Fairly simple question and I dont think this has ever come up in all the years of CL...
How do you work out who pays what in your household with your partner?
Do you put the same amount of money into a joint account?
Do you put the same percentage of your take home salary into a joint account?
Does one of you pay the mortgage and then the other pays the other bills?
Or do you do it a totally different way?
Having lived on my own for so many years, it appears my ideas for doing things financially are very different from my new partner, so am intrigued to know how others do it.
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I AM A MUG!
Her money's hers
Your money hers
Johnboy, quit your job and get her to pay everything. Will save this potential aggravation.
Cash gets pooled and I guess we've been lucky that we've had enough to cover day-to-day spending plus the occasional jaunt to Hillsborough or (in the past) Old Trafford...
So 'different ideas' on how to do it are to be expected...you've just got to come to an understanding!
Your now going to be skint forever johnboy
Money-root of all evil(and most of household arguments)
I hope you'll both be very happy living together
Joint billing account for all bills, mortgage food shops - pay in an agreed sum, either the same amount or depends if one is a much bigger earner.
Keep what's left for yourself in your own account so it causes no arguments when you want to go out and spend on clothes/booze with mates etc as you are spending your own money. I'd hate to not have that independence to do what i liked without someone bitching at me.
Joint accounts dont work full stop.
Sounds extreme but I can relate to the petty arguments mentioned above and the cash idea seems to have sorted it.
Works very well.
Best thing (apart from to stop watching Spurs) is to sit down and agree the way forward - I know it sounds obvious but money causes a huge amount of arguments in relationships.
BTW, what is her view?
Personally i think the best approach is to ease your way into things, depending the circumstances of how things are coming about. If getting a place together, or saving for a place together, a seperate joint account you both pay a set amount into (either an even fix or percentage), whilst leaving you the surplus in your own account works best.
If you are moving into someone else's place, then i wouldn't set up any new joint accounts to switch bills to etc for a good 9 months, i would simply transfer them what you think is either an even split of the bills, or what is agreed to be a fair contribution if you pay less.
Minefield stuff this, would hate to be in a relationship where things like this were a contention point.
Rest of our monies we spend as individuals. I don't expect my other half to contribute to a golf weekend for me, and I certainly ain't paying half of around £200+ per month on her cigarettes.
To be honest my wife deals with that side of things and we get by. I don't think it's exactly the same amount that we pay but we leave ourselves just about enough to get through on incidental costs.
At the end of the day we are married so our debt is shared, assets are shared so it's different.
To be honest I have no idea how we would split that if I were to move into a new relationship at this stage of my life.
Given that I take home roughly twice what the Mrs earns this might seem like I'm a mug but she looks after our child (soon to be children) and does the majority of the housework, takes care of the food shopping etc and, to me, that more than makes up for any seeming inequity in our earnings and spending.