Was speaking to a good mate yesterday.. he claims that him and his wife are happy with eachother emotionally. They both are on decent wages but noted they have an "awkward" tune when it comes to discussing and sharing their independant finances :where they are very discreet with their income, spending and savings etc.
Here are the key points I picked up:
*They split billing responsibilities and variable household expenditures
*He doesn't know how much his wife earns, due to her shift work and additional overtime shifts.
*His wife is not comfortable to disclose and would understate her earnings.
*They aren't open with their savings with each other and attempts to bring this up for future planning hasn't gone well.
*General discomfort in speaking about money and finances in general with each other.
Is this common? Personally me and my partner operate almost on the other side of the fence.. So am wandering what are OzB's thoughts on this, around being financially transparent (income, spending, budgeting/planning, savings) with your lifelong partner?
the allowance is purely for your personal fun and spending. It's up to you really what you want to put it towards.
I love my tech, video games and motorbikes, so alot of it goes towards that.
Even in terms of clothing, if it's not the bare essentials, like lets say i find some fancy shoes (that i don't need), i'll buy that under my allowance.
But then the general expenses covers a lot, but especially the essentials.Fuel, standard clothing (clothing you actually need), food, bills etc.
I hear what you're saying, the person that has a bigger allowance will generally be better groomed, and be able to afford more stuff….but generally that's how the world works. What this mostly does is gives us incentive to work harder and try to earn more, as well be wise with our money. It's more about having our own little guilt-free expense account, if i want i can blow that allowance to the point that the account is at $0, and i don't need to worry about bills being paid.
We did discuss the idea of splitting the allowance evenly, but then the problem you have there is 1 person is paying for more of the other person's indulgences, in addition to that it gives you less incentive to work harder or seek a job that pays more as you won't be seeing much of that come through to your spending money.
It should also be noted that right now we share the household chores and responsibilites somewhat evenly. But where we will re-discuss this situation is if we were to have a child, and if someone had to spend more time at home caring for the child, we would then find a way to balance that allowance money as the other person may still be working, but wont officially be getting paid for it.
In the end people need to have these tough to have conversations with their partners and find that middle ground, it's very rare that you and your partner will be earning the same amount, but in the end you need to do what's best for the relationship, whilst staying financially stable and enjoying life.