More than ten of you asked the same thing: can I plan this with my partner? So we built it.

The request that kept landing in my inbox

When I started WealthR it was, honestly, a tool for one person: me. A single net-worth number, my pensions, my ISAs, the future I was saving for. That's how a lot of money apps think — you, alone, with your accounts.

But the emails kept coming, and they were all variations on the same theme. A reader who owns a house 50/50 with their partner and didn't know whether to enter the whole value or half. A couple where one person holds most of the pension and the other most of the cash, who wanted to see whether together they were on track even though neither was alone. Someone planning to drop to one income for a few years and wanting to see what that did to the household, not just their own column. More than ten people, in their own words, asked for the same thing: stop treating me like an island.

They were right. For most couples, planning your own half in isolation quietly misleads you — in both directions.

Why a solo number quietly lies to couples

Here's the trap. If you share a home, a mortgage and a future with someone, there are two wrong ways to put it into a money app, and most apps only let you pick one.

Enter everything at full value and your net worth looks great — but a big chunk of it isn't yours. Half the house equity, the joint savings, the offset against the mortgage: you've counted money that belongs to your partner. The number flatters you and means nothing for your own position.

Enter only your half and your personal number is honest — but now you've lost the thing you actually wanted, which is whether the two of you, as a household, are going to be okay. Your partner's pension and their State Pension just vanished from the picture.

The honest answer is that couples need both views, side by side: what's mine, and what's ours. Not one or the other.

So we built a household view — three ways to look at the same money

The fix turned out to be one idea, applied consistently. When you add or edit any holding — an investment, a property, even a debt — you can mark it as part-owned: set your percentage, name who owns the rest, and tick whether that person is your partner. Leave it at 100% and nothing changes; the whole thing is opt-in.

Once you've done that, a simple switch appears at the top of your dashboard: Household · You · [your partner's name]'s share. Flip between them and your net worth, investments, debt and even your month-on-month change all re-scale to whichever lens you've chosen. "You" counts only your share. "Household" grosses a partner's share up to the full picture you share together. And there's an ownership breakdown that lays out, line by line, how the full value you track splits between you, your partner, any named co-owners, and a child's Junior ISA — so you can always see who owns what.

Only your share is yours — and the app is strict about it

This was the part I cared most about getting right, because it's where it would have been easy to be sloppy. Your net worth only ever counts your own share. If you own half the house, your net worth sees half the equity — never more. The Household view is clearly a separate lens, not your headline number.

And not everyone who co-owns something with you is part of your household. If you own a flat with a sibling, or a watch with a parent, you name them as a co-owner but leave the "my partner" tick off — and their share is then excluded from both your net worth and your household total. It still appears in the ownership breakdown, but only to explain why you're counting your slice and not the whole thing. A child's Junior ISA is handled the same way: shown for completeness, but kept out of your total, because it's legally the child's money, not yours.

If you've never read the case for why the single number matters so much in the first place, this is the piece I'd start with. Household planning is just that idea, shared.

Tax and pensions are where couples actually win

The net-worth lens is the headline, but the quieter wins are in tax and retirement — because the UK system genuinely treats couples differently, and planning solo leaves money on the table.

On the Tax tab you can enter your partner's salary, pension contributions and student-loan plan alongside your own, and see a You / Partner / Combined take-home — with Child Benefit and the High Income Child Benefit Charge applied to the higher earner exactly the way HMRC does it. On the retirement side, your partner's workplace pensions and their own State Pension record feed into one combined projection, so "will we be okay?" is answered for both of you, not just whoever opened the app. And for Pro users there's a household pension-efficiency optimiser that compares both of your marginal tax rates and tells you, plainly, which of you should make the next pension contribution to get the most relief.

How to switch it on

It takes about a minute. In Profile, find "Do you manage money jointly with a partner?", switch it on, add your partner's name and your usual ownership share. Tick "Plan as a couple" if you'd like the Household view to be your default. Then, as you add or edit holdings, set the ownership % on anything you share. That's it — the lens, the breakdown and the combined forecasts all appear on their own.

None of it is shared with anyone. It's your private view of how your wealth splits, and if you don't use it, nothing about your existing setup changes. You can see what else is on the way on the WealthR roadmap.

Frequently asked

This is a personal account and general information, not financial or tax advice. WealthR is a planning tool, is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and does not provide personal recommendations. Tax rules and allowances change and depend on your circumstances — check your own position and, for advice tailored to you and your partner, speak to a qualified financial adviser or tax professional.