bank accounts in a marriage

drlabman

We may be old-fashioned but my wife and I had a only one account - a joint account - from the minute we were married, and always thought it odd when people had separate accounts.  These days, we have a multitude of accounts, some sole, some joint, but that's partly so that we can have more accounts e.g. 6 TSB Classic, and partly for tax purposes because my wife is a non-tax payer.  Even these days, if we were to only have one account, it would be joint.

xylophone

Are you saying that you have no income at all? Or is it the case that you have an income but it is paid into a joint account and you  have to ask before accessing it?

dino7019

xylophone said:

Are you saying that you have no income at all? Or is it the case that you have an income but it is paid into a joint account and you  have to ask before accessing it?

i have to ask/ let spouse know 

xylophone

i have to ask/ let spouse know 

Well,  quite sensible as it reduces the chance of an unexpected overdraft I suppose.

But assuming you have your own income, why not opt to have it paid to your own account and set up a standing order to pay a specified sum to the joint account?

Or does your payroll permit you to split your salary payments  so as to send a certain amount to each of two accounts -  mine permits this.

J_B

drlabman said:

We may be old-fashioned but my wife and I had a only one account - a joint account - from the minute we were married, and always thought it odd when people had separate accounts.  These days, we have a multitude of accounts, some sole, some joint, but that's partly so that we can have more accounts e.g. 6 TSB Classic, and partly for tax purposes because my wife is a non-tax payer.  Even these days, if we were to only have one account, it would be joint.

Same here ... all thy worldly goods, I thee share!!!!

Amusingly, when we married many years ago, Mrs J B had a personal account at a bank in town. One of the cashiers also sung in the choir at the wedding ....  and automatically changed the account to a joint A/C the week after !!!!! 

Mojisola

dino7019 said:

xylophone said:

Are you saying that you have no income at all? Or is it the case that you have an income but it is paid into a joint account and you  have to ask before accessing it?

i have to ask/ let spouse know 

Does your spouse have to ask/let you know before accessing any money?

camelopardis

I'm wondering if this is more of a relationship issue than a practical banking advice question, and the OP may get a more useful response in the Marriage, Relationships & Families section

comeandgo

Husband and I have separate bank accounts in separate banks, separate credit cards, nothing joint.  I pay somethings, he pays others.  We never run anything past the other regarding our spending, we both have similar income so it works for us.  

cloud_dog

We have a joint account which salaries are paid in to, and from which everything else 'flows'.
We each also have separate bank accounts which the joint account pays an equal allowance in to.

There have been comments on here repeating whether there is an issue with trust or transparency.  For us it is neither of those, simply a matter of allowing personal choice around when and what we may wish to spend the money on, and not having to worry about how that may affect the more involved joint account budget.  

in_my_bumble_opinion

When we got married we converted my current and savings accounts into joint accounts. This took a wee while as I recall as my wife also changed her last name to mine so there was a bit of i.d sorting, etc, to be done.
My wife eventually got round to closing her sole name accounts, and I took the opportunity to close one or two extra ones I had....this also took a while as, once we had stopped using them, there seemed no urgency to close them. We do still both have a sole account in our names....I've got a Nationwide one for the insurances and the Mrs has the Lloyds one for the cinema tickets or magazines, etc. Neither has any money in except the fee that gets transferred in each month.

Everything has worked well. We have a kind of unwritten rule that if either of is going to spend over a certain amount on something that we try to quickly discuss it first. 

The only (mild) frustration is that, as with many things in a marriage, one person ends up kind of doing a particular job (think taking the bins out). Case in point, I do all our banking.