Joint accounts - do you use one?

grahamliza4

I am utterly shocked that there are still people who manage their money in some of the ways I've read about here.

Seperate accounts and husband pays the bills, wife gets child benefit to spend on kids things???? Husband gives wife 'housekeeping' (?!)

Couples who split everything down the middle? Does that mean if you are buying petrol (for your own car obviously, god forbid for the other half's) and you pick up a twirl you get back to the car and demand the 20p for half if OH wants to share it?

:rotfl:

This drives me mad, and in my personal experience it alays seems to be women who get the raw deal. I have a friend and her husband works in a good job (£30k+) so they want for nothing really, BUT he constantly tells her they are on the breadline, she must do everything on the cheap, and they have no money. Although he manages to keep up a very expensive hobby costing close to £5k per year. She's not stupid so I have no idea why she doesn't say something. She's taken a job cleaning his offices for £20 a week so she can have some 'pocket money'. He takes her shopping once a week and pays, and if the kids need anything or she needs clothes, her parents give her some money. Occasionally he'll hand her £30 and say 'get your hair done love' or similar, whereupon she falls all over him so grateful and makes his favorite dinners for a week, tells her mates what a wonderful husband she has and how grateful she is!!!! Meanwhile he's off spending 000s on things for him. I think he gets away with this through some form of manipulation 'Oh love you dont need to worry about the bills, you've got enough on your plate with the kids....you just leave all that to me....I'll look after you...just leave the bank satements on my desk.....':mad:

I think this is utterly mad. I firmly believe that in families where the man goes out to work and wife is at home with kids she should control the finances. Not control exactly, more have the biggest say. As lets face it, she's there when the post comes, she does the shopping, she buys stuff for the kids, she knows what needs buying, etc. Meanwhile husband is out at work and not there all day. What a laugh to expect wife to ask every time she wants £5 to pop to the shop for milk&bread!:mad:

I understand that couples who live together may not want to share accounts as this means giving the other person access to their cash, and I think if this is the case they shouldnt be living together at all and should just split up now as they obviously don't trust each other and therefore the relationship is not valid.

My ex was like this and insisted on seperate accounts (note how he's now my ex). If we were at the checkout spending £10 he used to refuse to pay until I'd given him the £5. He used to keep a tab on drinks in the pub 'You owe me a drink....I bought you a double, so you owe me...'. When I was made redundant he constantly reminded me 'I'm paying for you at the moment', 'Dont forget I'm keeping you this week'. Such a loser. Imagine what he's have been like if we'd had kids!!!! He'd have probably refused to buy nappies on the way home from work as I wasn't there to give him the £3!:eek:

Ever since me and my practically-perfect-in-every-way husband got together it has been one account, and it always will be this way. All the bills go by DD, we know what other big payments come in&out, I write cheques for other stuff like childcare, etc. We know roughly whats in the account at any one time. We both have ISAs but you cant have those in joint names so this way we get x2 the tax-free allowance. We can always see the account online. We don't feel the need to call each other if we want to spend £10 on somthing for ourselves. Obviously I would be cross if he emptied the account and bought a motorbike or something but neither of us are stupid. Anything over £100 we talk about anyway as it's going to be something for the house/kids. MOTs etc we talk about, might call each other to say '@!*% it needs £200 worth of work' or something. Where does all this rubbish about hiding stuff you've bought come from? Just bought some nice things in the debenhams sale, will show husband and he'll help me decide what looks nice and what doesn't. He wont obsess over the fact that one top was £10 and one was £12 therefore I look better in the £10 one. :T

Even when I wasn't working after having kids he didn't say 'ooohhh you can't put that pair of jeans in with the shopping, I'm not buying you clothes'. All the Child Benefit, Tax Credit, etc went into one account and we spent what we needed to. Sometimes there's not a lot of spare cash and we say 'right dont spend anything till thursday when wages go in, how much cash have you got? £30 I've got £10, I'll take the £30 and do some food shopping to last us and you keep £10 in case you need to buy something':T

VERY long rant but arrrggghh! A subject very close to my heart because of ex and my friends evil husband. Sorry moneysavers.:D

brummiebabe

grahamliza4 wrote: »

I firmly believe that in families where the man goes out to work and wife is at home with kids she should control the finances. Not control exactly, more have the biggest say. As lets face it, she's there when the post comes, she does the shopping, she buys stuff for the kids, she knows what needs buying, etc. Meanwhile husband is out at work and not there all day. What a laugh to expect wife to ask every time she wants £5 to pop to the shop for milk&bread!:mad:


Ever since me and my practically-perfect-in-every-way husband got together it has been one account, and it always will be this way. All the bills go by DD, we know what other big payments come in&out, I write cheques for other stuff like childcare, etc. We know roughly whats in the account at any one time. We both have ISAs but you cant have those in joint names so this way we get x2 the tax-free allowance. We can always see the account online. We don't feel the need to call each other if we want to spend £10 on somthing for ourselves. Obviously I would be cross if he emptied the account and bought a motorbike or something but neither of us are stupid. Anything over £100 we talk about anyway as it's going to be something for the house/kids. MOTs etc we talk about, might call each other to say '@!*% it needs £200 worth of work' or something. Where does all this rubbish about hiding stuff you've bought come from? Just bought some nice things in the debenhams sale, will show husband and he'll help me decide what looks nice and what doesn't. He wont obsess over the fact that one top was £10 and one was £12 therefore I look better in the £10 one. :T

Even when I wasn't working after having kids he didn't say 'ooohhh you can't put that pair of jeans in with the shopping, I'm not buying you clothes'. All the Child Benefit, Tax Credit, etc went into one account and we spent what we needed to. Sometimes there's not a lot of spare cash and we say 'right dont spend anything till thursday when wages go in, how much cash have you got? £30 I've got £10, I'll take the £30 and do some food shopping to last us and you keep £10 in case you need to buy something':T

This is just like us!! I manage all the finances, as it's me who's responsible for kids, food, clothes, gifts etc etc. DH never moans if I buy myself/kids something..it's OUR money!!

I couldn't stand to have to ask everytime I wanted to spend some money...would find that very degrading!! Obviously, if I'm buying something expensive..I would discuss this with him...but he's happy to leave it to me!!

We actually have 2 joint accounts - 1 for bills, where wages, CTC, Child benefit get paid, and one for spending money and petrol (we both have cars) - we then transfer a set amount into this each month, knowing that the bills are covered!

I have a sole account where I transfer money for food shopping. His sole account, we use to save for car related expenses. We both had these accounts before we met.

This works for us!!:D

Sweet_Pea_2

This is an interesting thread.
OH and I have always had joint accounts. He has always earned a lot more than me, and now I only work part time anyway. He leaves all the finances to me, (only because he is lazy!) and I think we are both quite good with money, we very rarely ever row about it anyway.
We have 2 joint current accounts, the main one that our salaries, child benefit and child tax credit go into. The other is only for direct debits and regular bills, a transfer goes into it monthly to cover what comes out.

We also have joint savings accounts and a joint credit card. I pay the bills (although they are in OH's name as the main breadwinner) from the joint account. I work out our monthly budget after the bills have been paid, we both have "pocket money" to spend on ourselves, which is just a nominal amount really, as things like travel expenses, petrol, haircuts etc come from a different budget, and we take packed lunches to work. I use it just for things like magazines, the odd bar of chocolate or cake at work for elevenses, things like this, as does OH. We have a "kitty" that we keep at home for things like the odd takeaway now and again, small household things (like I bought some seeds today from Wilkinsons) and easter eggs for the kids etc.

The only time we have problems is when we buy each other presents for birthdays and Xmas. I account for these in my budget, OH has been known to blow the budget, (usually on something Im not too keen on!) then present me with the visa receipt for it so I can sort out payment of the visa bill!
Even that is not too bad though, as he is so bad at presents I buy my own from him or tell him that he has given me the money!

Perhaps our system works because OH hates shopping, he rarely spends any money, if he is thinking of buying something he will ask me or call me if he is out and ask how to pay for it! There are probably not many husbands out there like him. It doesnt seem to bother him at all though, he can see that we have savings and no debts and I am not being frivolous with our money and he has a bit of money in his pocket for his very sparse needs, and there is usually money in the pot when he wants a haircut or a new pair of shoes so he is happy.

firesidemaid

we have a joint account in my name only!:D

i earn a lot more than OH and he would spend (does spend) whatever is in his account.

we have a weekly/monthly amount each to spend on whatever and the rest is for bills/mortgage/savings. he keeps his amount fortnightly (and gives me the rest) and is it normally all gone by day 2 of 14!:eek:

Morglin

Seperate accounts in our house doesn't mean loss of control for me or him.......it means we couldn't be bothered to close them, open another and notify everyone of a change with payments, pensions and DD's.

Money goes in and out of both - we have all the access numbers and PIN's to each other's accounts, and whoever is sorting the bills, transfers the money around to pay them.;)

There's no secrets, and no financial issues - we can either afford something or we can't.

What sort of account you hold makes no odds - I had a joint account for 30 years with my ex, and there were endless rows about money.

It's all about how you deal with what you want to spend the household income on.

Lin

janthemum

DH and myself both have totally seperate accounts.
In our 1st marriage had joint account....this was terrible; looking back I think I found it frusrating not being in total control of where and when money was going. (money was not cause of the divorce though!)

Now in our second marriage(yes to each other) money we have our own totally seperate accounts. When bills come in we just pay our bit and for the mortgage pay a set amount into a seperate account for just for this each month; however when mortgage is paid off in 6 years time this account will be closed down, and al money issues will be totally seperate.

Morglin

I found that despite having this joint account with my ex, we never had any ageement about priorities, financially.

I also got divorced for other reasons, but it's great that there is never a cross word anymore about finances.

The other factor we did consider is that we (individually) have huge overdraft limits on our bank accounts, and although we never use them, it's handy to have them there for emergencies.

I don't think we'd get the same amounts if we had just one account.

We do have a joint savings thing though, where all spare funds are put.

Lin

Zeddy

Our wages go into our individual current accounts, we then have a dd set up to put 85% of this into our joint accounts. The idea is that we do what we want with the 15% - I go out for a lot of lunches with colleagues, but my husband doesn't, I also spend a lot more on clothes and hair, so feel that having some of my own money gives me a bit of flexibility.

Anything left over in our own accounts at the end of the month gets put into our joint savings. At the end of the month sometimes we have a friendly competition over who has put the most into savings, but neither of us minds who puts in more. We have very different jobs, and different lifestyles come with this so inevitably it'll never be the same.

Mics_chick

I think whatever you decide on you should make sure it works for both of you.

I've had joint accounts for both of my major relationships - it works for the current one but not for my previous one - he continued spending and refused to stop in to try and deal with our debts and we ended up £40,000 in debt by the time we split up :eek: excluding our mortgage

Redbedhead

grahamliza4 wrote: »

Couples who split everything down the middle? Does that mean if you are buying petrol (for your own car obviously, god forbid for the other half's) and you pick up a twirl you get back to the car and demand the 20p for half if OH wants to share it?

Hell, yes:rotfl:

But that is nothing to do with sharing money and much more to do with my inability to share chocolate:rotfl: