When Max was making £70,000 a year in tech, he and his wife Hannah pooled their entire salaries into a single joint account. When he was made redundant last year and the household had to survive on Hannah’s income of between £40,000 and £60,000, nothing changed.
“We’ve always wanted to do things 50/50,” says Max, 31. “We made a commitment to each other that what’s mine is yours, and vice versa.”
“Couple Hannah and Max share finances 50/50 even after Max's redundancy, cutting spending drastically.”
The couple, who married in 2022 after two years together, have always split their money equally, despite sometimes large income gaps. Their salaries go into a joint account, from which mortgage, bills, food, petrol and other household costs are paid. Each month they take the same amount for personal spending.
“If one of us wants to buy clothes, make-up or go to the pub they can do that without feeling watched,” Max explains. “It means we aren’t accountable to each other for those things.”
They also divide money into pots for savings and predictable spending like haircuts. The couple came into the relationship with very different attitudes to money. Hannah’s family discuss finances openly, while for Max “money was totally taboo”.
“We never spoke about money so as an adult I was left without any knowledge of things like what’s a good salary or how to negotiate my pay,” he says.
Buying a home forced them to be transparent about earnings, deposits and affordability. “As first-time buyers, there are costs you don’t think about, like stamp duty and solicitor fees, so it was important we both knew exactly how much money we had,” Hannah says.
Now they make money an everyday conversation. “Just this morning we were talking about what we can do to help improve our financial situation in the future,” Hannah adds.
When Max was made redundant, the shock was immediate. “There was shock and panic initially,” Hannah recalls. “But we sat down and really looked through where we could cut things out.”
They cancelled gym memberships and Sky TV, and scrutinised their finances to ensure they could cover the mortgage and bills on a single, lower income. Their system of sharing everything remained intact.
The couple’s approach stands in contrast to wider trends. Research from wealth manager Quilter suggests almost half of couples do not share financial planning equally, with 46% acting alone in some way and more than one in 10 leaving one partner solely responsible.
Relationship expert Karen Doherty has three pieces of advice for starting conversations about financial planning, though she did not specify what they are.
For Hannah and Max, the model works. “We’ve always wanted to do things 50/50,” Max repeats. The question their story raises is whether more couples would benefit from such radical transparency – or if it only works when both are willing to lay their finances completely bare.