Personal Q. regarding home finances and salaries.

About 50%.

Not really sure how much help this will be though, as you don't know what we earn / how big our mortgage is etc.

No, I know, it's a bit of an open ended question I suppose but I'm just wondering if other people push themselves as much as we could possibly do financially and whether our expectations are unrealistic compared to others. Gawd, i'm not explaining myself very well.

My salary goes into one joint account and all our bills are paid from that account. We also put a certain amount into savings every month from this account. Everything is on standing order/direct debit and we never touch the account.

H's salary goes into a separate joint account and we live off that money - food, petrol, hobbies, socialising, presents, etc.. Anything that's left at the end of the month goes into our 'rainy day fund' (a separate current account) which pays for unexpected things, like car repairs for example.

Tbh we don't have much left to live off by the time we put our contributions into the joint account for bills. Because of the nature of my work I sometimes get a nice extra chunk every now and again which helps but H is on a set wage so after all bills, fuel for his car he probably only has about £20 a week to life off so for nights out and stuff I'll pay more or we will dip into our joint account if there's anything going spare there.

We're very lucky to have a mortgage so small that it only uses about 15% of our income each month. After bills and food we have at least 50% left over for us but as we're self employed with no holiday/sickness pay, we have to put a fair chunk away to feel secure.

Fair enough, ours is probably a bit on the high side because we're DINKYs, we're also pretty conservative with the spending.

Also if you asked the question a year or so ago, it would have been a different (much lower) answer. Hower in that time G&T got a better job so the % went up.

But also we got lucky with the property market 8 years back and have a relatively small mortgage, so we're going through a sort of "make hay while the sun shines" phase and stuffing away cash with a view to moving to a bigger property in the near future, so the % will nosedive again.

We work our finances slightly different as H is self employed.

My wages go into our joint account and all bills are paid from this. MrKB has to give me £x per month on top of my salary to help cover the bills.
Then any money he earns over the £x he gives me for bills, we use for food shopping, general day to day living and saving.
One month we can be dipping into savings to help pay for the food shop, other months we can be having nights out, shopping trips as well as saving a good amount.

OH and I share all bills 50/50. He's a mature student, so has a small amount to live on each week, after mortgage, credit card, insurances and utility bills. He has around £65 per week, which covers food, petrol, socialising, clothes, presents and anything else he needs. I have a little more a week - around £130. I'd have more, but I am paying my mum back for my new car, lining OH's savings with a few hundred quid a month to help him through uni and spanking my credit cards. Sadly, what I have to live on bears little resemblance to what I earn!

I guess how far you're comfortable 'stretching' yourself depends on what you'd happily go without to get the home that you want. For example, I've not been on holiday for a couple of years, but my hobbies (to me, all year round enjoyment) are non-negotiable.

This is the crux of it I suppose. At the moment we have a decent size home, are having 2 holidays abroad and a short break this year but to pay for those we don't have money for much else.

If we stretch ourselves to get the better home then it'll be goodbye holidays abroad, hello Sun £9.50 breaks and still we probably wouldn't have much money for anything else. I'm the sensible one, I don't want H to resent me for holding him back, sometimes I wish I was more of a risk taker but I'm always thinking 'what if'.

We do it slightly differently in that we each keep x amount of money from our salaries and everything else goes in to the joint pot, so savings are made from there. We still utilise our ISAs etc but by having all the money available for savings in one place I we can better plan where money is best to go.

We both get the same amount each month despite who earns more (while on mat leave that was H, now I am at work it is me again).

Actually that's a good idea Redbedhead, the difficult part is deciding what's a reasonable sum per week allowance to live on.

We put a equal amount in the joint account every month and that pays for mortgage, bills etc

whatever is left from our salaries is for us to spend whichever way we like. If he wants to buy a golf club thats fine, if i want to spend it on make up i bloody well will!!?

Any money left in the joint account at the end of the month we will just roll over to the next month or dip into it for treats like take aways etc

We sat and went through the expenses we would normally pay through our personal accounts (nights out, lunches, clothes, glasses, presents for each other, hobbies etc) and then compared. I felt H wasn't being entirely realistic as he had quite a low figure and so I suggested an amount above his and about the same as mine. It has worked out pretty well tbh and if anyone complains they don't have enough money it is H!

I did suggest we reduce it when I was nearing the end of my mat leave as I was worried about money running out but we agreed to defer a decision for 2 months by which time I had a new job and our finances were ok.

Remember, if you set it too high or low, you can just adjust it.

We pay a set amount into our joint account every month which covers everything (mortgage, bills, food, cleaner etc) and we're left with about 30% of our own salary each to spend and/or save. We usually save about 1/3 of that 30% and spend the rest - generally on socialising!

There is never anything left in the joint account to roll over - apart from on those months where you don't have to pay council tax!

Gem

x

We have our individual accounts, and then a joint account which covers mortgage, bills, food etc (everything except our individual mobiles, credit cards etc). Percentages are hard to work out because it depends on how much overtime I do, but probably about 50% of my basic salary goes in there. The rest I use to pay off my car loan, mobile bill, any credit card (don't have a huge balance, should be paid off in about 3 months), petrol, savings etc and whatever else I want to spend it on.

OH is back at uni training to be a nurse, just has a bursay, works one night a week as a youth worker, and sometimes picks up HCA shifts. But we're very lucky that her parents are in a position to help her out and cover her share of the mortgage. If they didn't, I'd be able to cover it but we'd have a much harder time of things.

No GemBear, there's generally nothing left with us now in our Joint Account but we don't watch the pennies that closely.

I'm thinking we could each live on £50 a week and I guess if I have a cheap week then I can 'roll it over' to the following week and so on so that I can pay to get my hair done or whatever.

Sounds fine in theory but I know that in practice i'd be left with nothing. We should probably start doing this now before we move and get a rude awakening ?

We "live on" £50 a week each at the moment as I'm on the umpaid part of my Mat Leave. H manages just fine with his £50, I struggle more as I have to get nappies and other baby odds and sods out of that. If I didn't have to get those things, £50 would be fine and dandy as we don't go out very much at all due to the baby.

We both put in 50% of our salaries into a joint account for bills and the mortgage. I keep another 10% back for longer term expenses (car insurance, holiday fund, car servicing etc). We spend about another 20% on food and joint expenses (like doing up the house), we save about another 5% so that leaves me about another 15% for petrol, clothes, going out and day to day expenses (contact lenses etc). We don't often go out to be honest and our mortgage is huge - I find it quite scary sometimes, there isn't a lot of leeway in it if anything went wrong!

About 55% is left for me. It used to be 40% and I've coped fine with both amounts.

ETA: I save about half of what is left so could survive on 25%.

Both salaries into a joint account and then the same allowance is paid into our own banks directly to cover Clothes, Hair going out, presents to each other, gadgets treats, work lunches, xmas presents.

H and I both have good salaries, our mortgage is aroubnd 20% of our combined take home pay, we save around the same.

Household money is to cover food, house repairs & mainetance, childcare, and bills (Utilities, Sky, phones and broardband)

Our allowance is £500 per month each - some times i spend it all,sometimes not.

This is my main worry and I tend to have to hold MrSun back a bit. In doing this I think sometimes we stagnate whilst others take the risk and reep the benefits IYSWIM. I'm always of the thinking that if it's going to happen you can guarantee it'll happen to us.

50% isn't much. I'm talking more like 75% of our salaries but that would cover food expenses aswell. Doesn't leave a lot for 'eventualities' does it?

After paying "my share" of the bills, etc I'd have nothing left so both our salaries go into the joint account. It's swings and roundabouts on who spends more in a week, but it probably all works out evenly in the end - H smokes/drinks more than me and I pay more for haircuts/clothes than he does instead. We still have money to put into savings and, hopefully, can start paying of fthe capital on our mortgage over the next few months (holidays and birthdays have put paid to doing that the last few months).

I could probably get by on £50 a week assuming I didn't go out/have only 2 drinks and would have to be much stricter about taking lunches to work. I'm sure I could do it though and pretty sure I used to when I had to survive on my salary alone and didn't have H's to spend.

Our salaries are pretty similar, and we both pay 55-60% into our joint account. which covers mortgage, insurance, loan repayment, utilities and shopping. The mortgage eats half of the money in this account every month, and there is usually next to nothing left at the end of the month.

The 40-45% of our salary we each keep in our individual accounts covers all car/travel expenses, mobiles, clothes, haircuts, lunches at work, nights out etc. (though nights out are few and far between tbh). I have just set up savings from my personal account, maybe to save for holidays but more likely for emergency purchases/repairs.

Oh blimey ? now I feel like even more of a financial disaster zone than I already did, reading all your tres organised ways with money - and having money to do stuff with, how does that work? ?

Mr Layabout's income fluctuates as he's essentially self employed - it's complicated if you're in the building trade, unfortunately - and that's what we live off. So some months all the direct debits can go out quite happily and we can pay off a big chunk of credit cards. Other months we have to scrap around to rob peter/pay paul on the mortgage etc and just watch the credit cards building up again. If we need something really essential like clothes then we'll buy it, and we do spend more money than we should on things like tea and cake when we go out, but we don't have a "budget" for spending money on ourselves as such. It's not a priority though, and I certainly don't feel as if I'd want to spend hundreds of pounds a year on clothes/shoes and stuff, I never did even when I had money. And I'm married to a man who thinks I'm bizarre and crazy for having more than two pairs of shoes anyway.

TBH I feel far too guilty to think about spending money on fripparies like haircuts or clothes when I earn about 35p a year at the moment, and I do wonder where my substantial salary used to go when I was earning lots of money by comparison, yet we still seemed to be skint ? But then we did do things like going on holiday a couple of times a year, going out for meals and to the pub so I guess a lot of it just got spunked on that.

I think I'm a financial idiot and need to get a grip on it all, but numbers make my head hurt and having different income every week makes it more of a headache.

We both have our own current account that our respective wages go into, we also have a savings account each. On top of that we have a joint current account that we both put the same amount into every month to cover mortgage and all bills / food, we also have a joint savings account too.

At the mo we are earning about the same we both put about 25% of each of our take home pay into the joint current account this covers all the joint bills. We also put money aside in the joint savings usually £100 each. I then put £100-200 a month into my own savings and I assume Mr WT does something similar too. We then pay our own bills from our own accounts (such as car tax, car insurance, car loans and whats left on the credit cards we split between us)

We are probably left with about 40% of our wages each to do as we please with.