Some share funds (but begrudge it), others split everything two ways. How we negotiate joint incomes is a relationship minefield. We find out how 10 couples make it work – or not

'My husband would treat me to a pair of shoes if I were neglecting myself'

Anna, 36, is a part-time copywriter, earning £6,000. Her husband Mark, 37, earns £26,000 as a project manager. They have two children and another on the way.

I know it's an unusual arrangement to have a joint account for absolutely everything, but I think it works because he's generous to a fault. There are times I feel I'm not pulling my weight these days, though in the past I've been the breadwinner. He's absolutely brilliant; he's never made me feel bad. It's been, "This is your bank account, this is your Switch card, you do what you need to do."

I don't go and buy myself clothes if I don't feel I've earned much that month. I've really noticed that. I know if I said that to my husband, he would say, "Look, that's ridiculous." He'd treat me to a pair of shoes if he felt I was neglecting myself.

It's old-fashioned; a bit strange, definitely. When I discuss this sort of thing with my friends, there aren't many people like that. I don't think there are a lot of men who would say, "You haven't earned anything but go and treat yourself to shoes."

Discussing this with a friend recently, she said she wouldn't be able to tolerate my arrangement. She said every time she bought a cup of coffee or a lipstick from the joint account, she'd feel he was breathing down her neck. But our personality types make it quite a laid-back arrangement. Neither one of us is particularly organised or brilliant with money.

Should I have a bit of financial independence or freedom? I don't feel that's something I need. If something terrible happened, I'd cross that bridge when I came to it. I won't live for the worst-case scenario.

'He's bought our son one jumper, I've bought everything else'

Claire, 33, earns £35,000 as a full-time editor. Her husband Paul, 38, is a police sergeant on £45,000. They have a seven-month-old son.

We moved in together after a year, and everything was fine until we got a mortgage. I thought it would make sense if we had one account for all the bills that we could pay some money into, and then whatever we had left would be our own. So I got the forms for a joint account, and he never signed them. They lay there for three years until I chucked them out. I reminded him and he said I was nagging, so I stopped mentioning it. Since I got pregnant, he's bought our son one jumper and I've bought everything else; he hasn't paid me back.

All the bills are paid on a very casual basis – I pay some, he pays some – and it does my head in, because I never know where we are with money. Both of us probably think we pay the bigger share, but I don't actually know who does.

There's no system at all. I'm paying all the childcare at the moment and he just keeps saying, "Oh, I'll do it." I would drop dead with shock if he came home from work and had sorted it out.

Recently I was trying to work out our exact outgoings, to see if we could afford for me to go freelance now I've had a baby; he promised to do his as well, but hasn't, and I'm back at work full time.

We went to Relate and this came up. The counsellor said to him, "It's a form of control; you really need full financial disclosure." My husband was surprised at my strength of feeling about it and that I saw it as him being secretive. But if I bring the subject up, he gets really wound up and changes the subject; it ends in a row. It's not the 1950s. He's 38! Grow up.

'I pay for everything we do'

Steve, 33, earns £70,000 as a lawyer. His boyfriend Toby, 28, is doing a PhD. They have been together for six years.

We don't do joint finances because Toby's too proud, and because I spend it all recklessly rather than save. I pay for pretty much everything that we do. It's normal – I make much more money.

I've said lots of times, "Why don't we just pool the money in a joint account?" He doesn't want that: he doesn't want to feel as though he's in a sugar-daddy relationship. He prefers not to go to fancy restaurants; he prefers something simpler.

He always says things like, "Oh, I need to pay you back for this", and of course he never does. It doesn't matter, but it helps him feel I'm aware that he's grateful. He's got a credit card with his name on it, but it's my account, my current account. Yes, I give him money sometimes. It depends how much he needs: when he went to the US, it was $1,300. Like any relationship, it's "What's mine is yours".

'We see ourselves as one'

Graham and Elizabeth: ‘Since we moved in together, our money's been each other’s. Everything’s jointly owned’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Elizabeth, 59, and her husband Graham, 61, are retired teachers.

We've been married more than 30 years. Since we moved in together, all our money has been each other's – we have a joint account. Everything is jointly owned. I think it's a Christian thought that what you have, you share, and that you are part of one family.

I am guided by the teachings of Jesus in terms of having a one-world perspective. We have a lot of creature comforts, but we don't value material possessions that much. At different times in our lives, my husband has worked, I've not; and I've worked and he hasn't – we see ourselves as one. The principle is to help each other, and that would include members of the wider family: others who might be in need. Whenever we can, we donate to charity. At the moment we're living on £1 a day for food for Lent, to raise awareness of third world hunger.

I think it's about sharing. You have a responsibility to care for other people, because the way in which we survive is interdependent on a global scale. It's about being mindful that what we have is not ours.

'We put everything in an Excel document'

Tom, 24, works in PR and earns £30,000. His fiancee Alice, 24, works in retail and earns £18,000.

You're going to laugh: I have a life plan based on an Excel document. It works. It's got columns for monthly salary in, outgoings, savings and savings towards the mortgage. When my fiancee came to London and we got our own flat, we said let's build on this Excel document and adapt it for both our incomes. We worked out a system.

We have separate accounts. In terms of how much of the bills we each pay, I have split these in proportion to our salaries. I earn 70% of our total income, so I pay around 70% of the aggregated total including water, electricity, Sky and internet.

In terms of food, she pays me £80 a month and I will cover the difference – we usually spend around £210 on food. She's got a credit card, but I pay it off if it's for food and household stuff. It was just a way of being fair. I know it sounds very precise and mathematical, but it works.

I suppose the whole point of being engaged is that it's a trial period to see how things would work out in married life. If she were earning more than me and if she paid more of the bills, from a male point of view I wouldn't feel comfortable. There'd always be the dreaded conversation with the in-laws – her parents would be like, "Ah, well..." I think we'd probably go back to 50:50. I do have a little pride.

Her family is far better off than mine. I've had to struggle to get money. A lot of my friends get help from their parents with mortgages, I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. That's probably why I feel that fairness with money is important.

'I just think he's tight'

Sarah, 44, is a sales manager earning £15,000. Her partner Ian, 46, is a public servant on over £60,000.

To me, a proper couple shares everything. We're very much two individual people in a relationship and it's really difficult. My boyfriend wants it to be that his money is his and my money is mine, even though we have a five-year-old boy and we've been together seven years. He also expects me to pay for our son's childcare and for half of all holidays.

He earns four times as much as I do, but he's very much, "Why should I pay for more because I work hard for my money?" He feels that his money should be his to do with as he likes. He thinks that I have a nice, fluffy little job and I get to do lots of nice things and I don't work very hard. I just think he's tight.

The house belongs to me. I bought it before I met him and he moved in. He grudgingly pays half the mortgage, but he doesn't think he should do any jobs in the house because it's not his. When I say jobs, I mean fixing, cleaning or decorating.

If I want to go out at night, I have to send him an email and ask, "Is there any chance you can be around to have [our son] on this night?" He just plans what he wants to do when he wants to do it.

It does rankle, and a lot of people think I'm a single mum, but I've got to the stage where it's not worth arguing about. It's never going to be any different. I don't think it would change if we were married, I really don't.

The main reason we're together is because of our son, so he can have a stable upbringing. It's not the best relationship in the world. I feel as if I'm not a valid partner in the relationship.

'We split everything two ways'

Poppy, 21, is a junior consultant on £20,000. Her boyfriend Ryan, 23, earns £30,000 in entertainment. They have been living together for seven months.

We have separate accounts. We haven't been cohabiting very long and it's safer to buy some things individually, in case we were to split.

We moved last weekend and bought some furniture together. We said that if we were to split up, the other person would pay the difference to buy it off the other.

We're very open. He earns a bit more than me, and he's got more disposable income, so if he wants to buy something and I'm all, "Oh, I don't really want to buy that", we'll both use it but he pays for it. We'll joke about it. I'll say, "You earn more than me, it's so unfair." It's not like resenting him or anything. It's quite a laid-back relationship.

Everything has a receipt: we say how much it costs and we'll split it two ways. Receipts for everything that we both use go in.

I think if we got married, there wouldn't be as much keeping track of how much we spend. For us, it's still quite early on. You never know what's going to happen.

'I have a separate account for my gambling'

Siobhan and Nick: 'It's nice to have that bit of privacy and to be able to spend what you want.' Photograph: David Yeo for the Guardian

Nick, 27, works in recruitment and earns £40,000 plus commission. His girlfriend Siobhan, 27, is a project manager earning £40,000.

We've got a shared bank account and individual accounts, and we each put £1,200 into the shared bank account. Then we use our money – what we've got left – on what we want. Food, shoes: all the stuff that's non-couple-related.

And I have a separate account for my gambling – mainly football betting. Each month I put about £350 into that. I've made a few grand a few times. I'm doing OK at the moment, but sometimes I lose it all. I wouldn't want to gamble with her money, definitely not. She probably doesn't realise how much I spend on it. We're trying to save at the moment, so she'd probably mind.

A lot of my friends do pretty similar things, if they've got girlfriends they're living with. People like to keep their independence. It's nice to have that bit of privacy and to be able to spend what you want without your partner having a go at you for being frivolous.

'What was hers was mine and what was mine was my own'

Bill, 71, is a retired dustman and construction worker. His wife Margaret, 67, is a retired local government worker.

I was brought up when there wasn't a lot, during the war, with violence from my father, and left school at 13. When I met my wife, she had a big bank account – when she met me, it disappeared very quickly. I'm an alcoholic, but I haven't had a drink for 26 and a half years.

I never had a bank account until the mid-1970s. You used to get your wages in cash. I gave my wife her money every week and I had my money to drink. It was a struggle; we struggled through life.

The missus didn't work once the first child came along in 1967. What was hers was mine and what was mine was my own. I was contributing, but being an alcoholic you're self-centred – you must have your fix, and I suppose I wasn't the best father.

This year we've been together for 50 years. Our only income is our pensions, which pay for our housing association home. Growing up, we always had family, and families seemed to pull together. I don't think there's enough of that these days.

I carry a very small purse: sometimes it's empty, sometimes it's full of change. Very rarely there's notes in it, but I'm never broke. It was Valentine's Day the other day and I had enough in to buy flowers for the missus. They weren't red roses, they weren't chocolates. They were a small bunch of daffodils and now they're blooming.

'We spent my money and saved hers'

Pete, 47, lives on benefits. His ex-wife Zoe is 45 and a full-time mother of their two children.

We were a couple with no children in our mid-30s with two good incomes. My ex was a secretary and I was in marketing and helping to run nightclubs. We were up in London painting the town red.

It was always in the arrangement that we would spend my money and she would save hers, putting away for the likelihood of family and a deposit on a house. That arrangement worked well for me, because it meant I didn't have to think about it. We went out clubbing and I would pay for the taxi, I would pay for the club entrance and the drinks – she was ordering champagne by the glass at Pacha.

After a couple of years, she got pregnant and we moved to a rented house in Wales, where we'd both grown up. I was going to take some quality time out for paternity leave, start a new business, but it takes time to set that sort of thing up, and by the time our second child came along, we started arguing and the relationship was suffering.

When finances became an issue, I said, "Well, we've got savings and if this is a rainy day, perhaps we need to dip into them." She said: "Oh no, no, that's been set aside for a deposit on a house."

Then she had an affair and I had to leave. I found out that over the previous nine months she had squirrelled the savings out of her account into her mother's and brother's accounts. So it wasn't there and it wasn't easily provable.

That was four years ago; we just got our divorce after a very vitriolic family court process. I'm trying to set up a business, but I'm in a bedsit, and the housing benefit doesn't cover my whole rent, so every month I go further into debt. She went around our home town telling mutual friends that I wasn't maintaining the children, but I know she is actually drawing upon the tens of thousands of pounds she saved when we were together, so my conscience is clear.

I have confronted her – she just sneers and walks off. At one point she said, "Well, it was mine in the first place." Well, hang on, you were drinking champagne by the glass out of my wallet. In a future relationship, I'll have a joint account.

• Some names have been changed.