Of love and money- how do you and your SO split householdfinances?

In My Humble Opinion
41

All money goes into one account, all bills get paid from there, and any money left over we get to spend as we see fit. This year all the money’s been his, since I’ve been unemployed/studying but up until now it’s been both his wage and mine going in there.

Since neither of us are too fond of general shopping, we tend to spend surplus in big chunks for things like furniture or computer upgrades, so by default it’s a team effort. If I decided right now to go out and buy new clothes or get my hair coloured though, I just go ahead and do it. Likewise if he wanted something for the car or a new computer game. Neither of us is especially irresponsible with money and we don’t spend it if we ain’t got it, so we’ve never had any disagreement over this arrangement.

This will probably shock and horrify the separate account keepers, but before we were even dating we had joint access cards on each other’s accounts. We were the best of friends and both of us had minimal income, so we each gave the other full access to the accounts in case of financial emergency.

When you have that kind of trust before you’re even dating, it’s a no-brainer that every account will be merged once you’re a couple.

42

It’s our whisky, unless I don’t drink whiskey and bought it specifically for him. I can’t really think of anything that we would both want to use that we don’t share. I mean, he’s welcome to the quilting and craft equipment if he wants it, but I don’t really see that happening. I’m welcome to play his guitars, but I can’t say as I’ve ever felt the urge. The stuff only one of us wants or uses is “his” and “mine” (in name, at least), and the booze, food, and electronics are ours.

Well, then, you don’t make a big deal out of it. Dr.J makes twice as much as I do, and that gap’s just going to keep on growing, and I really don’t forsee it being an issue for us at all. Yeah, by this time next year he’ll be bringing in almost all the money. Big deal. I’ll still be the one doing all the cat boxes and cleaning up all the dog puke, and you can’t put a price on that. At least, he wouldn’t. He really, really hates dog puke.

Well, yes, he does contribute more than I do. He makes twice as much money, after all. It’s an undeniable fact, so what’s there to fight about? Unless you’re factoring in non-monetary contributions, in which case we come out roughly even. It’s an undeniable fact that I have almost complete responsibility for the house, yard, and animals, so again, what’s there to fight about?

I suppose it depends on what sort of luxuries we’re talking about. If it’s stuff just for me-getting my hair colored, sewing stuff, cosmetics, clothes, outfits for the dogs, etc.–it comes out of what’s nominally my money. If it’s stuff that I want but can convince him is for the household, like say, an orbital sander, it comes out of his account as a household expense.

Cirular file 'em.

All of our joint bills come out of his account. I put a certain amount in every month, and he does all the paperwork. We each pay our own car stuff, student loans, etc. He pays for joint entertainment and most things for the house. I pay the cleaning lady and for everything pertaining to the animals. What’s left over for each of us is nominally his or my money. Out of that we grocery shop as we see fit (we have radically different approaches to food shopping), buy clothing, pay for solo entertainment, pick up incidentals and frills, etc. Of course, the his and my designation is in name only; practically speaking, it’s all our money. If one of us has greater than usual expenses, we vary how much I put into his account accordingly. It’s a fucked up system, I suppose, but it works for us.

43

[Taxi driver] You talkin to me? [/Taxi driver]

Well, Mangetout, I’m not sure what you mean anarcho-syndicalist commune. Anarcho? No-one is boss by default, so - Check. Commune? We’re living together, so I guess so - Check :wink: . Syndicalist? Like the labour-unions, we operate on a basis of “our interests can be both communal and opposite, so we have to provide for both situations”? That doesn’t sound romantic, but I think it’s a reality, so - Check.

Maybe the real difference is that some couples (I’ll call them the pessimistic couples, for the sake of this discussion) deal with potentially conflicting interests by bringing them out into the open, facing them and finding practical solutions, untill they feel such conflicting interests need no longer be a menace, even if they would come about.
That is the reason why my SO and I feel that it is important to discuss money matters in this rather cold way; to face differences, explore them, feel they don’t form a menace, and consequently forget about them.
Couples with an sexually “open relationship” do the same, when they face each others interest in others and find a way to deal with that, without it breaking up the relationship.

Other couples (I’ll call them the optimistic ones, for contrast) deal with potentially conflicting interests by, as I feel, denying them. They basically say “we don’t feel that way”. They sometimes add: “…because we’re married”. I find that hard to believe, especially as so many of such marriages still end in divorce. (as many of the other kind do, too).

Perhaps the differences isn’t so big, after all.

::keeps on wondering::

44

The Anarcho-Syndicalist thing was a Monty Python reference; don’t worry about it.

I’m genuinely curious here though; (I don’t mean this to sound as pointed as it reads)does it really seem to you that the coouples represented here that have worry-free joint financial arrangements are in some kind of denial? - You seem to imply this.

If so, [Spock]…Interesting…[/Spock] - because it honestly does look (from where I’m sitting, IMO, YMMV etc) that some of the folks with split finances (and not especially those in this thread) are just inventing hurdles for themselves to leap over.

45

I’m a student, funded by loans and the bank of mum and dad, he works.

rent: 50/50-parent’s pay my half
electricity:50/50
cable tv:50/50
phone: 50/50
broadband: 75/25- he pays more
groceries: 50/50

If there is something needed (milk, toilet paper, vegetables etc), the person for whom it’s most convenient will buy it.

We buy our own treats (clothing, toiletries etc), except things like concert tickets, in which case he buys mine, and I pay him back by being extra nice.

We don’t sweat the small things, as we reckon it all works out evenly…and if I drank his drink, I’d buy him a replacement!

46

See, to me it seems the opposite. We divvy up the money, and that’s the money. We each know how much there is at any given time. If you have two checkbooks linked to the same account it seems like all sorts of trouble. What if you both have to write a really huge check on the same day for an emergency or something and there’s not enough money in the account for both? What if one gets stolen and the account has to be closed while the other person is trying to write a check on the other side of town and raising hell because they’re being declined? Then balancing two checkbooks against one statement? Ugh! - forget it! It seems very cold, businesslike and overcomplicated to try and mush everything together. It’s not a trust issue at all as far as we’re concered, it just seems like a really unnecessary extra step that would just make things more confusing.

47

We’ve been married for over 25 years, and have always pooled our money. When we first got married I was in grad school and she had a job, when I graduated she stopped working since we were going to have kids, and after they were a bit bigger has been freelance writing, though I have always made more. There’s never been a problem. I get nervous when we got low (we have no debt except mortgage debt) but that’s it. It helps that we have identical opinions about money - we’d rather die than buy something we couldn’t afford. Neither of us buys expensive clothes, we bought new cars with stock money during the bubble, all paid off, and our pleasures are inexpensive. Whoever has time pays the bills, and I balance the checkbook in Quicken because I did it before we had Quicken. Extra money goes to our money market account. We tend to buy luxuries for each other rather than for ourselves, but by luxury I mean buying lox for my bagels, or splurging at the used book store.

I suppose if one partner had different views of money than the other, split accounts would be good. At one job a guy said that he never told his wife how much he made - that seems just sick to me. And I think we’ve had two arguments about money in 25 years, and none involving anyone saying the other overspent.

48

Mangetout, interesting question. I’m pondering it and will be back with an answer when I’ve got more time.

One additional question for the shared-money couples who never had an argument about the other spouse overspending. Haven’t you ever felt controlled that the other person could, in theory, make an objection against you spending money on something? Haven’t you ever thought: “Cool: I want that!” and then put it back on the store’s shelf, (or bought it, but with dampened enthusiasm) for no other reason then the thought of having to explain to your spouse why you wanted such an silly or expensive thing?

49

Splitting the finances would mean that each of the halves is in a worse position to cope with individual emergencies - in the case of really big, or multiple emergencies, again, a single large fund with a single large overdraft facility is going to cope better than two separate ones of half capacity.
Please explain exactly how you think separate accounts would be better.

If one cheque book gets stolen, we tell the bank that one cheque book was stolen and they decline the cheques that were in the one book, while still honouring the rest. Not a problem.

To be honest, I write a cheque about once every three months; most of our purchases are done on the debit card and so the place where the money was spent is named on the statement.

I’m not ‘trying’ to mush anything together; it seems entirely natural to me that all the money goes into one fund, from which all the expenses are paid; ‘trying’ for me would be the effort of maintaining separate finances, keeping track of ‘yours’ and ‘mine’, making sure that ‘I’ don’t pay for anything ‘you’ should be buying, etc. - Ugh! - forget it!

Like I said, from my POV, it honestly looks like splitting the finances, maintaining and reconciling multiple accounts etc would be the ‘extra step’.

But that might be because, like Voyager and a few others, we simply don’t have wildly different financial habits and we talk about stuff.

50

I’m not married, but I think about what marriage means to me and how that would play out in action quite a bit.

I would disagree with the quoted statement. Marriage isn’t about money, even fairly and equally distributed, its about making a supportive and functional family unit. I think I’d go for a more communal system - everybody’s wages go into the pot with an equal amount of personal cash pulled aside for both parties. The big pot takes care of housing, food, the family vacation, retirement savings and anything deemed family responcibility. The personal “allowence” used for when I want to buy a DVD or he needs a comic book or gifts or anything else. Knowing my tendencies, I’d like my own account as well- but funded from my “allowence”. Its not my money and his money, its the moeny made by the family members in order to maintain the family. Part of that maintence is that the individuals involved get to buy toys or take each other to the movies.

Before marriage (or long term serious relationship where you meld funds) a more individually accounted system would be to my taste. (I pay my half of the rent, guy pays his, etc.)

But this is just my thought - plans may not survive an encounter with the enemy.

51

Just talked to my folks, my dad earns about 6 times as much as my mum, who works 3 days a week as a doctor. They have a somewhat eccentric system, but it works for them.

They don’t have a joint account, bills are paid by my mother, who is in control of all the finances. She asks my dad for whatever she needs to pay the bills, the amount she asks for is determined so as to leave more than a certain “emergency minimum” in her account.

She uses her own money to buy clothes, shoes etc for herself. Money for the kids upkeep comes from my dad, as do any large expenses (family holidays etc), although these are usually paid for on my mum’s credit card, and he gives her money for the bill later.

Basically, she tells my dad what she needs, and he gives her the money, anything leftover is his. By the time you get through bills, savings and various expenditures, my parents reckon that they have about equal disposable income, which is theirs to do as they like with.

I don’t think my parents have the kind of relationship where a huge distinction has ever been drawn between what each of them owns, with everything pretty much belonging to the family as a whole.

Since I have never heard them argue about money (and they argue about other stuff) I guess they’re happy with the system they have.

52

Did you read my post? We discuss major purchases and talk about “stuff” (whatever that means…I’m not actually sure what you’re getting at.) It’s all “our” money. It’s just I have one account for “our” money and he has another. We both use the gas card but since it’s in his name, the bill comes to him so he pays it from his account. We have a joint credit card that’s in my name so I pay the bills from my account when they come in. I can’t imagine anything simpler. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re just so rolling in dough money doesn’t even matter to us or something. I find that highly unlikely.

53

Our arrangement started when we moved in together, and did not change when we married, nor when we bought a house. We opened a joint account, and we pay equal percentages of our paychecks into it. We put in enough to pay rent/mortgage, bills, and groceries (and now kid’s stuff). We each have the accounts we had before, and we keep what’s left in those. From those, we buy our clothes, our luxuries, and other personal expenses. In other words, there’s “my money,” “her money,” and “our money.” I used to make a lot more than than my wife, but she’s caught up, since she works for a ginormous biotech company and I work for an impoverished pharmaceutical startup. This change has had no effect.

Since the kid was born, our expenses have gone up, and sometimes the joint account can’t cover expenses right away. In this case, we move some money over from an individual account. If it’s just a little, it’s forgotten; a big chunk of money would probably be paid back. I like the individual account, because I know I can spend money on a new computer or lots of books without impoverishing “us.”

The issues in the OP:

“Whose (expensive) whisky is it? You bought it, but your SO finished with friends, which are not entirely your friends. (substitute whisky with car, space, equipment, or other stuff, as needed)”
*If I destroyed my wife’s expensive goody, or vice versa, I’d be expected to fix it, replace it, or (if the first two options are impossible) apologize profusely and do stuff to make up for it until the emotional bank account is refilled.

“You earn more or less then your SO, but neither of you wants to make a big deal out of it.”
*We don’t. We pay equal percentages, and we don’t discuss whose money makes up most of the joint account. I think it behooves me, as the slightly richer partner, to be generous: I will often put things like dining out on my card instead of our card. But I don’t talk about it.

“You both earn money. You’ve made a division of who pays what. Yet, you also both feel you contribute ever so slightly more then your SO does. This feeling is only ventilated during really nasty quarrels, but you sometimes suspect it is lurking in the backs of both your minds.”
Doesn’t happen. If my wife brought it up (as in “your percentage has fallen behind”), I’d either agree (and change it) or disagree (and offer reasons why)

“You want to buy some personal luxuries. Do you buy them with household money, pocket money, your “own” money?”
My own money. This is why I have my own money to begin with.

“What do you do with all those receipts, clogging up your wallet ?”
*I throw them away. I keep receipts that I might need for warranty or tax purposes, but most purchases are made from the appropriate account, and don’t need reconciling.

54

I responded to it point by point, so yes. Obviously.

Did it occur to you that perhaps this wasn’t a jab at you at all, but nothing more than an explanation of *why I think our arrangement works, for us?

55

Nope! If it’s an expensive item I wouldn’t even consider just lashing out and buying it without getting my husband’s feedback first, nor would he book up something expensive without consulting me. Bear in mind neither of us are particularly compulsive/impulsive shoppers, and big purchases are something we’d go home and think about even if we were single.

If it’s relatively inexpensive and I really want it, then I can quite happily purchase the thing and know he wouldn’t go crazy over it, and the same goes if he wants something. Mind you, I think the last thing I bought in that manner was one of those desktop toys that does a kind of perpetual motion thing (without the perpetual) and it was only about $40 - I’d wanted one ever since I was a kid. He didn’t care; he thought it was kind of cool too. :smiley: That was about 12 months ago. Like I said, I’m not really much for impulse shopping.

Basically it’s up to whoever’s purchasing to decide whether or not we can afford it. If they make the call that yes, we can, and they want the item, then there’s no argument from the other about it afterwards, because it’s a given that if they decide that no, it’s not feasible this week, then they won’t be an ass and spend the bill money on something unnecessary. It’s a system that’s worked flawlessly for us for 8 years now, and in all that time we’ve never had an argument about money.

On the occasions we’ve had a lump cash benefit - like tax return time, for example - if we can’t agree on how to spend it straight away we just bank it until we can find something we mutually like. It’s not a case of badgering the other person to your point of view, we just go looking for alternatives until we find one that suits both of us. Same tactic as deciding where to go for dinner (Italian? Chinese?) but on a different scale. :smiley: The huge benefit here is that because we don’t run pell-mell into spending it, we’ve always been really happy afterwards with how we invested the $$ into our home, and not regretted anything.

56

Oh, this reminds me of something!

My husband’s workplace has a Melbourne Cup (BIG horse race in Australia) ‘sweepstake’ where the employees who want to be in it pay $3 per week all year and then on Melbourne Cup day, get assigned a horse. They don’t actually put on a bet, they just return the money in the form of cash prizes for first, second, third and last placed horses. (And they refund your money if your horse is scratched).

Last year, my husband’s horse came in first and he won $2400 in cash. When he came home with it, he said “You won’t believe some of the guys at work. They were asking me how I was going to hide it from you - at first I thought they were joking, but they seriously expected that I’d keep it to myself!” He was as boggled as I was (probably more, since I have a pretty low opinion of some of the guys at his workplace :stuck_out_tongue: ) that the assumption would be that it was ‘his’ $3 per week and therefore ‘his’ $2400.

Neither of us can see how a couple could be married and hoard money away from their partner (assuming the relationship was fine) on the belief that it was their right to keep it to themselves. Clearly the concept of ‘partnership’ has a different meaning to his workmates.

As it was, we put the money towards a pergola area in the back yard, combining my desire for a cat-proof fence barrier to keep our two cats in, and his desire for an entertaining area to put his barbeque in. Both happy!

57

I’m not married, but my boyfriend and I live together.

He pays rent, and I pay everything else (elec, gas, internet, phone, cell phones, groceries). I end up paying a bit more, but that’s ok since I make more.

We have plans of getting married, but we will still keep everything as it is now, both have our own accounts, and just pay for certain things.

If we want something, we pay for it with our own money… if the bf wants something but doesn’t have the money, I pay. I usually pay when we go out to eat.

I know it sounds a bit uneven, but at the moment, he makes half of what I do. He graduated college in May, but there are hardly any art/graphic design jobs in the area (too bad we aren’t on the west coast, they have tons of that stuff there!)… so he is currently working retail overnight.

We both still have debt that we brought into the relationship, so it’s just better to keep things seperate (even when he does get a better job and we get married)… I couldn’t ask him to pay my debt that I created before I even knew him.

The whole thing works fine for us and we never argue about money…

58

If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were my husband! This is almost exactly how we are. If there’s something specific that Mr. K’s bonus is going toward, he takes it. But more often than not, it ends up in savings and just gets mushed into the fund. We are 100% even steven on rights to the money. Every last cent.

59

We’re in the “One pot, discuss the large purchases, no strife” camp ourselves, so I really don’t have much to add, except that until now I didn’t realize how good we have it. I mean, I’d always heard that the #1 issue for couples is money, but luckily we seem to have similar enough spending habits (despite having different “toys”–I buy shoes and clothes, he buys–quite literally–toys) that I don’t think either of us has any resentment about purchases made by the other, and I think each of us trusts the other not to be too frivolous without a discussion (the one exception to that being the time I impulsively bought a lovely red purse, for $104, when I’m usually a $20 purse kinda gal–but hey, it was originally a $250 purse, so I got a helluva deal, and it really is a lovely purse, which is good, because Skip says that I have to carry it for the next 100 years to make up for the cost :D).

60

I earn all the money coming into the household, since my wife is a stay-at-home mom. We’ve been married almost 17 years and never had any friction about finances. The key points in our secret plan for finanical happiness are:

  1. We have a joint account in both our names for running the household. I manage this account exclusively and hold the checkbook. Since this is where most of our money is, if my wife has an unusual expenditure, she would come to me for access to this money. If I get hit by a bus, it is jointly in her name, so that is good.

  2. 15% of my salary is direct deposited into an account held individually by my wife. This is her spending money. She also tends to buy most of our groceries out of this money and other small, household related things. This gives my wife a bit of independence (along with one credit card she holds in her name only), despite the fact that she doesn’t work outside the home and ensures that she has established some credibility with the financial world, should something happen to me.

  3. I pay all the bills out of the joint account.

  4. She buys anything she can afford out of her account, no questions asked. I buy anything I want that I can afford after bills, no questions asked. I probably would discuss something like a new car purchase with her, but maybe not. Purchasing stuff just isn’t a bone of contention between us.

  5. I usually give her a nice “bonus” around this time of year, just because I know it helps her with all the Christmas shopping and she doesn’t have to ask for money constantly during the holiday season. This usually amounts to a couple thousand dollars that she can spend/save as she sees fit.

  6. A couple times a year, I give her a “State of the Household” update, so she knows how well our savings and investments are doing. This helps her feel a part of our financial life and, again, serves the purpose of ensuring she knows what’s up should something happen to me.

That’s about it. We aren’t rich, but we are fortunate enough that my salary is such that we want for little. That takes a lot of the potential stress out of the whole thing and keeps us happy. That and the fact that I realize a very important truth: Even though I make all the salary, we are married and, consequently, she owns half the money and all the booty. That knowledge keeps me in line. :slight_smile:

Jammer