Sharing costs in flat

nham

My daughter is about to move in with 2 friends to a flat. They want to know if there is a bank or building society that will allow them to have a joint account that they all pay equal amount standing orders into in order to pay all bills, ie rent, utilities, etc.
Regards Nigel

Bargain_Rzl

I don't know of anything personally, but you might like to try asking on the Budgeting and Current Accounts board, or on the Students board (even if your daughter and friends are not students, it is something which students would be likely to know about).

HTH

tigs78

I would be wary of opening a joint bank account with friends, if your daughter does so she would be financially linked to them - not ideal if they have a poor credit rating.

When I shared with two friends I opened up a completely separate current account in my name, which absolutely every expenditure for the house came out of (rent, bills etc). We then each had a monthly standing order to that account. I was the most sensible with money and my friends knew that I wouldn't have touched the money in that account, after all if I had spent any of the money there would not have been enough to pay the bills and that would have affected all of us!

nham

Thanks for that sounds good. How did you deal with the delays between transfers of money of bank accounts? Each transfer takes 3-4 days. They cant transfer until they have their wages in their own accounts each month.

tigs78

We all got paid on different days but the rule was, the rent and bills money got transferred the day we got paid even if that meant us paying a few weeks before it was due. Hopefully your daughter and her friends paydays' will leave enough time for the transfer to go through so the funds are there in time.

If we didn't do that I knew that by the time the rent was due the two friends I shared with (both boys :rolleyes: ) would say 'I spent all my money on beer - I haven't got it!'.

Bargain_Rzl

tigs78 wrote:

When I shared with two friends I opened up a completely separate current account in my name, which absolutely every expenditure for the house came out of (rent, bills etc). We then each had a monthly standing order to that account. I was the most sensible with money and my friends knew that I wouldn't have touched the money in that account, after all if I had spent any of the money there would not have been enough to pay the bills and that would have affected all of us!

LOL! I lived briefly in a houseshare with two friends where we didn't even bother having a bills account, because I took charge of everything personally knowing that the other two were horrendously irresponsible and disorganised - I never worried about being left with money owing, as I got on well with their parents (who were their rent guarantors) and knew they wouldn't leave me short