My money, Your money

[butterfly_warrior]

We have a savings account with no card access, an expenses account and a bills account - all joint.

For the bills account, we add up how much all the bills (approximately) should come to in a year, and then divide it up and a set amount goes in each fortnight. You can tell when we're expecting a big bill like car rego or something as it starts to look suspiciously full.

The expenses account has limited spending money for things we can't put on the credit card during the week.

The savings account has no card access to help protect the bulk of our money from being lost through ATM card skimming schemes (we once lost $1200 that way, so keep the accounts with cards as low as possible). This account is where all our money goes into and it goes out from here to the various other accounts.

We also have one individual account each that gives us a little bit of "pocket money". The money we have to spend on things we don't need to justify... but since me going on maternity leave, it's more a source of emergency money rather than money to be frittered away on extravagances.

We've never had an issue of what's "his" and "mine", but it all comes down to the way we've set things up.

BW

[squidipa]

i share everything.... i support hubbie to and have done for about 98% of the time, hubbie has a trust his in and his family made it perfectly clear to me it never gonna be anyone elses bar his. understandable too. I paid for the wedding too heck i pay everything lol

[misty]

I think in a really committed relationship there is no such thing as 'my' money or 'your' money. It is all our money, and has been since we first moved in with each other. We have a joint bank account where DH's pay goes. I also have 'my' bank account that I have had since kindy, where any pay I get goes (ie, FTB, Work), but DH has a card to this account and complete access via the internet. Mind you We also discuss any spending that takes place too, even as small as $5.

[FabFiona]

This is something we've put a bit of thought into!

Initially when we bought our house together we had one joint account, but found we were spending too much money on crap.

Now we have three bank accounts - ours, his and mine. Everything goes into the joint account and all the bills, mortgage and other agreed expenses come out of that account. Otherwise we don't touch the joint account.

We call our own bank accounts our 'unjustifiable' money. Every fortnight our 'allowances' get automatically transferred from our joint account into our unjustifiable accounts. Our allowances are now $300 per fortnight and that is our play money. I use mine to buy books, gym, lunch, movies, go out etc. Hence the 'unjustifiable' part of it. We don't have to justify this to each other.

We have found this to be a really good system. We talk about big purchases (heater for the bedroom being a recent one) and then buy that out of joint money.

[Jakabella]

I have my account and DH has his account - its ALL OUR MONEY but we just havnt gotten around to changing it all over yet, DH pays all the bills out of his account and the mortgage and car loans come out of mine.

I have to say though that just because you have seperate accounts does not mean that you are not committed to each other!! I works for us and now that I am on Matt leave I dont get paid at all now and DH pays all the bills and mortgage - untill I go back to work. We looks at DH's account and after the bills we know what we have left - we know that the mortgage comes out of mine and the cars to we dont have to worry about that.

As we are going to see this house (my name) and buy a farm ASAP then I think that we will have a joint accoutn then - but we will see.

Kate

[misty]

I have to say though that just because you have seperate accounts does not mean that you are not committed to each other!!
Kate

I didn't mean that. I read back my post and realise that this is how people my read it though, sorry Really didn't mean to offend anyone.

All I meant is that in a committed relationship there is a joint financial responsibility and accessability. Having seperate accounts isn't the issue - It is the 'attitude' of 'I earned this money, I deserve it, and I am being gracious sharing any of it with you'. I know couples some with families, who keep finances completely seperate - they put in for 'their' share much as you would with a flatmate. And when I look at these couples you can see that there are real cracks in their relationship. They are so concerned with what is 'theirs' that they have created a wall (intentionally or not) between themselves.

Having an 'allowance' or such that you can spend on yourself without having to justify yourself to your partner, can be a good thing - you are both adults after all. But both parties should be in agreement about that 'allowance' (probably more accurate to say allocation) and I don't think it is the same as keeping you money seperate.

I think it goes towards more then just the cash in the bank too. When you are in a committed relationship one persons debt is the debt of the other partner too, even if it is in one persons name, both share the responsibility.

Does that make sense?

[catherinemoses]

We have 3 accounts too. His, mine and ours. His account has money that he earns from ebay and is linked to paypal. He earns that money outside of work so he can do whatever he wants with it. I don't have any issues with this and he is happy cos he gets to spend it on things which I think are stupid to spend money on!

Other than that it is all our money. It works for us. I couldn't imagine working all of our finances out seperately, especially seeing as I don't 'work'.

[Cassius2]

we have joint accounts. although since i stopped getting an income it does seem a bit funny LOL!

we have a savings account, online savings and a term deposit. all in our names. the credit card is his, but i have my own card attached to his. this works well for us, as all our costs are shared anyway.

soon we'll have the mortgage account in our name too. scary stuff! LOL!

[Jakabella]

Misty - sorry that is how I read it - but I agree - its all OUR money and gets spent on the same things just its kept at the moment in seprate accounts - but its not My money or His money. We also find that any spare money that goes into my account that isnt taken by the house payment or cars then becomes "savings" so we can use all the money out of DH's account and still know that we have a little extra in mine that will not get used - unless its needed for some reason.

Sorry if I made you feel bad Misty - I miss ready your post.

Kate