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Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#51
post #3

I am currently the main provider and my wife works part time while in school. All money is our money no matter who earned it. It’s never been a point of debate or emotions other than “oh we got more money this month, cool!” in the event of a bonus or extra income. We have a budget and try to stick to it and have occasional vacations or upgrade something in the house. When it comes to finances we are a single unit and…

This is what we do too. Once we bought a house and functionally drained our bank accounts we took that as the moment to open all new joint accounts to make tracking our income and spending easier and make the common pool explicit.

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#52
Put all income earned into a joint account.

Pull out "pocket money" to match demonstrated need for working or @home role

Have a third operating account for large purchases.

Stop worrying who earned it, and focus on shared experiences or justified solo spending.

(not in FAANG. If you go into a relationship seeking to preserve the asymmetry when you come out of it, don't be surprised it colours the relationship)

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#53
My wife's a postdoc and I'm a software engineer with around 8 years experience, so I make roughly 3x not including stocks etc. Our money goes into the same joint account and we split everything evenly (although I must admit to being more likely to impulse spend and go over my budget). I have no issue sharing this because in marriage you're equal, so I don't really think about it in that way. She also had more savings than me when we got married, so there's some equality gained there.

Just have a budget and try stick to it. Have a pot for your own entertainment and for her own entertainment, and then for joint entertainment. It's great she's on more money than you because you're playing for the same team. If there is some sort of "It's my money, I earned it" then have different personal budgets I guess, weighted on income amounts. But everything else should be equal imo (house, bills, holiday fund, etc).

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#54
You are married, whatever you are earning is marital property. Don't think of it as mine or hers, think of it as ours.

(If you don't think it is really both of yours, talk to a divorce lawyer.)

I've been married for forever. My wife finished school before I did and was making 4x what I was while I stayed in school. Afterwards we were making about the same for a bit and then I started getting raises and eventually she stopped working when the kids came around.

We always just put the money together and set aside an equal little bit for each of us to spend however we wanted (currently ~$300/mo). Haven't had any fights about money yet.

Re-reading your comment now, it sounds like maybe your wife is having problems making that mental adjustment. There are couples counselors that specialize in financial counseling, maybe that's worth a shot. I'm not sure showing her this post would really help. :-)

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#55
post #4

There are three main possible future outcomes: 1. You get divorced and she keeps her money 2. As a couple, you never spend "her" money because it's "her" money. You die having spent none of the money 3. At some point in the future, you start spending "her" money (3) doesn't make sense given she's uncomfortable with it now. (2) also doesn't make much sense. So to me it seems like either she's acting irrationally or ex…

4. You and your wife become one in spirit and stop thinking in terms of "his" and "hers", only "ours".

OP, it sounds like this would be a huge shift in thinking for both you and your wife, but I hope you can find your way there (maybe with the help of a marriage counselor).

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#56

Our general division of labor is that I'm responsible for earning money and my wife is responsible for spending it. It works for us.

That's about how it works for us as well. I make the money, and she spends it exceedingly efficiently for our regular purchases (squeezing a dime and finding a quarter).

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#57
My wife makes 5x less than me and it's all our money.

We live in a developing country, she has an local job while I have a remote job.

We've still got separate bank accounts but we'd like to use shared account instead.

Prior to 2020, I was earning similar to her. Then I got this job and we tried out best to avoid money conflicts by making it all ours.

Fact: we spent over 100% of our combined pre tax income since 2020 on cancer treatment for a family member.

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#58
My husband and I have always had a deal where we live off the higher salary, and the lower is allocated as our "fun money" (dinners out, travel, etc.). We've swapped back and forth over 20 years, but it worked well for me psychologically when I was making less, since everything we did that wasn't grown up stuff came from "my" side of the budget,

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#59
My wife doesn't work and I earn all of our money. It's always our money. We each get a small column in our budget that we can do what ever we want with but apart from that all our money is just one big pool. I don't know how you can raise a family without treating your money that way. When you have kids you're all working together to raise them. If your input is money or time it's all input that you're giving of yourself to provide for your children.

People have different ways of doing things but I like the simple way. We all work towards the goal of raising our family. All resources are shared and lots of communication is required to keep us on the same page. I couldn't do this without my wife and she couldn't do it without me. I'm grateful for all of her hard work and she is for mine.

Re: Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

#60
I'm the sole earner in our family. My wife has been a stay at home mom for the last 7 years and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. It was particularly wonderful during the pandemic - we pulled the kids out of the school system and had great success with homeschooling. (Obviously there were plenty of challenges and difficulties, but overall a great experience).

I make a bit under 150k a year which is pretty good in our area (although it certainly _feels_ like we should have more money than we do, guess that's life for you). All our regular expenses fit into about 5k a month.

There is about an extra 400 per paycheck after we budget for savings, which we divide into two separate checking accounts. These are our respective "fun money" accounts, and that money is off budget and purely discretionary. Hers goes largely to coffee and books, mine goes largely towards fishing, weightlifting, and guitar stuff in various percentages depending on what I'm most into at any given time.

My wife is planning to start working part time eventually - this is the first year when both kids have been in school full time. This money, in theory, will fatten up both savings and discretionary cash.

It has worked out pretty well overall. We budget the "regular" money with reasonable strictness, and the "fun" money makes it easy to keep our hobby spending from digging into the important money.

Minor edit: We have never thought of money as belonging to either one of us, even when we were dating in college (I mean, at first we did, obviously, but after a two or three years it became moot). We're a team, the money that comes in is _ours_ - not mine.

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