What's your monthly "allowance"?

[Deleted]

I'm getting married this summer and the fiance and I have been discussing how to merge finances. We are planning to do "our", "his" and "her" accounts. Both paychecks will be dropped in a joint checking account. Rent, utilities, groceries and other shared expenses will come out of this account. Each month "X" dollars will be automatically transferred to "his" and "her" accounts to be used as we see fit....fun money, clothing, other individual expenses. Whatever is leftover in joint checking account at the end of each month will then be transferred Roth IRA, taxable investments, and other savings.

I know this topic gets discussed ad nauseum on this site, but I was wondering how much others using a similar setup designate to the "his" and "her" accounts as a monthly allowance? So I'm not asking if you are common potters, separate, etc, but I'd like to know how much you allocate to the "his" and "her" accounts if you use this type of setup. Also, what are your expectations of what comes out of the joint account and what comes out of the "his" and "her" accounts?

[Deleted]

^^^I should add that the other thread on the couple having friction caused by the "his" and "her" accounts sparked my interest. They only allocate $100 each month to their individual accounts. This seemed a little light to me, but then again I'm not sure what the $100/month is all supposed to cover.

[Deleted]

DH $400. Me $0. It is a sore spot for me - not that I can't buy what I want but there's rarely any cash left over. When there is cash available for me, I take it. I'm waiting for our tax refund, it's all mine. :-)

[Deleted]

First it all depends on your income and how much you can afford. People that make combined 60K cannot afford the same amount as another couple that makes 200K combined.

- For us it comes down to $160/month each; but we mostly get it in the amount of $40/every thursday (I get paid every week while my wife gets paid every two weeks).


As for accounts, we joined everything a little after we got married (checking/savings) and we each kept one credit card in case of an emergency or if we want to buy something as a gift for the person and we don't want them to find out (I usually find out before hand since I keep track of our accounts on Quicken.

The credit cards are not joint cards, they are cards that we had before we got married. I used to have 6 credit/charge cards and she used to have 4 or so... we decided to cut it down to 2 combined (1 credit card each).

[Savoir Faire-Demogague in NJ]

I am of the opinion that each spouse contributes equally or according to some share based on income(what ever is agreeable) to the family pot to cover the household expenses.

If the couple has some goals, such as buying a house/condo, etc., or something else, then fund that goal.

After that it is wide open. The rest for each spouse is theirs to do what ever they like, no questions asked. If you want to contribute to your retirement plan or invest, then fine...if you don't, then fine it is your business.

[ca]

Personally, I am going to do it the other way around. My pay will continue to go into my own account and then enough money will come into the joint account to cover our agreed upon joint expenses and savings, and the rest is mine to spend as I wish.

Once we determine is the amount of joint expenses/savings, we will split this amount based on proporition of income, so that we are both putting in the same percentage of take home pay:

eg I make 60k they make 40k, joint expenses 50k a year, then I put in 30k they put in 20k, both put in 50% of income.


Joint account to me would be enough to cover housing, food, joint vacations, all household bills, long term savings like EFs, insurance. Basically all the "needs" and joint "wants" that are for both couples.

The individual accounts would be for individual "wants". Like her spa days and his fishing poles (not to be sexist in my examples).

[sheilaincali]

My DH, DS and I all get $20 apiece per week. I hate shopping with a passion so I don't typically spend my money. We get clothes twice a year- in the spring for spring/Summer and in the fall for school/fall/winter. We do all of our shopping on those two days and consider that a regular annual expense. We don't usually eat out during the work week so that's not an issue either. DS saves his money up for video games and itune's gift cards. DH and I buy things like movie tickets, water, etc. Not too exciting.

We have family hair night at my sister's house (big family dinner, licensed stylist comes in and does everyone's hair like clock work every 4 weeks) so we treat that as a regular monthly bill. So grooming doesn't come out of our allowance either.

Depends on what your monthly allowance needs to pay for. Hair cuts? Clothes? Work lunches? Parking? etc.

[Deleted]

Feb 11, 2011 11:53:35 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

My DH, DS and I all get $20 apiece per week. I hate shopping with a passion so I don't typically spend my money. We get clothes twice a year- in the spring for spring/Summer and in the fall for school/fall/winter. We do all of our shopping on those two days and consider that a regular annual expense. We don't usually eat out during the work week so that's not an issue either. DS saves his money up for video games and itune's gift cards. DH and I buy things like movie tickets, water, etc. Not too exciting.

We have family hair night at my sister's house (big family dinner, licensed stylist comes in and does everyone's hair like clock work every 4 weeks) so we treat that as a regular monthly bill. So grooming doesn't come out of our allowance either.

Depends on what your monthly allowance needs to pay for. Hair cuts? Clothes? Work lunches? Parking? etc.

Oh yeah that would change everything. Before I got my promotion I would shave or get a hair cut maybe twice a year if even, but now I have to shave mostly every day and get a hair cut every two weeks.

So from $20/year it comes to $20/every two weeks and that comes out of our regular expenses, not allowance. Same for my wife (shampoo, hair stylist, etc).

[Gardening Grandma]

The joint account covers nearly everything including personal care and clothing. It covers food, gas, all expenses for our residence, entertainment, dogs, vacations, etc, etc.

The "his" and "hers" accounts are for things that are strictly personal priorities.

"His" allowance is $1170/mo. That's the rental check he gets after the PM fee is deducted. He's responsible for paying the property tax, insurance and maintenance on the rental house. The rest is his. He spends in on his hobby car.

"My" allowance is $600/mo. I pay my son's healthcare premium out of it. The rest goes towards grandson's tuition, school expenses and some goes into a trust account for disabled g'daughter.

The "his" and "hers" allowances are deposited into separate checking accounts. I don't keep tabs on his and he doesn't keep tabs on mine. Even though it seems that his allowance is larger, I think it's pretty even after he covers the rental expenses.

[shanendoah]

We have one checking account, one quick access savings, and one high interest savings account. No allowance money gets transferred anywhere, I just keep track of it on the spreadsheets.
I get $125/month. DH gets $75/month. Right now, I am the sole earner, and DH is back in school. School costs, going out to eat together, etc comes out of our regular budget.
Allowance is used for grooming, clothes, if we eat out individually, movies, concerts, gifts for eachother, whatever. I ger more because I am the earner and because my grooming/clothes expenses are higher due to my job. I also like to spend more. DH tends to save money up and get one or two big things a year (just got a new computer) and buy me anniversary gifts. I buy treats for the office.
Allowance was his idea, as was that I get more. I still don't give myself as much more as he thinks I should, but I like having the bigger cushion in our EF.

[sbcalimom]

My husband and I typically get $100 each, though sometimes we have to cut it a bit during tight months. We do also get a small bit from any windfall but that varies depending on the amount. It is primarily intended to cover miscellaneous junk like lunches on the go, a book for fun, or other such stuff. Our allowance isn't intended to pay for any clothes or other personal care expenses. Those are part of our regular budget within reason though anything totally frivolous is considered allowance. This caused some friction in the beginning while we were working out the kinks but works pretty well now.

Oh, and if it helps, we make about $4-5K/mo on average.

[telephus44]

We each get $500 a month (well, actually a little more than that - we get $250 per pay period and we're paid bi-weekly). It covers anything we personally want - if we go out to eat together, that comes from joint. If we go to the movies together, that comes from joint. Allowances are getting my nails done, new CD's, iTunes, Starbucks, eating out lunch while you're at work, clothes, licensing fees for an internet radio station, yoga classes, etc.

I could live with a lot less, but keeping the amount high keeps DH happy and brings much harmony in the marraige. I tend to save mine.

We make 123K combined.

[jeffreymo]

We are supposed to split $140 every payday (biweekly), but it never ends up that way.

[Deleted]

We don't have 'his' and 'hers' accounts... and we really don't have an allowance either.
Neither of us are big spenders, so it has not been necessary to date.

[Tiny]

I'm single so not sure this will help you. I have $140 every two weeks (pay period) as my Allowance. This is enough money for one breakfast, lunch, take out dinner each week, drinks out with coworkers once during the two weeks, any get togethers with friends/hobbies, and the occassional sports betting pool, gift $ for co-workers life events, charitable fund raiser, GS cookies, whatever that comes up occassionally thru out the year. I usually have $20 on "reserve" that I'm saving up for some something (a book, music, whatever splurge-y thing I want for one of my hobbies). My budget has categories for vacation, holiday/family gifts, and clothes so I typically don't need to use my "Allowance" for those kinds of things. My budget DOESN"T have line items for "going out for drinks", hanging with friends, or hobbies... all descretionary spending in my world - so I use my Allowance for those things.
I tend to use every penny of my Allowance.

The best advice would be to determine what things your Allowance will cover and then set it accordingly. If you know you need 2 manicures a month and you can't live without them- you might make that a separate budget line item. If you could live without them then maybe it's something your Allowance is for...

[stats45]

I like this system or the one that CA described. Both give some room for personal expenses, gifts, etc. that don't have to be micromanaged by the other person.

I do this with my partner, and we deposit paychecks into a common account. Automatic drafts take out monies set aside for shared savings goals like travel funds and house savings along with all monthly expenses. The money that goes into the account is after deductions for insurance, workplace retirement, etc. We each put about 10% of the total income into individual accounts. Right now that 20% is about $1600 a month total, but it will be considerably more when I start my new job. We haven't done the expenses as a percentage of income. He has made much more than me in the last year, but I'll be making more than him as of next month. I think it would take a long period of making quite a bit more or less to care about changing things.

I spend mine a little more often than he does; he is remarkably frugal. I invest much of mine, and he likes to know that there is a lot of 'cash in the bank'. Phil might flame us, but it makes him feel better, and he is awesome about doing the other stuff 'by the book'.

[thinid]

DW and I put everything into a joint checking and pay all of our monthly expenses from that. We budget gas, haircuts, dining out, movies, etc, and we both have a debit card. We also maintain a cushion of $500 in the account just in case some of the expenses are higher than usual.
We also have two linked savings accounts. One is for the irregular expenses that we can plan on. Each year we sit down and figure out how to allocate for clothes, camping trips, vacations, xmas shopping, birthdays, etc. We also use this account for our insurance premiums, which we pay every six months. We simply divide the amount we come up with by 12 and that’s what we set up to automatically transfer each month. We also try to maintain a $500 cushion in this account as well.
The second savings account is our “impulse” account. We keep $1000 in this account and this enables us to have enough money on hand to cover any unplanned, but not really necessary expenses. For example, tickets for a concert we both want to go to came on sale a few weeks ago when the good seats were available and cheapest. Having this account allowed us to get those tickets without having to take away from savings or put it on credit and then have worry about the bill. We replenish this account from our personal money allowances, so it’s kind of like being able to give ourselves a short-term loan.
Our individual allowances are $300 each per month. This is ours to use for whatever we want and it gets transferred to our individual accounts. After we take out our fixed and irregular expenses, and our personal allowances, and account for the $500 cushion, everything else goes to our Roth’s and investment accounts.

[Deleted]

Because I "run" the finances and would see any expenses my DF spends we get our allowances in cash, $5/week paid on the 1st Sat of the month. If we want to use the credit card (online or large purchase) or the debit card (we need to use 15/month), we put the cash back into deposit envelope that we run to the cu when we are downtown. If it is a normal purchase, lunch out we will mention it to each other (for example, one more purchase on the debit), if it is a surprise, don't look at the X cc, I'll pay and review that card. Works for us, so far.
Haircuts, need clothes, stuff for the house is budgeted separately and talked about.

[oreo]

We maintain completely separate accounts--no joint account. I own the house we live in and DH pays a contribution toward that a month (about 1/4 of the monthly payment which doesn't include property taxes and/or insurance). He covers all of the food, utilities, and other household stuff (like diapers, paper towels, etc). Whatever we have left at the end we do what we want with and no one keeps track. We are lucky in that both of us are responsible and neither of us have any debt (it took time for DH to learn that but he has come around!) We never fight about money. We've been together almost 20 years. I personally think the separate accounts are the reason but we are also lucky enough to not be financially strapped. When we were (early on), it was more difficult.

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

We have only joint accounts. And we don't really have an "allowance." But we have agreed not to spend more than $500 without checking with the other person first, unless it's an emergency repair or something along those lines. This works fine, for us.

[dividend]

DBF and I don't share money beyond a joint CC for shared purchases, but we allocated our "allowances" very similarly. For me, I take 10% of my gross pay for fun stuff, in 2 categories. 5% if simply discretionary, so anything I don't have a budget line item for. Eating/drinking out, movies, video games, clothes/shoes/jewelry, basically spontaneous, short term fun. The other 5% is labeled 'Vacation'. It's for actual vacations, but also things like maintenance and gear for my bicycle, clothing related to either cycling or snowboarding, scuba gear or classes, basically anything related to my outdoor hobbies. DBF breaks his out differently, but it's roughly the same % of his income for the same stuff. If we ever decide to combine finances more, we'd both be happy with the same discretionary breakdown.

The second savings account is our “impulse” account.

That's a good idea. I just borrow from myself directly. So sometimes the balance in my 'Vacation' category is negative. Mostly it's not, and it all averages out.

[Deleted]

We have one account for fixed expenses, one account for variable, and we each have a fun money account. I deposit between $200-300 for each of us once a month (when I remember anyway.)

I handle all the non-investment finances according to my own logic. DH is not fashionable. He wears a discontinued style of Levi's with tapered ankles. You read that right. So all of his clothes come from the joint account. I pay for my clothes out of my fun money because I like to shop and I don't need everything I have. Personal care expenses (except for discretionary makeup/skincare) come out of joint. My lunches out come out of my fun money because I like to do that often. DH hardly ever does it so he just pays for it out of joint.

If I'm doing something DH is not comfortable with (like sending an irresponsible friend with children some money for food) it comes out of my fun money.

[dragonfly7]

Right now, DH's $80 a month allowance is meant to cover Nintendo DS games, DVDs, fast food meals, morning soda stops, and impulse purchases. In other words, individual discretionary purchases that aren't normally covered by the joint checking account. Since the amount is so little, he just gets the cash rather than setting up a separate account.
I don't currently have or need a formal amount since I'm still looking for work and don't spend much money on small items. However, when we do both have incomes, I will likely make the allowance amount equal for both of us. Other than an occasional lunch out, most of mine will likely be saved up for the large things I would really like to have, like a full Ancestry.com subscription or camera to feed my genealogy habit.

[lurkyloo]

$1200/month for me! That includes everything except mortgage, though--food, gas, clothes, personal care, insurance (when DH doesn't pay it for me, he's sneaky like that), vet bills, gifts, gardening supplies, and often travel. We're more on the independent operators end of the spectrum.
I don't actually know what DH's average discretionary spending is; I suspect he doesn't either. I'd guess it's normally lower than mine, but he's been taking flying lessons for the past year-plus; that tends to skew it a little high...He's one of those people that doesn't spend money unless it's called for, but doesn't stress about spending when it's appropriate. He's the same way with food--only eats when he's hungry and stops when he's full. (I'm sort of jealous especially of that last bit.)

[formerexpat]

We each get $500 a month (well, actually a little more than that - we get $250 per pay period and we're paid bi-weekly)...I could live with a lot less, but keeping the amount high keeps DH happy and brings much harmony in the marraige. I tend to save mine...We make 123K combined.

$13k / $123k = 10.6% of your gross income on junk, not including going out to eat together or other entertainment you do together. Wow, much too high for my comfort. Sounds like your DH is a teenager and has a bit of a self absorption problem. Hope you get that sorted before having children.

We're a single income household. My wife and I have come up with a budget for groceries [including all household items], entertainment, personal spending & misc. Since she stays at home with our child(soon to be "ren"), I transfer that budgeted amount to another one of our checking accounts and she manages that money. She keeps the surpluses as additional "personal" spending above the budgeted amount, so she is benefits from budgeting well and keeping our regular expenses low.

It makes sense this way since she's primarily the one spending this money and closest to where the money is going. I also never have to look at it for budgeting and wonder what this purchase was or that purchase was. It's great to never have to look at a bank account.

All recurring expenses are out of our other joint checking or credit card [car payment, mortgage, HOA, electric, insurance, cable, cell phone]. I manage all investing and saving but we have monthly meetings. All of these items are on auto pilot. I probably log into the bank account once a month. [/size]

[tiptap]

no set allowance. if we're out of cash we withdraw between $500-$1000 from our checking and put it in our "common" wallet in my closet. Then we dip between $50-$100 for our personal spending until the common wallet runs out. We use CC for our grocery and gas.

[justwhoever]

$0. money is tight. If there ever comes a day when we have enough income then we might give an "allowance" but it would also include the kids. No reason why the adults should be the only ones enjoying life.

[WannabeWealthy]

I'm the breadwinner in our house (until Monday actually), so everything comes from my account and everything gets saved in my account. However, when we work, here is how I split everything up:

I take the percentage of paying for all the bills and what my net income is and use that same percentage for my wife to take out of her income. The rest is ours to save in whatever or spend whatever. We have our own retirement accounts and our own savings accounts. Of course, if there is a real emergency, then we both cover it the way we can (that usually means I'll pay for everything). I'm sure when we retire, I'll use the retirement money to pay for our living.

-M

[hawkeyes2001]

$100 a month. Which for me is plenty and for DBF is not enough as previously discussed! Essentially it is to cover anything "fun" we are not doing together. It usually boils down to individual meals out, individual hobbies or activities with friends in which the other is not included. DBF spends most of his on breakfast, lunch out during the work day and on things like going to or renting a movie. I spend mine on the occasional latte and books. We agreed it is not a lot so if we want to do anything major like go on a trip with friends we would have to save up our allowance.

We also agreed that clothing should come out of our joint account but to be honest I buy most of my clothes/shoes out of my individual account. I spend more on these things and I always have the money in my personal account because I don't spend a lot of it on other things. I prefer it because I buy what I want without worrying what he thinks about the cost and he is CHEAP when it comes to clothes/shoes.

I think we both are a somewhat limited by the small amount. As far as being able to go on weekend trips with friends or buy something more expensive like a road bike (a want of DBF). Then next time we have extra money to allocate somewhere I might suggest giving each of us a larger lump sum ($500-1k) for our individual accounts. I have no idea what I would do with mine but I know he has a list of things he wants.

[cael]

OP, we're in the exact same position. Getting married this summer and my plan is to then have one account both our checks are deposited into for bills, savings etc., then we'll have our own checking accounts to transfer "fun money" into weekly or monthly. I don't know how we're going to portion it out just yet... I don't spend much; DF spends more in a week than me, but he is getting laid off this summer sometime (supposedly.. it's been pushed up 3x now). Once he gets laid off (and quits smoking), I've told him to prepare to not have much money weekly to spend on incidentals. He gets it, even though he'll probably whine a bit. After the wedding our big goal will be a house, so we'll be starting a house fund I'll be putting money into as I see fit. DF isn't very good with financials... and although he whines sometimes, he understands it, so I'll be doing most of the money managing.

So back to the original question - I dunno. For discretionary "fun money", in a normal week I might get lunch out once, and about a coffee a day. I'm cheap, so $20 or so would be more than enough weekly for me. Again, I don't spend much usually. $100/month for that would probably be more than enough for me. For DF, I think that amount is reasonable too, but again his spending adds up on cigarettes and snacks, which we're trying to work on (he's promised to quit smoking by the wedding.. .really hoping he's able to for a number of reasons) Good luck!