Yeah, I’m not sure I understand the OP’s question.
In any case, all income received by me or my wife goes into our family’s community money pile, out of which we pay our bills, and out of which comes our savings, etc.
20% of our savings, divided equally (so 10% each), goes into individual “blow” accounts that we can each spend as we like without asking the other’s permission.
Maybe better to think of it as a “found money” situation, like when I get a holiday bonus at work and my husband doesn’t? Raises just go into the general household account.
We generally split the found money - half goes to something useful and mutually beneficial like savings, house repair, paying off a bill. The other half get split in half for each of us to do what we want. So the answer would be 25%.
On the other hand, my husband gets overtime and holiday pay which I, being salaried, do not. In most cases he keeps that in his own account as spending money, having more expensive hobbies than me. Since I handle all the household accounts this helps him not to feel like he is on an allowance, and I can budget from household for my own walking-around cash.
It would depend on how much she’d broken the rules regarding defrosting chickens throughout the year, I’m sure
We don’t have money - we have income, and we have expenses. If the income column grows bigger, we may increase the expenses column, and we may not. It depends on whether there’s something we want to pay for.
I think that stating that it’s an excuse to hide purchases is painting it with a really, really broad brush. My husband and I have separate accounts - always have. It’s not that I want to hide my purchases from him or him from me, we were just too lazy to combine them. However, at one point we did go in and add each other’s names to our accounts in case the other needed access, but they’re still technically separate. Also, all our bank accounts are fully accessible via the same account page online, so if I were inclined to do so, I could wade through all his expenses and he mine and we could transfer cash back and forth.
In response to the OP, our money is just that - our combined money. It happens to be divided up into different accounts and we happen to have separate investments because we both have family money and have thus far been too lazy to re-configure all the accounts, though our mutual trusts, my husband and the kids are the beneficiary for everything I own and vice versa with my husband.
If I got a raise, I would disclose it to him fully, and he has access to any of my funds online. As it is, he makes about twice what I do because he’s a consultant, so he hasn’t felt the need to do so. That could change, given the temporary nature of many consulting gigs, but so far it hasn’t been an issue.
Thank you for that laugh, despite nearly causing me to choke on my food. 
I don’t think this is what you meant but I felt the urge to respond anyway 
One of the keys to our ability to turn our finances around was the creation of separate accounts. When all purchases came out of our joint account and we discussed each one - neither of us wanted to say no to the other. So what generally ended up happening was he would want a new computer. I would say yes and then start looking for something I sort of wanted to spend an equivilent amount on. I would want a weekend away with the girls. He would say yes and buy a new golf club while I was gone.
Now we each have our own account that our allowance goes into twice a month. We each spend less and yet rarely do we feel we’re depriving ourselves. He’s been going back and forth over whether to get a gun for the PS3 for about 3 weeks now. In the past I would have felt that his hesitation was only due to money and would probably have just bought it for him since he’s mentioned it so many times. Now I know he’s got the money and he can buy it if he wants so there’s no pressure for me to give permission and he doesn’t feel compelled to buy it just because I’ve said yes.
The answer to the OP btw is 0. We’ve agreed that we have more than sufficient money for our needs and any bonus, raise or other windfall is going directly to debt reduction this year and savings/retirement as soon as we’re debt free.
This makes a lot of sense to me.
I was in a different situation in that my late husband would spend, spend, spend, AND spend if he had the chance. So he had a separate account of cash that he could spend on what he wanted but he couldn’t touch the household accounts without discussing it with me. But boy, even though I knew he was spendthrift, when we shared accounts it was hard to say no.
I try to decouple my income from my expenses as much as possible.
I buy the things I need (and some more things that I want), and save all the rest. If I get a raise, or have some found money, The “all the rest” pile just gets bigger.
In Betty Smith’s book “Tomorrow Will Be Better,” (She is most famous for “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn”) the mother of the main character Margie tells her daughter…
“Make sure you make your husband promise on your wedding night to hand over his pay envelope unopened. Do it on your wedding night, 'cause then a man will promise you anything. I made your father promise me this. Now he’d never do that.”
Evidently in the old days it was common for the husband to get the raise and not tell the wife, then he had an extra two dollars to spend on beer or <gasp> a “lady of the evening”
In the spirit of the OP in spite of us having one joint account for all the household income and expenses, when my husband gets bonuses, raises and dividends from his job, we sit down and discuss what we’re going to do with the money. If either of us has any particular desires or ideas at the moment, we hash out if we can afford it now, or if it should wait, or how to approach it.
I just got a 17% raise, and we have a joint checking account. So we both get 100% of it.
My husband and I have individual bank accounts and a joint household one.
We both put 30% of our income into the joint account, plus half the monthly mortgage payment. This covers what we spend monthly, usually with a bit left over. We have separate ISAs, and my husband is still paying off his US student loans (argh).
If I got a raise, I would see whether we could bump our contribution rate down a few percentage points and leave us both with more money to save or spend on ourselves. (We buy things like clothes from our individual pots.) I don’t think our expenses would go up - we’re happy with our standard of living.
(emphasis mine) That word means the opposite of what you think it does. “Thrifty one” would work in its place.
I knew something seemed off and couldn’t figure out what… thanks, Tom Scud.
I also feel the need to comment on this. My wife and I each had our own bank accounts before we met, and we continued to each have our own bank accounts when we got married. It was what worked for us in terms of keeping track of the accounts. But our money has always been our money, regardless of whose account it’s in.
QFT.
[Hijack] Seeing the word “stipend” reminds me of the Spinal Tap Reunion, in which David St. Hubbins is shown working for the Pomona Parks Dept. “I get a stipend. A stipend is like money, but it’s such a small amount, they don’t call it…money. They call it a stipend.” [/hijack]
Oh my god. It is the same guy.
Superhal, seriously, we’re all dying to know. Did you ever just ask your wife why she thawed the chickens?
I predict this is going to get a, “Dude, stop stalking me, I already dealt with the chickens, why are you so obsessed with misunderstanding me” post from the OP.