally into and remainder is our own)

ours is set up to happen the day before the mortgage is due to go out. so.

pay from employers goes in to own accts -> equal contribution to joint acct goes automatically from own accts -> mortgage goes out from joint account -> remainder covers food and all other bills for the month

once set up (with the right amount) it runs itself.

i also transfer a fixed amount per month from my current account to my ISA (meant to cover car repairs etc). right now i’m manually adding extra on top, as much as I can afford to as well.

if i had more in my current account i’d spend it 🙂 running myself on ‘just enough’ keeps me under control. (even though i can tap up any amount, or use a credit card (only used for emergencies ,and always paid off in full) at the drop of a hat..)

So my current account often has bugger all in, but I can quickly fire up the app on my phone and put money in to my current account from my savings / buffer account. (saving for a car, then a new bike, then just saving..). right now i’ve got enough for petrol for the rest of the month, and a little spare change. if i’ve been over ambitious saving at the start of the money i can pull back 30 or 50 quid.

It seems a lot of people here are moving money between theirs and their spouses separate accounts. It’s just adding an unnecessary extra step, am I missing something?

I suppose it depends what you think is ‘nescessary’ ha ha. Seriously though keeping my own finances keeps me sane and my Wife and I together, we have such wildly different views on most things financial, it’s best to pool what we need to pool and keep our own money our own.

We moved house over the weekend, lots of money being moved from the savings, lots of purchases – my Bank tells me my total income this month was about £5k, it really, really wasn’t.

Keeping separate accounts with a joint a/c for household bills helps keep track of budgets as well – running low this month? due to gas bills or bike bits?

(If the bank would tag/allow you to set rules for tagging items with category names and sort them on your statement, then this would not be a valid advantage, but in the 1950’s theme park that is the UK, that isn’t possible)

A question for couples with separate accounts.

Say you both contribute to joint stuff, but the remainder from your pay is yours to do as you wish.
You, being a true STW’er, buy bikes and tech.
Your partner, being sensible, put his/her money into savings/pensions.

Come retirement, your partner takes a dim view of your pile of second hand junk and isn’t too happy to have to fund your old age.

Is this what happens?

I always find it a bit awkward when going for a meal with a couple who have separate accounts as there is always the “who is paying” standoff between them, almost like it is a business transaction. Call me traditional, but what is wrong with earning your money, pooling it together and having a bit of trust in each other not to take the P”SS out of each other when it comes to spending.

I always find it a bit awkward when going for a meal with a couple who have separate accounts as there is always the “who is paying” standoff between them, almost like it is a business transaction.

We have separate accounts but a joint credit card for this sort of stuff. However, when we go out, my wife never takes her purse, so I just pay for everything….

Your partner, being sensible, put his/her money into savings/pensions.

Come retirement, your partner takes a dim view of your pile of second hand junk and isn’t too happy to have to fund your old age.

Is this what happens?

We both put nearly every spare penny into pensions…..

We’ve considered for a while doing it the ‘other’ way, have our salaries paid into the joint account, and then take out our ‘pocket money’ into our personal accounts. The subtle difference would be that at the moment the variable costs like food shopping, clothes, whatever are our own the manage – if you have a decent amount left you might treat yourself to a new pair of jeans, if you don’t you won’t etc. Doing it the other way would mean we’d just take a few hundred each for ‘walking around’ money.

I think it would make my Wife happier, but she’s the more controlling of the 2 of us, for me it would be harder – Mrs Jay would think nothing of buying herself something, and it wouldn’t bother me, but I don’t think the reverse would be true, but the big one would be the dreaded “Alps Trip” every year we go around the same merry dance, it’s never about the money, but it seems to create such tension with her than even me paying £100 for a week’s accommodation would have her wailing about the kids going hungry. I don’t need that in my life.

Say you both contribute to joint stuff, but the remainder from your pay is yours to do as you wish.
You, being a true STW’er, buy bikes and tech.
Your partner, being sensible, put his/her money into savings/pensions.

yeah that would perhaps be a bit silly.

we each put £x per month into the joint account (bills etc) and £y per month into savings. Then the rest is for our personal spending.

One thing I have realized from this thread though is that we’re lucky to both earn within about 10% of each other. Keeps things very simple – if one of us was earning double what the other earned it might get more complicated…

I always find it a bit awkward when going for a meal with a couple who have separate accounts as there is always the “who is paying” standoff between them, almost like it is a business transaction.

this is what the joint account is for! That and the boring stuff like council tax obviously. We had to increase our contributions to the joint account after we found there wasn’t enough left over for bills 😉

I always find it a bit awkward when going for a meal with a couple who have separate accounts as there is always the “who is paying” standoff between them, almost like it is a business transaction

Really? I’ve never noticed or experienced that. We take turns, roughly speaking. Never an issue.

Call me traditional, but what is wrong with earning your money, pooling it together and having a bit of trust in each other not to take the P”SS out of each other when it comes to spending.

Nothing wrong with you running your lives however you want.