When Sarah Reeve got engaged she gave her fiancé Lee an ultimatum: clear his debt or no wedding. “I told him I wouldn’t marry him if he had any debts,” says the 45-year-old. They had met in their early 20s, when Sarah was paying her mortgage and Lee was giving his mum rent. He had taken out a £2,000 bank loan – £4,000 in today’s money – to buy a car. So they set a wedding date two years ahead, giving Lee time to pay it off.
Once the debt was gone, the couple opened a joint account and Sarah took charge of bills, saving and budgeting. “He said ‘you can sort it all out and take charge with money because I’m rubbish with it’,” she recalls. That arrangement has lasted 25 years. Sarah earns £24,000 working part-time in insurance; Lee worked in maintenance at the same factory for 27 years, earning about £26,000, before being made redundant four years ago. He now earns about £30,000 working for himself in property maintenance.
“Sarah Reeve gave her fiancé an ultimatum to clear debt before marriage; 25 years on, she still manages their money.”
The couple have two daughters, aged 19 and 21, and have always thought of money as shared. “It’s very much our money rather than mine or yours which is really nice especially as I took four years off work when we had children,” says Sarah. They have never overstretched, making regular overpayments on their mortgage. “We’ve also always been savers – well, I’ve been the saver for us,” she adds. Every month she writes down how much money is in their accounts. “That really helps as if we’ve had a bad month, at least you know and can find the reason.”
But being the financially responsible one has not always been easy. Sarah wishes Lee would take more ownership: “I feel like it’s all down to me,” she says. Lee is not money-orientated and is happy for her to make the decisions. “He says, ‘I met you and I had nothing, so I don’t care if I have nothing’,” she says. Sarah feels the pressure of planning for their future. They had “a little pot of money” – the article does not specify how much – but she remains the household’s financial anchor.
Sarah’s experience reflects a wider trend: more than four fifths of women are actively involved in managing daily finances, according to St James’s Place’s Women and Wealth Report. Family Action, a charity that offers financial support to families, says the first step when money is tight “is getting a clear picture of what’s going on as this helps you understand your current position so you can make the best decisions possible together going forward”. For the Reeves, the picture is clear – but it is Sarah who holds the lens.
