joint finances??

My husband is dreadful with money, now we are out of the military and he is finally here in the uk has just found some casual and xmas employment (minimum wage) until he finds something in his field. He wants me to take care of the finances and just give him an allowance, fine with me, but i really dont know how much is enough or too much to give him. hubby smokes and drinks alcohol, i dont and as such i dont think it should come out of the weekly shop, but his personal allowance.

I am also thinking that bigger purchases should come out of joint savings.

I am hoping once debts are sorted and we have some savings, then we can have a bigger allowance each month.

Right now we have a joint account, where all money is paid into and all bills come out.

seperate accounts ( thinking allowance paid into these)
joint savings account.( money for bigger purchases)

was also thinking of setting up another savings for things like birthdays , xmas, holiday.

Do you think this seems ok, i know it is all relative to how much you earn and how much you have going out, but just looking for some advice , or if this set up would work, or wondering how you deal with finances

Shaz
__________________

I think it has less to do with how much money you have than with which method will keep the two of you from fighting about money.

I think that sounds like a great system, if you are both in agreement. We decided to do partially joint finances as well, and it has worked out brilliantly.

We both pay into a joint account every month. This was originally a percentage of both of our salaries when I was earning more, but now that we both earn the same, we contribute the same. Out of this comes our mortgage payments, our groceries, insurance, household bills, and any purchases for the flat.

We both have our own cash ISAs, but these are considered joint savings. We also each pay into a travel account, out of which we pay for our holidays every year.

And finally, we both keep separate current accounts. We are both paid into our own current accounts, and whatever is left in these after money is transferred into our savings and joint accounts is considered our own money. DH tends to spend money on music and dvds, and the odd expensive nights out with his friends. I tend to spend money on clothes and expensive shoes for my deformed gimpy feet and lunches/evenings out with my friends. We decided we didn't want to have to ask permission to treat ourselves, and we wanted to avoid the possibility of feeling resentful over how we each spent our extra cash. We've never had a money-related argument, so it's worked out fine for us.

My mother thinks having separate money is being selfish, but I think it's the best system for us.

The only issue with moving money from separate accounts into a joint account is that you need to be careful with the timing of direct debits, if the direct debits come out of the joint account.

Banks tend to take out money for direct debits before they transfer money into the account, when both events are meant to happen on the same day. Meaning that you could end up with some very nasty overdraft charges if the money isn't moved over early enough.

Doing that is unlawful.  In my experience, when a bank has done that, a quick phone calls gets the charges withdrawn.

Vicky

We have two joint accounts - one for paying bills and one which our paychecks go into.

We've only had a problem with bouncing a direct debit once, but I called the bank and they didn't charge us.

We pay our bills based on percentage of salaries. So we total up both of our incomes and all of our bills, work out what percentage of our total monthly income goes towards bills (incl food) and then we each pay that percentage from our respective monthly wages. It works for us at the moment. Most of our direct debits were already set up in his name before I moved here so he pays all the bills out of his current account and I pay rent out of my own current account (cost of rent is exactly the same as my monthly percentage so it worked out nicely) and then we each contribute however much we can to a joint savings account.

We have a joint checking account for bills into which we pay the same percentage of our salaries. We have separate savings accounts for our own savings and fun money. It took us a while to get to this system, but it works best for us.

I would consider cigarettes and alcohol as "allowance" money unless you were going to a night out together, then the cigarettes as "allowance" and alcohol as joint.