Who holds the purse strings in your house?

In my house, my husband pays all the bills from our joint account, and I do all the groceries/household purchases. If I WANTED to, I could log in right now and see where our finances are at, but I don’t because I know he’s looking after that side of it.

We have separate savings accounts and an auto deposit goes into each of them each pay day. It’s only $50 per fortnight, however, and we still use the joint accounts for individual purchases sometimes.

I’m the gift-buyer in the marriage… it’s taken some time for my husband to not see that as wasteful :D but he’s slowly getting there!

I think the trick is to be objective in recognising the strengths and weakness both in yourself and your partner, and then arranging it accordingly. For me, I always want to pay bills as soon as they come in. My husband, on the other hand, has a much better handle on leaving things til we’ve extracted the maximum interest, before paying them.

As always, a great post, and it’s got me thinking! Thanks!

We have seperate finances in our household although we do combine money for larger purchases.

Completely agree with the car dealer comments though. I will do research on the technical and performance details of a product before we purchase it. I will give advice on what we should be looking at getting and what we should be paying.
Then my girlfriend will just go and buy whatever she wants because “It was cheaper” or “I liked the colour”.
Grrrrrrrr.

Oh and she then gets angry at me when it breaks down or doesn’t work properly. I don’t even get to say “I told you so”. haha.

My partner won’t even tell me how much the mortgage payments are. He pays them and some bills while I pay for groceries, household items, entertainment, some bills, incidentals and the like.

We don’t talk about money because he flat-out refuses to (gets all childish and immature and just states ‘i’m NOT talking about it!’) and i’ve given up asking.

I feel he wastes too much money because rather than get something fixed when it breaks or just doesn’t work right, he goes and buys another one.

My fiancee isn’t happy with the way she spends money so I pretty much take care of all the finances. I’ve got direct debit going everywhere and utilise interest free periods on a credit card (it’s paid in full monthly) and this allows a bulk of our money to stay in an interest bearing account as we save for a house deposit.

I think it comes down to the fact that I get satisfaction about seeing my savings account healthy even if I don’t have a goal for that money. I’m also patient and enjoy the actual act of making sure our finances are in order. So I do have control of the purse strings but this is effective not because I won’t give out money when asked for it but the fact that my partner has to ask. This is her safeguard against her self and makes her really self assess and ask if she really needs the item. This system would never work if it’s something I implemented, this was her choice and it works really well for us.

In my household my partner and I have our own individual accounts that our pay goes into but each fornight we transfer a set amount into our joint expenses and joint savings accounts, the expenses covers, health and contents insurance, water bills, power, rent ect and the savings is for a house deposit and a holiday.

We take turns paying for grocery shopping and dinners out and the rest is ours to spend on what we please.
It took two years to get my boyfriend to agree to this approch before that I was paying the bills and then chasing him for his share of the money, which was not fun.

My boyfriend and I keep all our money in separate accounts (so it can offset both home loans rather than be earning 0.1% interest or whatever), and transfer money to and fro as required. We live in my place and rent his out, he pays for all the bills so I sort of get my share of the income through not having those outgoings. It can be a little fiddly at times, but it means we each get ‘play’ money, if you will, in accordance with what we earned and our own budgeting ability.

We might change the arrangement when we get married or have kids or there becomes a good tax reason for it or something, but for now it’s working (and the home loans and bank accounts are fee free so there’s no savings to be had there either).

All our money goes into our joint accounts, either one of us pays the bills (we keep track of it by spreadsheet) usually whoevers at the computer when they are due, we both think each other buys pointless things but that’s because we are different… Usually if somethings more than x amount say $50 a quick txt is usually sent to make sure it’s ok.. it works for us.

Because my partner and I both had our finances sorted out before we got together, we’ve kept our separate sets of bank accounts. We’re both paid fortnightly, and both pay a week’s rent per fortnight by automatic debit. We alternate paying for shared expenses (groceries, entertainment, dining out, etc), and pay separately for our own unshared expenses (cars, clothes, shares, etc).
We’re each aware of the general financial position of the other, but we don’t discuss money at length.
It works for us.

Argh, I manage ALL of the finances. I pay the bills, do the grocery shopping, look after our investment properties, shares, insurance – EVERYTHING! It gets rather tiresome and I wish my husband was more interested and had a better understanding of our incomings and out goings, but the fact of the matter is than he simply isn’t phased by any of it. I wish that he was able to share some of the workload when it comes to our finances, but it’s not likely it will ever happen. I do worry about what would happen to him if I ever keeled over, he would be lost!

He says to me that as long as he has enough money in the account for a beer after work, he’s happy!

When I first met my husband he thought nothing of spending $1000 on a new phone or gadget. Since then I’ve educated him about the value of money and he’s a very quick learner. Since becoming engaged / married we now have complete joint accounts, it jut works better with 2 mortgages and two incomes.

I’m the dedicated banker in the family & manage most of our finances but that’s mostly because I have more time at work to pay bills, talk to the bank etc. We discuss all of our purchases, holidays etc, & we sat down together and establised a budget so we both know where the money is going. We both have seperate CC’s which we use for gifts or small splurges.

It’s important that we have an equal say in how our money is spent, invested etc. One thing we found works for us is a Debit account which has our monthly budgeted amount in it, so for shopping, petrol, beer, eating out etc all comes out of this, that way when it’s gone - it’s gone! I do most of the research though cause it’s just something that i’m good at & he trusts my judgement.

I’m so glad that he now understands the importance of a budget & having control over your fiances, he’s seen the progress we’ve made in 5 years & how we can progress from here.

I ca never understand how people in one household have separate accounts.  I am not saying its wrong or anything like that, just that it doesn’t make sense to me.

You say you put e.g. $800 per pay into the joint account for everything and the rest is yours to spend as you see fit.  What happens if one person earns significantly more than the other?  Do you have to start loaning your parner money to buy something unexpected but important?  Don’t you find you are paying for 2 sets of bank accounts?

My wife and I just have ‘our’ money, not his/hers.  We each get the same spending and big purchases get discussed.

Again, just have to say whatever works for you is fine, neiher of these approaches is correct, I just want to get an appreciation for how other people look at it.

My wife and I have a joint account for both our pay.  We each get $100 per fortnight “pocket money”, which we can do what we want with. 

Other than that all bills and mortgage payments come from the joint account.  I tend to pay most of the bills, but only because she isn’t signed up for internet banking.  Groceries are done online together, and we discuss any large purchases (over $100) before we make them.  We record everything in a spreadsheet to make sure we are on track. 

I tend to keep a closer eye on the current balance of accounts and the mortgage, but simply out of interest (I’m more likely to waste money than my wife).

Communication is the key.  Neither of us would be happy not knowing the state of our finances.  It’s simple, but works for us.

In reference to car dealers.... i knew a guy who adopted a similar approach.

he’d say…

‘win the children, and you’ve won the wife. Win the wife, and you’ve won the hubby.

Then use the combined pester power of his children & wife, and flatter his ego a little by making him think he’s just a pulled a fast one over you, and you’ve got the sale.’

That man retired quite well off!

I control the finances within our family. I set the budget, make sure bills and loans are paid, do the grocery shopping, buy the gifts etc.

We have joint bank accounts and credit card accounts. My husband is great at earning the money and I am very good with finances, particularly with budgeting and making our money work as hard as it can. We have a combined allowance that we use for personal spending such as going out for dinner or taking the kids out on the weekend etc.

It did take about 6 months to get the budget right and to make some changes with how we did things, particularly with home cooking, groceries, ‘retail therapy’ and reducing the cost of our utilities.

Most of the changes we made are now habit and we’ve come a long way from how we used live, which was pay packet to pay packet.

All of our finances are combined and have been ever since we were married. My parents have seperate funds and some of my friends… I never really understood it.
We both have joint access to everything so it is all completely transparent.
My wife does most of the spending - groceries, stuff for the kids, etc. I do most of the earning. I also pay the bills - utilities, credit cards etc.
While I guess I probably have the bigger say in the big expenditures it is always a joint decision.
I just want my tax return to arrive already! So much for E-Tax being quicker…

My Husband and I have two accounts. One is in his name. He had the account before we were married, and it has his phone bill and car payments linked to it. We were going to change it to both our names, but to do that we would of had to close the account to open a new one which was way to much hassle.

Another account is linked to that one that we can only access on the internet. That account is in both our names. My pay and our savings go in there, but rent comes out. Everything else (bills, electricity groceries etc) comes out of his.

We have completely joint finances and joint accounts, but for simplicity we often say ‘your account or my account!’

Like many of you who have posted already, my fiance and I opened a joint account when we got a mortgage for our house.  Both pays go into the mortgage offset, I look after the bills and do the groceries and keep everything updated in a running spreadsheet, with future bills etc factored in.  We both earn decent money, and because the fiance is a shift-worker, some pays she makes more than me and vice-versa.  She can do OT as well, which helps even more.  The upshot is that she is quite happy not to be bothered with having to worry about it and has access to see what’s going on anyway.  She still gets a bit miffed when the bank addresses stuff to us with my name first though (which upsets her because she had a larger deposit than me!).  Still, things seem to be working out OK and we also zero off the CC each month.  Our offset is growing quite nicely and we should be interest-free on the mortgage within the next year.  Major purchases are discussed beforehand.  We are not “consumerist” by nature and have made do with a 16yo car and a lot of hand-me down furniture etc.  We could go out and splurge on just about anything we liked, but getting the mortgage covered first is the main goal, even before any sort of overseas trip.  Sometimes I wish she would take more of an interest in our finances, but, like others here, she trusts me, I wouldn’t do anything wrong, and has access to accounts to check if she wanted anyway.  Works for us.

In my house, I generally have control of the joint account and paying the bills though I talk to my husband about the bills and the sort of money being paid out so he is aware of our living costs. He is more interested to know how much we’ve got floating about in total but that’s really only when we’re considering making a purchase for the house. We pay major bills and the mortgage out of this account, anything else is classed as incidentals which we take care of out of our “own” money - yes, this means we have separate accounts. 

This system has worked for a good ten years now and generally most things come out even in the wash.  We’ve found that maintaining a bills/mortgage account that can only be accessed by the ‘net means that we are less likely to overspend the money we actually need. Money is very rarely an issue of contention in our house because we always ask each other regarding big personal spends (we both have very expensive hobbies).

Mrs Westie & I have a common bank account, it IS the mortgage account, which is linked to one credit card account which we are both cardholders on.

I earn >90% of the income.

She spends, spends, spends. It’s amazing how much trivial stuff we spend money on: food, clothes for the kids, shoes for the kids, swimming lessons for the kids…

every now and then, I work out how much money she has spent on her interests (it doesn’t matter much what they are - they are important to her!), then I look at what I am going to spend on myself and it’s OK because while she hasn’t gone over the top she spends a lot more on her “interests” than I do, and on top of that she spends a lot more on “fashion & grooming” (without being excessive) than I do (hello? 1 pair of hair clippers lasts us three years and there are 2 male kids in the house as well!!).

Things may change a little after family allowance or whatever they call it and we buy an investment property. But it will only be tinkering around the edges.

Very informative reading.  My partner and I are struggling with increased living expenses, mortgages and renters not paying on time. 

To the people who have commented on using a spreadsheet to track all spending, is this something you have developed yourself?, or is there somewhere on the web I could find a sample spreadsheet.

I am currently refining our budget (I’m in charge of finances in our relationship - and at the moment it is very stressful) and any tools to help would be great.