Joint bank accounts

Raymond Lin said:
If I pull up at the house with a new car the (future) wife is going to ask how much was that, regardless which account it came out of tbf.
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Yes but the point is that not having to pay out of a joint account means there is no asking for permission or any feeling of guilt. Of course my wife asked how much it was, she winced a bit after I told her as she wouldn’t spend that much money on a car but ultimately she didn’t care
 
Ian_Eb said:
We just have one joint account and it all goes in there together. We have been together for 20 years though.
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Same here, just keeps life easier, we did it pretty much from the start once we were married.

We did experiment by then assigning ourselves "Spends" each month out of it so that there was no guilt when spending on higher value items, such as bikes etc. Although it's pretty much only me that has expensive tastes, however we scrapped that and just stuck to a single account for everything again.
 
We have a joint account, that covers mortgage, utilities, food shopping, kids clubs, house insurance etc. We also have a joint savings account, linked to that account.

We both have our own accounts and our own savings accounts and pay a fixed amount into the joint account each month to cover all our shared outgoings.
 
kaiowas said:
We have our own accounts that our pay goes into, then we have a joint account that we both pay a fixed DD into every month. Shared living expenses like supermarket, mortgage, utility bills etc all come out of the joint account and usually come to less than we are putting in meaning there is usually a small fund there to cover unplanned household expenses. Other spending comes out of our individual accounts as appropriate.
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Same here, works well for us. Any surplus funds usually go towards holidays spends.
 
All separate. Works fine for us. We cover diff costs between us, so not felt the need to have a joint account. Been that way for 24 years.
 
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On paper our finances are joint but in reality they're totally seperate. I wanted to go "quids in" but she didn't so that was that. We do have 4 joint accounts but she has no idea what's in 3 of them and doesn't contribute to any. Given how bad she is with money I'm mostly happy about this.
 
I refused to have a joint account with my ex wife because of her insanely bad spending habits, I was already having to give her money on a regular basis because she would spend money on stuff she couldn't afford all the time. I paid 3/4 of the bills she paid the rest, which was minimal, she had more money to spend than I did most of the time, yet complained she didn't to. I saved for things I wanted, she just spaffed it on trash. She never really paid for anything like takeaways, nights out etc. Didn't spend a penny on our house for work that needed doing, ever. Always expected etc. Her dad always bailed her out before. He has just got her out of 10k debt when we met.

I Finally gave in. Within a month, noticed money coming out of the joint account. Kept on questioning her and she said she'd put it back if she took it out. She did very occasionally put it back, but most of the time didn't.

I'm also still giving her money at this point. Then noticed the account started going overdrawn. She had put an overdraft on it...

Eventually we broke up for many other reasons.

Current partner, we are buying a house together at the moment. I earn over double what she earns. She is not interested at all in having a joint account. My money is mine, hers is hers. She pays her way, she pays for days out, she pays for take aways, she buys what she wants without getting herself Into debt. She's happy for the bills to come out of my account. She pays for things for the house, which is currently just mine as I bought it after divorce. She very rarely will let me help her out or buy her something she needs! She is very independent.

It works best for us this way. While I still am a bit weary of joint accounts, I wouldn't be against having one that we just used for bills, as she is far more sensible.

Edit - just to say, I had no kids with my ex as I never wanted them, and neither does my current partner. So that probably makes a difference in our situations, compared to others.
 
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Going against the grain here.

No joint account.

When I was married many years ago, did what most here are doing splitting the bills into a joint acc.

But now with current partner, no.

I used to try and make things 'fair' based on salary splits etc. Now I can't be bothered. She pays for food shop, I pay for bills. When we go out we just take turns.
 
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D-Ranged said:
I refused to have a joint account with my ex wife because of her insanely bad spending habits, I was already having to give her money on a regular basis because she would spend money on stuff she couldn't afford all the time. I paid 3/4 of the bills she paid the rest, which was minimal, she had more money to spend than I did most of the time, yet complained she didn't to. I saved for things I wanted, she just spaffed it on trash. She never really paid for anything like takeaways, nights out etc. Didn't spend a penny on our house for work that needed doing, ever. Always expected etc. Her dad always bailed her out before. He has just got her out of 10k debt when we met.

I Finally gave in. Within a month, noticed money coming out of the joint account. Kept on questioning her and she said she'd put it back if she took it out. She did very occasionally put it back, but most of the time didn't.

I'm also still giving her money at this point. Then noticed the account started going overdrawn. She had put an overdraft on it...

Eventually we broke up for many other reasons.

Current partner, we are buying a house together at the moment. I earn over double what she earns. She is not interested at all in having a joint account. My money is mine, hers is hers. She pays her way, she pays for days out, she pays for take aways, she buys what she wants without getting herself Into debt. She's happy for the bills to come out of my account. She pays for things for the house, which is currently just mine as I bought it after divorce. She very rarely will let me help her out or buy her something she needs! She is very independent.

It works best for us this way. While I still am a bit weary of joint accounts, I wouldn't be against having one that we just used for bills, as she is far more sensible.

Edit - just to say, I had no kids with my ex as I never wanted them, and neither does my current partner. So that probably makes a difference in our situations, compared to others.
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I personally couldn't be with someone bad with money. It would do my head in.
I'd rather someone on a lower wage good with money than on a good wage and bad.
By bad I mean spending on gambling and accuring bad debt etc.

I'm same on that last point. Neither of us want kids and that does make a difference. If had kids probably wouldn't be able to spend loads on ourselves anyway!
Might ask what my sister does. She's the bread winner but they have a kid.
 
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413x said:
I personally couldn't be with someone bad with money. It would do my head in.
I'd rather someone on a lower wage good with money than on a good wage and bad.
By bad I mean spending on gambling and accuring bad debt etc.

I'm same on that last point. Neither of us want kids and that does make a difference. If had kids probably wouldn't be able to spend loads on ourselves anyway!
Might ask what my sister does. She's the bread winner but they have a kid.
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Well, it was certainly one of the reasons the marriage ended! She didn't earn much, but my current partner earns even less, but has more money. All the time. make that make sense...

Her sister has a kid, and they share all their money. It seems a weird situation, but some men/woman are quite happy to just hand it over and let someone else deal with it. Her sister seems to be the one that deals with the money.

My parents were the opposite. My dad worked, my mum stayed at home until we were older, then got a job again for a while. She managed all the money and the bills for the house. My dad had absolutely nothing to do with it.
 
We have separate accounts and both prefer it that way.

I pay the rent, she pays me back some rent, she pays the heating/water/energy, she pays the broadband, I pay the Netflix. She pays the Hello Fresh, I buy almost all the other food we buy and pretty much all the household cleaning supplies/toilet roll/etc.
When we eat out or have takeaways we generally take turns.

We both save but I'm better at it than she is.

I put €1000 a month in "pocket money" savings (eg money I can spaff up the wall if I want to without needing to justify it) and €1000 a month into savings for holidays/furniture/house stuff.

In Austria I get 14 salary payments - double pay in Summer and Christmas - so I sort of pretend this isn't real money and just bang it directly in my pocket money stash in a lump sum.

It sounds messy but it works fine.
 
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Desmo said:
So what we do is have a joint account and a separate account each. All income goes in to the joint account for bills, savings, days out, etc. Each month we'll put a set amount in to each of our own personal accounts. With that money you can do what you like because it's yours and we get the same amount each, regardless of who earns more. Want to fritter it away on small things? Go for it. Want to save up and spend £1k on a mountain bike? Go for it.
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This is pretty much what we do and it works well :)
 
The wife and I have a main joint account that salary, bills and all general expenditure go through. At the end of each month I move the net into a second joint account which we use for savings.

I have been finding that over the past several years it is very difficult to keep a track of expenditure due to kids and online purchases (specifically Amazon).

I had suggested that we split the money into 2 joint accounts (bills and savings) and 2 personal accounts (our personal money) to allow better oversight of where the money is going. She was very unhappy with this idea even though I had tried to make it "fair" as she is part-time and I earn a lot more than her.

We had a joint account when she earned more money than me, but at that time I found it much easier to keep track of the money and we found savings easier. I think having kids makes it so much harder to budget.
 
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