Living Together / Managing Finances

Former Member

My boyfriend and I have been talking about beginning to save for a house - buying or renting, we don't quite know yet. He graduates from uni in two or three years time (depends if he does his Masters or not) and we'll be moving in together then.

To those of you who are saving / already living together.. how much did you have to (or are aiming to) save before you actually found somewhere and moved in? And how did you save it - seperately or together, etc?

And (looking a bit further ahead), to those of you who do live together.. how do you split the bills, etc?

Thing is, at the minute, my boyfriend is on his placement year, earning about £14k and I'm working fulltime (have done for two years already) and earning £10k. Next year, he goes back to being a student (with a £2k loan and £2k sponsorship grant) and I'll still be working. When he graduates, he's going into a job (already has it agreed) that'll pay £24k, whereas because of what I do, I'm looking at earning £14k at best. Bearing in mind the difference, if we both pay the same into an account to pay the bills from, I'll have much less money to spend on myself however I like than he will. Therefore, would a "two thirds of each salary go into the joint account and the rest is your own" arrangement work better?

Grr... so many questions!

Former Member

We're married, so we have more legal protection if it all goes wrong, but we have a joint bank account. Both our wages go into there, the bills go out of it, and we take out a certain amount each month as spending money. It's the same for both of us (although we do earn largely similar salaries at the moment), so one partner isn't getting screwed more than the other, and we both contribute according to our means.

As for saving, we have a little bit of the wife's student loan tucked away in an ISA, when we didn't need it all.

When you come to rent or buy, you will need to have saved a fortune. We had to beg, borrow and steal from our parents to get all the fees paid for this place at first.

Former Member

Kermit wrote:

When you come to rent or buy, you will need to have saved a fortune. We had to beg, borrow and steal from our parents to get all the fees paid for this place at first.

Hmm.. that's what I'm concerned about - if we buy (renting just seems like "empty money"), not just the actual mortgage deposit, but the fees, stamp duty and all the rest of it! I work for a firm of Insurance Brokers / Financial Advisers, so I'm going to ask one of the guys roughly how much it would all cost (nowadays, obviouly) next week.

I've got £3k in an ISA (from my Grandparents, have to spend it on "something worthwhile"), as has my bf. He was talking about not getting his student loan next year and just surviving off his sponsorship grant (his parents pay all his tution and accomodation fees), but I would have thought it'd be a good idea that he gets the student loan and sticks it straight into the "house fund". Because the interest charged on it is so low, wouldn't that be the best idea? (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Former Member

If you can avouid using the student loan, it isn't a bad idea to wang it in an ISA.

We rent at the minute, we had to pay a month's rent in advance, a month's rent as deposit and then, on top of all that, we had to pay half a month's rent plus VAT in estate agent's fees. Only due to estate agent incompetence did we avoid paying the latter (they fucked up that many times we told them that we wouldn't pay them).

Which is why I hope all estate agents, all their families and all their friends, die in a horribly painful manner.

Former Member

luckily we bought our house 4 and a half years ago when house prices were a lot lower. I had about £3k from a trust fund which was our deposit and I cant remember much about fees.
As regards to splitting the bills, we just have a joint bank account. All our money is OUR money. We dont keep anything back as seperate money.

Former Member

we just bought our first house earlier in the summer (not even moved in yet!). it was a bit of a task.

we had a pretty big deposit (40% of the house price) that was made up of money my mum had been investing for me since i was born, and it was an (advance!) wedding present (don't worry, it's protected until he marries me, just in case he decides to chuck me ), money saved up while we'd been living rent-free at my parents house, and an unofficial, interest-free loan from the money in my dad's private pension fund. there's no way we would have been taken seriously as buyers without their help, even though we could comfortably afford the mortgage repayments. most mortgage companies will stretch to 2.5 to 3 times your joint salaries (more if you're both graduates). so unless you're both doing pretty well, you're going to need a fairly big deposit, or you'll either not be able to get a mortgage, or be screwed on rates.

we have our own current accouts that our salaries get paid into, and then we have a joint account that all the bills go out of, and we pay in a set amount every month (enough to totally cover all living expenses and bills). everything that is left in our own accounts is ours to do as we want with. we do earn a similar wage though, which probably makes it easier.

the best thing is just to figure out what works best for you, money wise. everyone likes to do things a little differently.

Former Member

Thanks for all your advice

Just to update, we talked about it last night and he's "thinking about it"..

He hasnt given much thought as to how he's going to afford anywhere to live when he graduates (whether I'm there too or not) and I think he's only just woken up to the fact he needs to think about it now, particularly if he insists on not doing his last year.

I've agreed not to mention it again until he does

Former Member

I'm not in this situation yet (being single), but I agree with Kermit on trying to save some of the student loan.

I did a placement year between years 2 and 3 of university and earned £13k. After I subtracted my rent and lifestyle, I managed to save about £3k. This helped me through the final year of university. This meant that I was able to save nearly all of my student loan for that final year. That went into a Smile ISA at 5%. I inherited £1000 from my great grandad when he died in 1986, so I had most of that when I left uni as well.

Former Member

Managing Money!

Hi there.

I have just been in a sticky predicament! We bought our house in 2001 when we both earned 13K each, and recently ended up having a debt of 34K on credit cards....whoops... we then had to borrow from the equity in the house - on our mortgage to cover it. A lot of this debt was student loans of mine, and student debt coupled with joint debt we got into doing the house up.

All I am saying is BE CAREFUL - and don't go into it if finances are going to be hard. I earn a lot more now, but cuz we were paying so much on credit card repayments, it is only now we have sorted this out - I can live again!

When we moved in, we set up a joint account and each still had our separate accounts which meant that we had our own spending money for clothes etc. My fella used to pay more into the account as I had so many debts.

Now we have cleared the debts - aside from a huge mortage and I earn a lot more than him, we have just got a joint account which all our money goes into and we take some money - the same amount - for spends. When you get into living together, it has to be give and take and shouldn't matter if one person earns more than the other as long as you both respect each other