Joint Budgeting- new year, new plan.

HouseACA

Hi,

Looking for a bit of advice about organising joint spending.

Our current family set up is both salaries are paid into a joint current account. Each month an allowance is transferred to a personal account for our own spending and the balance remains to cover joint bills, food, maintenance etc.

We have always used a credit card for day to day spending and clear it in full each month. However, as you can't have a joint credit card, it's in my name with another card for my wife. This means that only I see the credit card transactions online, not my wife who does most of the shopping for groceries, kids clothes etc. And although she is very sensible with money, she doesn't know what the running total is.

I have used YNAB (which i like), but that relies on me keeping it up to date and the syncs working to mobiles and the app being checked to establish what is available.

So I was thinking about ditching the credit card (cashback we get is only 0.25%) and using a joint debit card for day to day spending.

I was looking at possibly using Starling/Monzo account that tags the transaction at the time and will show how much has been spent in the month. Ideally I would like some sort of envelope system within the account, but would automatically deduct rather than us setting up separate savings and doing transfers each time we buy some milk.

Has anyone any experience to share of starling or monzo (or any other) from a budgeting/spending perspective? Or any other advice to share?

TIA

[Deleted User]

Why do you need to know how much each of you is spending?

Surely you just spend what you spend between you?

HouseACA

!!! wrote: »

Why do you need to know how much each of you is spending?

Surely you just spend what you spend between you?

Sorry I must have missed a bit. I meant that the credit card is used for family/ joint spending and that is the spend’s we want to keep an eye on going forward.

The money we give ourselves each month is up to us how we spend, that’s not in question.

Yellow_mango

We did a similar thing earlier this year. We have a joint account with Starling and transfer money into that for joint spending (groceries, petrol, family trips etc). It works very well for us :-)

Slappermum

If you're happy with the current arrangement why not just let wifey have your credit card login credentials or set up the app on her phone and she can keep track of the spending that way..

maxximus75

You don't need joint accounts in order to get a joint mortgage.... you just need to have individual credit histories.

IvanOpinion

I don't understand all this complication???? Our life is much easier, I earn the money and my wife (stay at home) spends it.

Seriously though all the money goes into a single joint account. A single, high credit limit, credit card is used for day to day spending and I encourage Mrs O to put everything onto that (I never query what she spends separate housekeeping on) - we also have a separate credit card for holiday spending (or in case the first one goes wrong).

Has it worked? Well Mrs O. knows better than to screw with my credit card and has never once, in 35 years, put anything I am uncomfortable with on it. I balance everything up at the end of the month and let her know if there are any limitations (rarely) - job done.

cloud_dog

Giver her your login credentials.

Or, if you need to safeguard credentials, most financial institutions will allow 3rd party access with authorisation. see if your CC will allow this.

Alternatively, simply export the CC spending on a monthly basis and email so they can review and digest to their hearts content. I export an review the data periodically, not to check what the OH is spending money on per se but, to check for trends in our spending habits. An example was food shopping, we were (on average) increasing our supermarket spending (which I've never been overly concerned about TBH); what I noticed was that we had increased the number of time we shopped at the supermarket. This had led to an increase in 'nicety' spending which had increased our shopping bill. This information allowed us to focus on what we needed from the supermarket, cut down on the number of visits and thereby reduce the shopping bill without significantly reducing our 'enjoyment' of the purchases.

Another alternative, get the American Express Everyday card (1% cashback on purchases) and they will itemise the spending person (based on the card used), so this makes categorising / reviewing purchases even easier. This is the card we use for general/everyday shopping.

[Deleted User]

IvanOpinion wrote: »

I don't understand all this complication???? Our life is much easier, I earn the money and my wife (stay at home) spends it.

Seriously though all the money goes into a single joint account. A single, high credit limit, credit card is used for day to day spending and I encourage Mrs O to put everything onto that (I never query what she spends separate housekeeping on) - we also have a separate credit card for holiday spending (or in case the first one goes wrong).

Has it worked? Well Mrs O. knows better than to screw with my credit card and has never once, in 35 years, put anything I am uncomfortable with on it. I balance everything up at the end of the month and let her know if there are any limitations (rarely) - job done.

^^^ this

I don't understand the need for separate spending accounts and giving each-other "pocket money" to spend.

Both our salaries go into one joint account, bills come out of another account so money is transferred by SO every month to keep that ticking, savings are taken by SO every month into a joint savings account, then the rest is a "free-for-all" for us to spend on what we like, when we like. Credit card bills come out of this as well and are never queried. Neither is each-others spends.

Anything left over come payday is swept into the savings account.

Rinse and repeat.

HouseACA

Thanks for all the suggestions. I do like to keep things simple.

I'm not concerned about monitoring what my wife spends, its allowing her more real time visibility of whats being spent.

cloud_dog wrote: »

Another alternative, get the American Express Everyday card (1% cashback on purchases) and they will itemise the spending person (based on the card used), so this makes categorising / reviewing purchases even easier. This is the card we use for general/everyday shopping.

1% would be tempting. I've never considered Amex, is there ever any issues using it anywhere?

MDMD

HouseACA wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions. I do like to keep things simple.

I'm not concerned about monitoring what my wife spends, its allowing her more real time visibility of whats being spent.



1% would be tempting. I've never considered Amex, is there ever any issues using it anywhere?

To get the 1% on the Amex Everyday first you have to spend £5k and get 0.5% cash back on that £5k. You can get the 1% (or 5% on some of it) on the whole amount but you need to use the non-Everyday version of the card, but that comes with a £25 annual fee. There may be a Topcashback or Quidco offer that may offset some of this fee for year one.

https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/credit-cards/card-types/cashback-credit-cards/