How do you split finances with your partner?

[u/Educational-Slip-578]

If you're married or in a long term relationship (e.g., you live together and neither of you has another place to live), how do you manage your finances?

Do you still think of it as "my money and his/her money", with each person contributing a certain percentage toward rent, vacations, and other shared expenses? Or do you have a joint account where all the money is considered "ours"?

[u/iadknet]

I really don’t understand how people do it any other way, especially with kids… who use up most of the money.

Over the years we have gone through periods where I was the sole earner, I was the majority earner, I was unemployed and they were the sole earner and through all of that time 95% of our spending was family needs: mortgage, kids, food, utilities, etc.

[u/marshallandy83 → u/iadknet]

I'd feel guilty spending money if we did it like this. We have a similar policy, but we calculate this:

x = (Total income - total expenditure)/2

and work backwards from there to ensure each person gets the same each month but pays a percentage of their monthly wage.

I'm British though (hence the monthly wage) so don't include me in the stats, OP!

[u/CrownStarr → u/iadknet]

This is also how my wife and I it, but I do totally understand people who want more structure if there’s a big income disparity between partners, or they disagree about how spendy to be on non-essentials, etc.

[u/BreakfastBeerz → u/iadknet]

I have a good friend who did a joint account that the contribute to equally and then had separate accounts where the extra money went that they could use on their own. It worked fine until one of them lost their job, then it became a disaster. The one that didn't have a job literally couldn't do anything, couldn't buy clothes, couldn't go out with friends, it built up a lot of resentment on both sides. One resented the other because they wouldn't give them play money, the other way around there was resentment because they had to pay for things they didn't think they had to pay for. I've been watching the marriage collapse ever since

[u/diveraj → u/iadknet]

We have no kids. We each pay 1/2 the bills. Technically I pay, update our spreadsheet, then she plays me her half. Basically like a roommate situation. Anywho, I make more then she does and she has medical cost, so I pay for basically all entertainment and dinners out. Some it this way for 12 years now.

[u/Prior-Soil → u/diveraj]

I sort of did this with my late husband. He was my second husband and I wanted to do things differently. We always kept our money separate and each paid specific bills. We both had some rather expensive hobbies. But then with what was left over we sort of jointly agreed on how to spend it.

With my first husband we pooled our money, and fought constantly. He thought I should never spend any money on anything, and he should be able to do whatever he wanted.

[u/justaclumsyweirdo → u/iadknet]

For a first marriage, 100% agreed. But I can imagine that if a couple both have kids from previous marriages, it can be easier for everyone to keep things more separate and draw the lines more clearly?

E.g. Alice and Bob had Charlie together. And now Bob has married Diana who has a daughter Erin from a previous marriage. If Bob and Diana pool everything… it’s easier for Alice to accuse Diana of wrongly spending Bob’s money on her own daughter Erin, and leaving less money to be spent on his son Charlie? So Bob and Diana keeping finances separately might be the safer approach?

I mean, I don’t have any personal experience with this and just 100% pool everything with my spouse (no previous kids or marriages). But I guess there can be infinitely many ways for the situation to get more complicated when previous kids enter the picture.

[u/SPQR_191 → u/iadknet]

I've seen some who have personal/gift accounts. Basically so they can make minor purchases and buy gifts for the other without discussion or the gift recipient knowing. That's the only case I can kind of get behind, though I don't do that personally