How do you manage your joint income?

catkins

When we got married 36 years ago we opened a joint account. At the time I earned substantially more than my OH. A couple of years and a change of job later and he about the same as me.

14 years ago I went part time so he was earning a lot more than me and then, 5 years ago, I gave up work mainly because of ill health.

I was not entitled to anything so was not putting any money into the account.

All the money that comes in is OUR money no matter who earns it. OH recently got a large inheritance and, again, it is OUR money.

I am in charge of paying bills etc because I am more organised, quite enjoy doing it and am better at budgeting, finding deals etc

Nicksmum

My husband & I have been married 23 years and have always had a joint bank account,I couldn't be bothered to go transferring money here & there but each to their own I guess. If there is an expensive purchase that one of us wants to make we have asked each other if it's ok,there have been times in the past when money was tight. I came into a fairly sizeable inheritance last year and I certainly don't regard it just as mine.

Ray_Singh-Blue

Both incomes go into a joint account. We spend what we want, whenever we want to. We are both by nature pretty frugal, so this rarely causes any friction. More often than not we have to persuade the other to spend money on themselves.

I take the lead on financial planning. Once per year I produce a financial report, my wife says "that's nice" and gets on with what she really cares about. She does like to discuss supporting charities, and how I can't get a sports car (I don't really want one but am mid life so need to make the right crisis noises)

Pengi904

I have a great deal. Hubby pays for all the boring stuff like mortgage, bills and council tax and I get food, everything for the kids and holidays. We have separate accounts but that's only because we already had them when we met and have had no need for a joint account.

Bumblebear

Ray Singh-Blue, I do like the idea of an annual report! Like a lot of people here, hey it's MSE, I am the money person in the marriage. I may nick your idea; every so often DH looks up from what he's doing, says "hmmm, huh? What, urrrmm... I trust you " (followed an hour later by "Wait, did what you said earlier mean I need to send any money anywhere?") - it might be a way to get him more interested, it'd certainly make him chuckle. He's an intelligent man and it's not that he couldn't cope with doing the finances, and he puts his glasses and thinking stubble on for important stuff, like mortgage things; just that unless he got "into" it he'd struggle to find the enthusiasm to concentrate on it. From my point of view I think that's why I'd worry if I was on a reduced/nil personal income and my BB cream ran out as an example - I'd feel the need to produce a PowerPoint presentation on the impact on the finances of whether I replace it, the impact on my sanity of not replacing it, how that would impact on the family, and the economies of scale involved in purchasing a cheaper variant!

catkins

Pengi904 wrote: »

I have a great deal. Hubby pays for all the boring stuff like mortgage, bills and council tax and I get food, everything for the kids and holidays. We have separate accounts but that's only because we already had them when we met and have had no need for a joint account.

We already had separate accounts when we met but we closed them and opened a joint account

esm9900

To add to this, I don't think most people realise what difficulties can arise when your partner dies. Having just had to arrange a funeral, it brought this home to my wife & I. We had to pay for the funeral up front, no payment no funeral! So keeping some money easily accessible is a must, especially as you get older. A newspaper article recently, brought to our attention about premium bond for example, you can't get your partners bond money over £5000, without going to court to get letters of administration etc. This also applies to insurance policies as we also found out, luckily we were under £5000, so no problems. Every money site wants to sell you ISA's, but the key is individual, so you won't be able to gat a partners cash, without going through the legalities, and this could take months. We've cashed our in and putting everything into a few joint accounts. When we told our bank about our plans, we were told, we wern't alone, apparently a lot of older people are doing the same.

laven

I've been looking at the replies to this question and found them very interesting. My experience though, is that using a joint account works well when it's going well.

I've been married twice - I'm 73 now. During my first marriage my husband and I had a joint account, which was great. I stopped work when the children came along and my husband supported us. Unfortunately he became an alcoholic, and treated the ATM like a personal piggy bank. I opened a separate bank account to make sure that we had enough money for food.

Fast forward to my second marriage. We each had bank accounts, and we decided to open a joint account into which we each pay an equal amount each month to cover all our household bills, food, insurances etc. Now that we are both retired and keep only one car the car expenses are covered as well. Periodically we have a look at our account and increase the amount we pay in. We also have a joint savings account into which we each pay £25 a month - for Christmas! So no nasty bills in January.

We still have our separate bank accounts, and we pay for our holidays etc out of that, as well as any personal expenditure (his rifle club, my trips to see my son in America).

We have been married and using this system for 15 years now, and it has worked very well for us. Unfortunately I have experienced what can go wrong by having just a joint account, and "our money". I may seem cynical, but I really hope that none of you wise MoneySavers will share my experience. You never think it will happen to you.

TonyStableford

sysadmin wrote: »

We are exactly the same as this and couldn't agree more. I earn 4 x more than my wife but we are a team so its our money

Same. And since last 15 years we've only had one income it just transitioned nicely.

chubster

We have our wages paid into our personal bank accounts and we have a joint account that we both pay an agreed amount into, all utilities, groceries, household expenses etc are paid from this account. This works for us.