Joint accounts

[srw]

Joint accounts here. Anything else would be, well, weird. Admittedly it helps that we're very comfortably off, that neither of us is particularly good at spending money on a whim, and that R is an accountant so is very capable at keeping the books. And that we trust each other and are quite happy to talk about difficult subjects.

 

[Mr Haematocrit]

Separate accounts, she smokes and eats sweets and crap all day... why the hell should I contribute to that.

 

[Kies]

23 years of marriage,and always had a joint current account and a joint savings account.
She always asks me if she wants to buy anything expensive (say over £100) and i do the same.
Never argued over money,even when it was scarce and the children were small

 

[Andrew_P]

Been together for 30+ years and always had a joint account, not once have we ever argued about money or who spent what. Actually now I think about it I do not even have a personal account, crikey thinking about it even more my wife owns 50% of my business too!!

My wife has not gone to work for 15 years but has been working very hard bringing up our kids and running the house, I couldn't stand demoting that contribution to our teamwork to a weekly housekeeping allowance, the job she does is as tough as any job she did before! Just don't let her read this

 

[jugglingphil]

I thought the article was interesting, and it shows that not getting the finances right in a relationship can lead to big problems.

My wife and I have separate accounts, and we each pay for different bills. It works for us, but we do have similar views on money and we are honest with each other.

 

[PK99]

Joint account since before we were married (30 years this year).
No individual accounts.
Never had an argument about money.

 

[Sandra6]

Tried it - did not work for us.
I pay bills as late as i can and deal with big bills as they come along. Mrs OTH likes to put money aside in imaginary jam jars and pays bills as soon as the envelope hits the mat. My late paying bothers her and sending BT money 3 months before i need to bothres me!
Also you end up both dealing with the same things.
We just split the costs and deal with our own allocated jobs. I have not looked at the TV licence for 20 years and she has not looked at the house insurance for 20 years. Works for us like that.

This is pretty much us, but I am a late payer and mr6 is a saver.
He doesn't know how much a pint of milk costs and I don't know (or care) how much it costs to run the car.

 

[Sandra6]

Joint account holders - what do you do when it's your other half's birthday or at christmas??
Isn't it like using their money to buy them a present?
Someone I work with told me recently she gave her wages to her husband so he could go and buy her christmas present. I wasn't sure what the point of it was.

 

[bianchi1]

I used to have a joint account with my now ex wife, unfortunately she had a bit of a shopping habit and ran up a £23000.00 credid card bill in secret. When this was discovered she decided that the best option was to remortgage the house to get the dept down, which I disagreed with as it failed to address her issues and put everything we had worked for at risk. I had inherited around £12000 a few years earlier which I had split into 2 and put in an Issa in her name. It was decided to use this now joint cash to get the debt down and the I would pay the bills until everything was sorted, so I took an extra part time job as well as my full time one.

To cut a long story short 2 years later she bugged off with a bloke from her work. I had to pay totally for my own divorce plus £35000.00 for her share of the house...it turned out she had just moved the Issa cash into a secret personal account, and I had to cut my hours to a minimum as she left me with our children. She now pays a total of zero towards them as she has decided to take a career break.

Just thought I would offer a different viewpoint to all these happy couples dealing well with their shared cash!!

 

[brodiej]

This is pretty much us, but I am a late payer and mr6 is a saver.
He doesn't know how much a pint of milk costs and I don't know (or care) how much it costs to run the car.

Sounds like you're getting a bargain - milk is definitely cheaper than running a car

 

[Shaun]

I used to have a joint account with my now ex wife, unfortunately she had a bit of a shopping habit and ran up a £23000.00 credid card bill in secret. When this was discovered she decided that the best option was to remortgage the house to get the dept down, which I disagreed with as it failed to address her issues and put everything we had worked for at risk. I had inherited around £12000 a few years earlier which I had split into 2 and put in an Issa in her name. It was decided to use this now joint cash to get the debt down and the I would pay the bills until everything was sorted, so I took an extra part time job as well as my full time one.

To cut a long story short 2 years later she bugged off with a bloke from her work. I had to pay totally for my own divorce plus £35000.00 for her share of the house...it turned out she had just moved the Issa cash into a secret personal account, and I had to cut my hours to a minimum as she left me with our children. She now pays a total of zero towards them as she has decided to take a career break.

Just thought I would offer a different viewpoint to all these happy couples dealing well with their shared cash!!

Wow ... that sounds horrendous. I imagine it led to a lot of emotional and physical drain and took a long while to recover from (if you have recovered from it)?

 

[steve52]

i gaver her evrthing including the deeds, though it would save time when or if we split ... still here after 27 years yippeeeeee

 

[bianchi1]

Wow ... that sounds horrendous. I imagine it led to a lot of emotional and physical drain and took a long while to recover from (if you have recovered from it)?

Plenty of cycling helped!!

 

[MacB]

Joint account holders - what do you do when it's your other half's birthday or at christmas??

Short answer is we don't, stopped doing prezzies several years ago in favour of a nice night out or a mini break or a joint shopping trip. Both of us are a bit anti marketing/commercialisation so we ignore totally things like Mothers and Fathers days, though we still acknowledge them for our parents, and only adhere to the other stuff for the children. We have always discouraged the children from buying us anything regardless of the occasion, though we're happy if they do something for us.

I suppose you could say we believe in trickle down economics within the family.

 

[PK99]

Joint account holders - what do you do when it's your other half's birthday or at christmas??
Isn't it like using their money to buy them a present?
Someone I work with told me recently she gave her wages to her husband so he could go and buy her christmas present. I wasn't sure what the point of it was.

Separate account holders - how do you cope with balancing expenditures with uneven incomes?

For us marriage is about equality and trust in all things, separate finances would imply lack of trust. At various times one or other of us has had a significantly higher income, first me them my wife, the changes did not require any "renegotiation of terms".