How should married couples conduct their financial affairs?

if 150K combined isn't enough for you, you really need to question your spending habits.

If a partner sees you as someone who wastes money, he'll generally withhold money for a rainy day. I know my wife has zero financial sense. We have a joint account, and she's basically not happy until it's empty every month.

Not married but 10 year relationship with 2 older stepkids.

I earn more by some margin compared to herself who also has a "good" salary, not too dissimilar to OP situation.

We do a budget for expenses each month. We have our own accounts and a joint current and joint saving account too. With the budget figures we make sure we each have a similar amount of disposable income for the month. Generally this would result in me paying 60-70% of the expenses. Can't imagine a situation where herself was on the breadline and I'm out living it up.

However we didnt arrive at this situation organically. We went to relationship counselling (for other issues) and money came up as a problem. I was completely unaware that a 50:50 split was unfair as I was earning more. And she was struggling but hadnt communicated it well. Counselluing really helped this.

I think you are missing the point - there is trust in having a joint account. My husband doesnt ask me for permission to spend or I dont ask my husband for permission - we buy what we want and need. Obviously large expenditure amounts would be discussed. I would think that even couples with separate accounts should discuss large expenditure - I would find it very odd if a partner just went off and bought themselves say a new car without telling the other person. Having a joint account causes no arguments whatsoever and never has for us. We have separate savings accounts though but no expenditure goes out of these accounts. To me having a joint account is equality and openess in a marriage.

I would find it very odd going out for a meal for instance and having to discuss in the car who is paying - that to me is ridiculous. It would seem though that some couples are like this.

I think it is called "pin money". It is money that a wife should put away and keep to herself as an emergency fund in case she needs it to run away in case the husband got abusive, or disappeared, or if he went on the drink. Every woman should have an emergency fund like this and not have the husband know about it.

I would find that odd that couples can be as nitpicky to take note of who has paid for what. I wouldnt even do that to a friend! Its not good in a marriage. Sooner or later that will lead to problems.

Exactly. I funded my recent expenditure on a fancy solar panel and storage system from my bonuses at work. Personal savings are allowed too! It's important to cover the joint expenses with a margin for safety. But after that money is to enjoy life with. The whole point of the setup we have is to have the joint account budgeted and then we have our own remaining salary to spend as you please with no question.

openess and transparancy is very much important with any system . the issue here is that the op didnt know her husbands salery and what he is doing with the 40k more a year he roughly has more than she does.

OP you realy need to find out where this money is going. it can range from a great pension , to colage funds for the kids to a gambling adiction or a second family. hopefully not the last ones

im supprised that you think a joint account is the best way. i have heard stories directly from people that show it doesnt work

several times i have been talking to guys and they have told me they are saving up for a newer car or van etc or a trip away with the lads and when asked about it 6 months later thaey say there wives spent the money on them. and one case where the husband boughts a 35k camper van and the wife lost the plot on him. i was working there and it would have been funny if it wasnt so sad.

joint accounts only work with 2 frugal people. if one is more or less frugal than the other it can create issues

I can give my take here... I Thankfully was in the position to clear the final chunk on my mortgage last week in AIB. They sent me a letter with final amount to clear it and the daily interest of circa €1.04 each day. I went to the counter in AIB and gave them a draft for the large amount and asked what the extra was of daily interest - think total was €4 something.. with that my wife gets a fiver out of her bag and gives it to me to pay the balance. Anyway.. the story here is that after 18 years of marriage and me paying the mortgage and never missing a payment; it was my wife that finally cleared it for me. That's an example of how some married couples conduct their financial affairs.. nothing ever agreed; just that I paid for the house.

Note.. that's the only ever contribution she made to paying the mortgage; but it was an important and symbolic one 😁

i agree 95% . your probably right. but he could be doing good with the money.

thats why the OP needs to find out

Well done on your clear mortgage @paddydriver , nice milestone. Hopefully that will be us in 4 years.

Our situation was always that both incomes come into one joint account when married. All bills come out of that joint account, and we discuss and agree everything financial. Pensions, insurance, mortgage changes, savings and planned spends. Savings go into dedicated accounts for specific intended purposes. Car, Holiday, Emergency. Before we were married, we did it a different way, I covered bills and he covered rent, and we did every second discretionary... was roughly even but it didn't give either of us a clear view on how we could be more efficient because it was scattered / split. We found it more difficult to plan that way, too ad-hoc.

We use three documents to track how we are sitting, financially for the last decade or so.

Plan - this is just a google document with notes in it like... replace the car in 2025, replace the gutters on house in 2024, bring emergency fund up to x amount. We check it once or twice a year, have a note in the calendar to do it.

Budget - This we take a look at every 6 months as well. Has all the expected incomings and outgoings listed, so we can see where we need to adjust anywhere. So, if we see groceries going up for example, we might bring pension contributions down. Things like that.

Monthly tracker - this isn't needed unless people really want to get into the nitty gritty, but we are both nerdy enough to enjoy it. We dump the account data in here and have set up charts that update monthly on various things, like grocery spend, electricity usage and cost, pension / share / investment performance, mortgage burn-down, car mileage and cost. It gives us indicators like when a car is getting old, we can see cost getting steeper for example. I love a good excel chart. :)

But either way, to have a clear understanding of your own household, the very least you need is the data. And OP, you don't have that. That would stress me out. And I think when you're the lower earner, being responsible for the lions share of the expenses simply isn't fair.

I feel for the op as the things seem to have really gotten out of hand by the fact the status quo has remained for many many years and it's going to take quite a bit of work to get things evened out. I think the first step would be to make sure all common expenses are split including the things that are currently not e.g. kids clothes and household expenses - also a jointly paid for holiday for all the family needs to happen.

From the perspective of managing finances there is no "right" way, every couple will be different but like a few other posters my wife and I would never have considered the pooling all money into one account and both getting paid into it etc - I don't want to offend but I do find the whole "pocket money" or "allowance" from the pool etc quite strange for grown adults. We both get paid into our own accounts and while we have a joint account which we setup on getting married we have found that we don't really use it - mortgage comes out of my wife's account as it gets her free banking, I just transfer over 50% of the mortgage, she has some other bills and I have some bills some sort of balance so we don't worry on them but major ones either one or the other transfers over money (or has an SO set up for fixed things like mortgage and childcare).

Things like car expenses we both look after our own car though if fuel is needed when driving the other persons car we would fill and not be looking for it. Meals out and that sort of thing we take turns paying, not religiously keeping track but over time we would think it balances out. I wouldn't know the balance in her account nor she mine at a given time but we know what we earn and roughly what we save etc. We save separately but would pool it in the joint account for a large one of purchase etc.

We split things 50:50 as a general rule - I earn a bit more than my wife now, she used to earn a bit more than me - we feel 50:50 is fair and after bills are paid our money is our own to spend/save as we each wish there is very little discussion on what we spend our money on outside of big purchases. There was a period when my wife was not earning while on mat leave during this I transferred over money to her account as she needed it. I think if one person earns a very low wage compared to the other then 50:50 is harder to argue but once both are hitting 50k plus I think even with a large difference like the OP I think 50:50 is a fair way to go about it.

Our way works well for us, we trust each other and we never have any arguments or stresses over managing our finances.