Financial advice for new married couple?

opinions4u

Each to his own.

You need to set up something that suits both of you and work (i.e. avoids bank charges and helps you to build up savings).

In the O4u household it's as follows:

- wages in to the 2 sole name current account
- standing order (monthly) from each sole current account in to joint current account totalling 120% of estimate value of monthly bills: Strict control over the supermarket spend as that used to be dramatically variable!
- each individual saves/spends what's left over as they see fit
- all bills paid out of joint current account
- included in those bills are standing orders to two high interest 'regular savings' accounts which fund an annual holiday and car insurance premiums
- occasionally sweep out 'surplus' funds from the joint current account in to a joint savings account (which has 3 months' joint income in it). Anything over that 3 months' income figure funds Christmas, home improvements and every few years an additional holiday.

My advice: don't let the wife have a credit card

Seriously, try to avod borrowing for anything. Save for it first and then pay in full. I do use a credit card, a cashback one, but clear the balance fully every month. Never paid interest for anything other than the mortgage.

Rollinghome

margaretclare wrote: »

Big mistake.

While I'd be the first to argue that you need a joint account, to pay household bills, you also need your individual accounts.

Could I ask why?

We've always had joint accounts except when there might have been financial/tax reasons to do otherwise. Being able to move funds between us maximises the tax breaks. But then we totally trust each other and even sleep in the same bed!

I know couples who keep all their finances separate and are constantly arguing over who is responsible to pay for what. Even restaurant bills. I know one couple who married late and have their own shelves in the fridge.

My own view would be that if I didn't trust someone then I wouldn't get married in the first place, but whatever floats your boat...

john_s_2

This is rapidly going offtopic... My advice above was to have separate accounts for 'pocket money'. But the OP said s/he didn't want that. Fair enough. Each to their own.

My reasons for having separate accounts are that you can't argue about what you've spent your own money on. If you have a joint account, and come home drunk five days a week, your partner could quite rightly start blaming you towards the end of the month if there's not enough to pay for the groceries. You might not think you've spent that much money, but without going through a bank statement in detail it will be very hard to pinpoint who's spent what - especially if you both use the same cash machine.

This can't happen if you run separate accounts, and only use the joint account for essentials.

I spent a lot of the early years of my marriage in the pub ;-)

opinions4u

john_s wrote: »

I spent a lot of the early years of my marriage in the pub ;-)

I think mine would be happier if I spent more time there than in the house these days!
:rotfl:

margaretclare

In response to opinions4u, anyone who called me 'the wife' or who demurred about whether I should have a credit card would very quickly see the error of his ways.

In response to Rollinghome, in our case it's historical. In the first couple of years that we were together we daren't combine our money because of his impending divorce, which took 18 months to go through. His ex badly wanted to involve me, thinking she'd get more, but she failed. Following his experiences in that marriage he was very much against the idea of a joint account, and I understood why. Some time later while I was at the CAB I heard of a very sad case in which a lady had been left almost penniless when her husband, who'd done all the family finances, suddenly died. I persuaded him to open a joint account with me just for the essential bills - no cheque-book, no cards - funded by us both, and that has worked well. It's peace of mind knowing that 9/10 of essential household bills get paid by direct debit on the 1st of every month, and that applies whether we're away on holiday, in hospital or whatever. It really is peace of mind.

As against that, we both get retirement pensions, I like to get my state pension paid weekly and he gets his 4-weekly - his choice. We also get annuities paid into our own accounts. We both save, but we save in different ways. He tends to 'sweep' his surplus across to savings, I save first. On my advice he started saving into a cash ISA but as the interest is now 0.5% he's decided to transfer that into a stocks-and-shares ISA with Hargreaves Lansdown. He knows I have one of those already, £3600 each for last tax year and this one.

We do not argue, we discuss and we share. I agree to some extent with john s above, although neither of us 'comes home drunk 5 nights a week'!!!!

opinions4u

In response to opinions4u, anyone who called me 'the wife' or who demurred about whether I should have a credit card would very quickly see the error of his ways.

Don't think for a second I'd dare use the term at home!

sho_me_da_money

Just to shed a bit of light.

I understand how 2 current accounts are useful but i truly love my wife and trust her 10000000%. The feeling is mutual.

And I know that some might say "You're saying that now, but wait 10 years", but seriously we completely trust one another.

Now im trying to work out how we can benefit the most of putting our wages into one account. Not bothered about a cheque book but having 2 cards are a must.

The idea is that our wages go into one pot (a pot that offers us good benfits in return). From that pot all our bills ghet paid by DD as top priority. After bills are all paid, £600 goes to the best maxi cash ISA available.

The remainder for e.g. £1000.00- not bothered who spends it. If I spend £100 month and she spends £900 - i'm not too bothered because what's mine is hers and vice versa. If anything, i've already got first dibs by getting the OK for a £2K LCD TV.

BUT i know she isn't like that. The most likely scenario (if we had £1000 left over) is that we'd spend what we need. If we need personal stuff, then so be it - there is no threshold on what we spend providing we both just give each other the heads up before we do.

If we don't spend the remainder, we've decided to leave it in the Joint account and let it accumalate as our "Holiday Fund" or "Christmas Fund".

So the $60 million dollar question is, what Joint account can offer us the best return for holding a decent sum?

or do we transfer that remainder into a different high interest savings account and try and leave the Joint account as a zero balance.

p.s. she has a Visa and Mastercard in her own name.

Thanks,

agsnu

sho_me_da_money wrote: »

So the $60 million dollar question is, what Joint account can offer us the best return for holding a decent sum?

I think you're confused: you can have joint current accounts and joint savings accounts, and their terms aren't really any different to their comparable single accounts (except the obvious).

So the answer is the same as the question "what account can offer the best return for holding a decent sum".

You need a current account for paying bills and stuff (because you need direct debits, cash cards, cheques, etc), but these rarely pay the best rates of interest.

Other than that, look at Martin's tables, money supermarket, moneyfacts, etc and make your own choice.

wriggly

sho_me_da_money wrote: »

I understand how 2 current accounts are useful but i truly love my wife and trust her 10000000%. The feeling is mutual.

And I know that some might say "You're saying that now, but wait 10 years", but seriously we completely trust one another.

Now im trying to work out how we can benefit the most of putting our wages into one account. Not bothered about a cheque book but having 2 cards are a must.

I agree with others that both joint accounts and personal accounts are the best idea, with salaries going into the joint account, and an equal allowance going from there to the personal accounts.

Want a killer reason for a personal account? How about when buying presents for each other? In truth, it's a combination of the thought, effort and price that count, and in my experience it's best to let her guess all 3.

A year ago, the best current account would have been one that paid good interest if you added a large sum per month, but these days most of those accounts are hibernating in the cave with three entrances (it looks like this: 0% ).

We have a Nationwide FlexAccount for our joint fund as it makes the holiday fund go further.

sho_me_da_money

Was reading Martin's article and it seemed to me like the 2 top accounts to go for are A&L, First Direct and Halifax.

How does Nationwide weigh up?