Splitting Household Costs Without a Joint Bank Account

colsten

Would the Starling Connected Card be a solution for you? I.e. one of you sets up a Starling account, purely for the purpose of your joint household spend. That person can do the shopping with the normal debit card that comes with the account. The other person can use the Connected Card. Limit is £200 on the card, but topping up is instant. Alas, it now costs £2/month but you don't end up with a financial connection on your credit files.

The other option could be a Curve card. Everything is in one person's name, so no financial connection, but you have two cards, the debit card from the current account, and the Curve card. Although not strictly in line with the Curve T&Cs, the other person could do their shopping with the Curve card. The free-of-charge Curve version should be sufficient but you could only sensibly/practically use Curve for this specific purpose, not for any of your other cards.

Third option might be ApplePay or GooglePay, which would also be free of charge, and without financial connection (assuming you have smartphones). Again, not really in line with the T&Cs of the card but there isn't anything technical that stops you from having the same card registered on two different devices - i.e. on both, your own, and on your partner's mobile.

Whether you would be happy to bend the T&Cs, only you can tell. 

Lastly, I would say that even if you find a technical way that lets both of you spend from the same account, don't kid yourself: you will still have to regularly sit down together and budget your spend, and then review the actual spend against that budget. If you don't do that, you are asking for arguments about finances down the line.

Sowffle

colsten said:

Would the Starling Connected Card be a solution for you? I.e. one of you sets up a Starling account, purely for the purpose of your joint household spend. That person can do the shopping with the normal debit card that comes with the account. The other person can use the Connected Card. Limit is £200 on the card, but topping up is instant. Alas, it now costs £2/month but you don't end up with a financial connection on your credit files.

The other option could be a Curve card. Everything is in one person's name, so no financial connection, but you have two cards, the debit card from the current account, and the Curve card. Although not strictly in line with the Curve T&Cs, the other person could do their shopping with the Curve card. The free-of-charge Curve version should be sufficient but you could only sensibly/practically use Curve for this specific purpose, not for any of your other cards.

Third option might be ApplePay or GooglePay, which would also be free of charge, and without financial connection (assuming you have smartphones). Again, not really in line with the T&Cs of the card but there isn't anything technical that stops you from having the same card registered on two different devices - i.e. on both, your own, and on your partner's mobile.

Whether you would be happy to bend the T&Cs, only you can tell. 

Lastly, I would say that even if you find a technical way that lets both of you spend from the same account, don't kid yourself: you will still have to regularly sit down together and budget your spend, and then review the actual spend against that budget. If you don't do that, you are asking for arguments about finances down the line.

Hey, thanks for your reply, they are some really good solutions. I actually posted this almost two years ago now and we have been using Monzo which seems similar to Starling, except we essentially both have current accounts but we can "bill" each other in a shared tab, which has worked very well for us over the past two years or so. 

It's great how many more options there are at the moment, I will definitely have a look into the Curve and Starling options as they sound very interesting. Thanks again, have a great day.

colsten

LOL, I never saw the date of your original post. Glad you found something that worked, and that your relationship didn't fall victim to money squabbles