How do you manage your joint account?

[TheListeners]

So DH and I have two joint accounts. One pays all the bills. This one ticks over as salary arrives, direct debits go out with tiny bit left over.

The other account is for food, petrol and everything else. This one is a complete mess. We both spend from it and then I end up putting money from savings in to stop us going overdrawn. DH hates discussing it because he takes it as me blaming him for being profligate and then accuses me of being tight. It's a well worn argument that never gets resolved.

So if you share an account like this how do you manage it?

Had one for 22 years with the practice husband. Never ever again!

I have my money and Mr Maiden has his. We share household outgoings equally. He can spend his money how he likes and I can spend mine. We NEVER need to discuss money.

It sounds like you’re spending more than you’re earning so need to sit down between you agree how to reduce spending or increase income.
We have a joint account for wages / direct debits, a credit card I use for groceries to keep that spend separate and try to keep around £300pcm.
Other day to day things we each have a starling account and put equal amounts in them - though some months more than others.
Big things like holidays or large purchases are discussed and come from joint account (or credit card for extra protection).
It makes it much easier to keep track of spending because very little comes out of the joint account so it’s easy to spot unexpected spends, and I just keep half an eye on the credit card to see if we’re a kit in track for the grocery spend (more like £400 in lockdown!). Stuff for DD counts as groceries if it’s normal clothes / nappies.

Together. Suggest you both track all spends for a time ( review all spends each month) . Then create a very detailed budget that includes all these extras spends you’ve identified, as well as bills, rent, petrol etc. Agree what’s in this joint budget vs personal spend that comes from you own personal accounts. Pay yourselves an allowance/pay each per month into your personal account you can spend that how you want but no bailout from savings or the joint account.
Check your income covers everything in the budget and personal spend for next 12 months. If it doesn’t revise/cut your budget till it does. You need to do this together to agree where savings can be made.
Review your spends vs budget in the joint account every month together- see why you then overspend...agree, adjust the budget and keep going round the loop till he realises there is a budget and he can’t spend over

I do all the financial stuff we both have debit cards I save for my now luxuries, have moving saving account. Christmas h0me ect.

We only have a joint account for bills which we put the same amount into each month - covers everything plus a bit extra for emergencies.

We split food shopping 50/50 and this goes on our Amex as we collect BA points. I transfer DP exactly half of what we spend.

The rest of our money is in our own accounts and we have nothing to do with that the other spends it on.

Badly.

We have a joint account everything but child benefit goes into and all our regular expenses go out of, we have a joint savings account, and we each have our own individual account. My individual account gets the child benefit which I keep aside for unexpected child expenses.

For management, each week I go through the joint and my account, make sure it all matches up with our goodbudget account so we don't get many surprises. At the start of each month, when our utilities company sends me an update on what we spent the previous month, I put that and all the goodbudget records for each category into a document table so I can see month on month how things have changed, how things are comparing to our income, and things. We use that to make plans going forward.

These seem really complicated. Our wages are paid into our joint account and then our Direct Debits come out. Then we just spend whatever we want. Beneficial for me as DH earns a lot more than me.