Creating a joint bank account for household bills

dllive · 17 November 2018 at 10:14AM

Hi

Ive recently bought a house with my partner. We've been talking about having a joint account which we each pay into monthly. This account can then be used to pay council tax, water, electricty etc... and any surplus will accrue each month and can be used on maintenance costs.

How best to do this? I have a dormant Lloyds account I could resurrect. Would we use two debit cards or just one?

Im new to this so I would appreciate any suggestions, tips and things I should consider from people who have experience of this. (Im sure most couples have jint accounts they use for monthly bills )

Thanks

J_B · 17 November 2018 at 10:46AM

The 'man in the pub' has two daughters, he told me, one married and one engaged.

The married couple have individual accounts and a 'joint account for household bills'

The engaged couple just have one joint account - 'all thy worldly goods I thee share' and all that.

He tells me that the ones with the joint account are happier - food for thought??

PS - sorry I haven't answered your question

northwalesd · 17 November 2018 at 10:54AM

dllive wrote: »

How best to do this? I have a dormant Lloyds account I could resurrect. Would we use two debit cards or just one?

We have a Halifax (so LBG) joint account, we each have a debit card for that account. It's up to us whether we use them both or not (in reality we rarely use either as it's mostly used to pay regular bills by DD).

FabFifty · 17 November 2018 at 12:30PM

We took out a new joint account for bills (each contributing an equal amount each month) and never use a debit card as the bills are all paid by direct debit or standing order. We occasionally have a tradesman in for a maintenance issue and even this is paid directly out of the joint account, so again no need for a debit card. If we did have a debit card I'm sure one would suffice.

Terry_Towelling · 17 November 2018 at 3:21PM

We have individual accounts and a joint one and have done so for the past 30+ years. We worked out/estimated all of our bills for a year - including things like food shopping, birthday/xmas gifts for family/friends, holidays, house/car insurance, mortgage (now long gone) road tax, servicing, petrol, firewood, heating oil, TV licence, council tax, electricity, water rates, telephone, car loan etc etc etc.

We divided this by 12 and then contributed this amount equally to the account each month - plus a little extra to get the account started and to smooth out the bumps whilst we got used to it. We monitor the expenditure month on month, year on year and learn how best to budget with it. Has worked perfectly ever since.

One extra thing we have done over the years is to work out exactly when the bills come in so that any surplus funds in the account can be swept into a savings account until needed.

The key to all this working efficiently for us was to use a 'joint' credit card (yes, I know they aren't really 'joint') for all spending other than standard DD bills, so that the spending goes out in one lump once a month to the card bill. If the card spending was ever over budget in one month due to some unforeseen expense, we would know about it in advance, because we kept track of the receipts and always checked our CC statement and could add extra funds to the joint account to cover the full CC payment.

You need to trust your partner to make it work and agree exactly how the account should be used - no dipping in by one party for something frivolous unless jointly agreed.

xylophone · 17 November 2018 at 4:47PM

If this is an account for your household direct debits and you would like to earn some interest perhaps the Santander 123 would suit.

dllive · 18 November 2018 at 9:33AM

Great - thanks for the replies, very helpful.

bhjm · 18 November 2018 at 11:25AM

xylophone wrote: »

If this is an account for your household direct debits and you would like to earn some interest perhaps the Santander 123 would suit.

natwest reward would be another option.

if you put all your household direct debits in it - you would get an estimated 2-3£ a month on these.

Note. there is a 2£ monthly fee, which is mostly leveled by the council tax alone, as you get 2% on household bills as reward/cashback. only criteria was so far i can remember a monthly pay in by 1.500 per Calendar Month.

dllive · 18 November 2018 at 11:29AM

Presumeably - when signing up to an account, or when using one of my existing dormant accounts - I need to add both our names and specify its going to be shared between 2 people? Will I need to give some form of identification too for my partner? (Id like to get it all setup today but my partner is away at the moment).

Zero_Sum · 18 November 2018 at 11:30AM

xylophone wrote: »

If this is an account for your household direct debits and you would like to earn some interest perhaps the Santander 123 would suit.

Full fat 123 isnt worth £48 a year for bit of interest. The lite options loads better

Terry_Towelling · 18 November 2018 at 9:17PM

dllive wrote: »

Presumeably - when signing up to an account, or when using one of my existing dormant accounts - I need to add both our names and specify its going to be shared between 2 people? Will I need to give some form of identification too for my partner? (Id like to get it all setup today but my partner is away at the moment).

It's probably true that you'd both need to sign something for the bank.

Creating a joint bank account for household bills

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