‘WE EARN £10K A MONTH AND SHARE IT ALL – BUT OUR RELATIONSHIP IS LIKE A PRESSURE COOKER’

Do you organise your finances with your partner in a unique way? Let us know at [email protected].

You may share a home, a child and your whole life with a partner – but do you share your money with them too? 

Finances can be a minefield, even in the strongest relationships. A survey by Aqua, a credit card firm, found that 35pc of UK couples feel financial strain has affected their relationship, with 31pc admitting it’s a regular source of arguments.

To keep tensions low, some stick to the principle of what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours. In fact, half of British couples do not share a joint bank account with their partner, according to a survey by F&C Investment Trust, with younger people especially preferring to keep things divided. Others swear by the 50/50 rule or a fairer, more flexible split.

At best, it creates a lot of annoying maths tallying things up at the end of the month. At worst, it’s a ticking time bomb that can tear couples apart. We talk to four couples to discover how they share their finances – and what they argue about most when it comes to finances.

Kayleigh and Craig Johnstone, both 37, Cheshire

The Johnstones have been together for 18 years and married for 12. They have two children, aged 11 and nine. 

Until recently, Craig was the main breadwinner for the family, earning £80,000 last year. He has since quit his job to start his own company, Cheers Global, which offers export consultancy and management services to drinks businesses. Kayleigh took a tax-free £12,500 from her business income annually, with the remainder going into her pension. 

Together, they have a combined monthly income of approximately £4,500. Their monthly expenses include a mortgage of £800 and total outgoings of £3,500.

From the day they graduated into the workforce, Kayleigh and Craig pooled all their earnings into a joint account.

“Because we got together at such a young age, we started our adult lives together,” says Kayleigh. “We hadn’t established any other way of doing it.” 

Earlier, when they earned relatively equal salaries, they would each take the same amount into a separate personal account for “fun money”. 

“We quickly realised our budget would be spent on different things,” Kayleigh says. “Craig is more extravagant – some would say generous – than I am, so when he is treating his mates to rounds at the pub, it doesn’t impact our household budget. Equally, I can spend all my fun money on nails and lashes without any guilt. It works well for us to defuse tension and remove the need for discussion.” 

However, this system isn’t foolproof and they do sometimes still find themselves clashing.

“Right now, Craig wants a new sofa and I don’t,” says Kayleigh.

They have also found themselves disagreeing in the past when one of them feels the fun money amount should be changed.

“We have a discussion and eventually compromise and agree,” she adds. “The reason we set our finances up in this way was to avoid those disagreements, which largely it does.”

Both Kayleigh and Craig have gone through periods of earning more than the other. At times, Kayleigh has been the primary caregiver for their children, sacrificing her earning potential. She found this mentally tough, juggling childcare and part-time work, earning about £10,000 a year. 

“Back then I felt as though I didn’t have the ability to earn more and that the responsibility was on Craig’s shoulders, which I found very difficult,” she explains. “I felt as though the work I was doing looking after our children instead of putting them into nursery was not seen as valid or as important as earning money.”

For Craig, sharing their finances this way simply makes sense. Any other way – particularly for couples with children – he finds odd.

“It seems like a trust issue, like they don’t trust their partner in that kind of joint financial situation,” he explains. 

Chad, 28, and Ben, 24, London/Portugal

Chad has been with his partner Ben* for just over a year. Chad is a CEO and angel investor and earns over seven figures a year. His boyfriend owns a small construction business and takes home around £200,000 per year.

The pair moved in together at the end of 2023. They split their time between London and Portugal, where they live in a seven-bedroom home that Chad owns.

“I bought the house outright and I cover all the expenses,” he says. “So everything from bills to maintenance to the housekeeper to the gardener to the pool boy, everything is covered by me.” 

This is something Chad decided, despite pushback from Ben.

“I feel that if I am the partner in the position where I’m a significantly higher earner, it’s my responsibility.”

Chad’s mindset towards finances is the same, whether you’re in a relationship or you’re not. 

I think either way, those expenses would be there, so I would be paying them regardless of whether he was living with me or not.” 

Ben disagrees with this and would rather the household costs be split down the middle. This was something the couple knocked heads over.

“I don’t really get how that works,” says Chad. 

Fighting a losing battle, Ben found his own way to financially pull his weight. Now they simply pay for different things, rather than splitting the cost of everything.

“Whenever we go out, he almost always pays,” says Chad. “We travel a lot; whenever we do that, he tends to take the lead.”

Even if Chad and Ben got married in the future, as well as signing a prenuptial agreement, Chad is adamant that they’d keep their finances separate.

“I’ve had terrible experiences with partners in the past where they’ve been with me for what they can financially gain,” he says. “I’m at the point now where I have a clear separation of what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours.” 

Maybe down the line, Chad says, his perspective might change. He admires couples who are able to go all in and share a bank account.

“They’re clearly a lot more trusting than I am.”

*Name has been changed.

Karl and Rohini Emanuelsson, 47 and 51, Kent

The couple met in 2001 in a cheesy nightclub in Leicester Square.

“It was love at first sight,” says Karl.

Within a year, they bought a four-bedroom investment property together in Islington despite not yet living together. 

Initially, they used spreadsheets to ensure everything was split 50/50. Karl was making £300 a day as a business analyst at Goldman Sachs, while Rohini was raking in around £1,000 a day as a project director for the likes of BP, John Lewis and Microsoft.

“We always had shared accounts, shared credit cards,” he explains. “Everything is on trust.”

In 2004, Karl made the decision to quit his job to focus on property projects and entrepreneurial ventures, making Rohini the main breadwinner for the couple. But by 2015, their relationship was strained and Rohini suffered severe burnout from her corporate career and was bedridden for three months. 

“Burnout was the most difficult time in my life. Everything I valued and who I thought I was was shattered,” says Rohini.

After a transformative retreat in Austria, they decided to fully commit to their passion project, Y42 Radical Retreats, in 2019. They run wellbeing and couples’ retreats from a manor house in Lincolnshire and a beach house in Kent. 

Their income comes from rental properties and their retreat business. On average, they take home £10,000 per month but don’t have a rigid system for how this is split.

“Whenever one of us needs money, we just ask the other person and juggle it like that,” says Karl. 

Working together has been tough and takes daily persistence, Rohini explains.

“It’s like a pressure cooker for the relationship, any cracks are magnified.”

The main issue? “Sometimes we give too direct feedback which is frankly very unkind,” she says. “Basic Ps and Qs are missing and we have very high expectations of each other.”

Despite not saving traditionally for retirement, their eight buy-to-let properties and passive income sustain their lifestyle.

“Our properties have really been the big gamble to enable us to retire already and do these retreats,” he explains. 

While Karl and Rohini approach their finances as partners to avoid clashing, each of them has the sign off on different areas of their lives. Karl leads on finances and investments, while Rohini manages their three children’s upbringing and their business operations. 

As a couple, they have always regarded money as a vehicle.

“We’ve always been about growing and always been about investing,” explains Karl. 

However, that doesn’t mean he won’t occasionally enjoy splurging on the finer things.

“I like to buy watches, I like to buy boys’ toys,” he says. “Rohini used to be like that but now if she has more than two pairs of shoes, it’s too much.” 

Alice Ojeda and Daniel Redmond, both 32, Cardiff

For Daniel and Alice, keeping finances separate created tension. The couple have been together for nine years; Daniel works for a housing association and Alice has been running Authentic House, a small business selling sustainable skincare and home products, since 2018. 

Previously, Daniel covered the couple’s main expenses and Alice was simply left to pay for whatever personal expenses came up. However, due to the unpredictability of her business she found she was having to go to her partner and ask for money.

“It was more of a strain before we started splitting things so transparently, because then I felt really bad when I had to ask Daniel for money,” she says. “I’d say the power dynamic was a little bit off.” 

For Daniel, it felt like all the weight of the household costs were on his shoulders. And Alice felt like she was being given pocket money by her partner.

“Asking for money when I needed it made me feel guilty,” she explains.

Now they share their income, which gives them both oversight of their money and the different pots it is going in.

Alice adds: “It also felt like formalising the idea that as a couple we’d share our prosperity, the highs and the lows.” 

The couple’s mortgage is £310 a month and other monthly expenses – including bills, groceries and dining out – add up to just under £1,000.

“We just about cover our expenses,” says Alice. “I know that we both need to make a bit more money, particularly me with my business.”

During the pandemic, Authentic House generated more than £100,000 in revenue. Daniel even worked full-time for the business during this period.

Alice recalls: “It just felt like it was going to keep growing. The problem was my finance skills were low, so … it didn’t result in much household income.”

Authentic House turned over £28,500 in the last 12 months and Alice reinvests most of her earnings back into the business. While the business contributes partly to expenses, the couple mainly live off Daniel’s £28,000 salary. Despite living with a small margin for error, they maintain a 50/50 split of the household income regardless of who earns more. 

For Daniel and Alice, it’s important to consider both financial and non-financial contributions to their household.

“When you have a relationship, you’re not only bringing in financial benefits to the house, there’s also the unpaid work, the cleaning, the cooking,” says Alice. “It’s really hard to quantify what each person brings into a couple and we just take it on trust that everything we bring in is shared.” 

Play The Telegraph’s brilliant range of Puzzles - and feel brighter every day. Train your brain and boost your mood with PlusWord, the Mini Crossword, the fearsome Killer Sudoku and even the classic Cryptic Crossword.

2024-09-15T07:02:00Z dg43tfdfdgfd