joint bank accounts or not?

tanith

I think that everyone does what they have to do as some say one partner likes to spend and one likes to save so you just do what suits ......

Becles

It's a bit different for us due to past circumstances.

I was a single parent for a while, and I'm self employed so my income is erratic. I've got my own little systems for dealing with income and making sure everything is paid and we have enough to live on.

Got married last year and hubby moved in here. He's admitted he is useless with money. We sat down and I showed him a list of the outgoings relating to the house, food etc. He agreed to give me half the cost of that, and just sends it to me when he gets paid, so I'm still running the same system as before.

He's got access to the filing drawer and MS Money so can see where the money goes if he wants to. What he has left in his salary after paying his half is his to do with as he pleases. He runs a car, and buys the usual "man crap" without feeling guilty about it. I pay my own car expenses and I have money left out of my wages for all those essential lady purchases like new clothes and shoes

We split big purchases, such as we've just bought a 42" plasma so we put half each to it. Other times it just works itself out - like we went half on the main holiday costs last year, but I paid for the connecting domestic flights from here to London, and he paid for a taxi transfer and some trips out there.

It may sound an odd system to some people, but it works for us and we are happy with it. Money is one thing we never argue about.

Spendless

what will you do if you stop working after having the baby Becles?

Morglin

We kept our seperate accounts when we married (basically because we couldn't see much point in changing them).

We opened a joint savings account, though and all spare money from both of us goes into it.

But, we have access to each others accounts, know what each has coming in every month, and keep all our finances on MS Money programme, so we know to the penny where we are at.

We pay everything between us and never argue about finances - we can either afford something or we can't.

Lin

Dumyat

we have separate accounts for savings and current accounts. he pays most of the household bills. I pay everything to do with my car, the phone bill (stopped the arguements when the bill came in), overpay the mortgage and a few other odds and ends.
however with online banking we are able to move money between all our accounts to suit different situations. And we know whats coming in and out of all the accounts, we talk about it all the time.

Becles

Spendless wrote:

what will you do if you stop working after having the baby Becles?

Too many things going on regarding that so I don't know yet! We're just going to play it by ear and see what happens.

I'll get MA and extra tax credits and he's going to give me a bit extra money if I need it when I'm on maternity leave. My personal expenses will drop a lot though, as I get through a lot of petrol for work, and as I'm not in retail places every day, my impulse spending will drop. No more "ooh nice shoes, I'll have them" He said he wouldn't expect me to go halves on a big spend if my income had dropped.

Then it depends on if I go back to work and how many hours I do. Hubby also runs a small business which is booming at the moment. We hope to break even this year and go into profit next year, so he said he'll contribute more if that happens. Ideally he'd rather work so I can stay home as much as I can with baby, but I feel a bit guilty when it's him putting all the hours in and feel I should still do my bit. Due to the nature of my job I can work and take baby with me for some jobs, leave baby with Mam some mornings, and there are things like telephone work which I can do from home around baby.

And we're both doing degrees with the OU, so who knows what opportunities they will open.

Lots going on here

stevie_wonder

It all comes down to trust (do you trust your OH?) and responsibility (is your OH responsible with spending)? If it's a no to either then joint accounts can't work - simple!

Spendless

stevie_wonder wrote:

It all comes down to trust (do you trust your OH?) and responsibility (is your OH responsible with spending)? If it's a no to either then joint accounts can't work - simple!

However bear in mind neither can single accounts if there is no trust. My friends with seperate accounts one has run up a £10K debt without his knowledge:eek: , the other has been funding a mistress out of his :mad: . At least with joint accounts they'd have both been able to see what the other was up to.