To wonder about the obsession of joint finances?

[Organon8]

Inspired by another thread, what is the obsession with having joint finances with your partner/spouse?

So many people display such horror and shock when you tell them you have separate finances.

I have heard to plenty of stories where one partner has cleared the whole account and no action can be taken against them.

People are free to have separate finances, it does not indicate a less strong marriage or partnership.

I have separate account from my DH. He pays for all household expenses, bills and childcare from his own account. It works for us

[AtiaoftheJulii]

We have joint finances, just not joint accounts. And we've never argued about money.

[gingerdad]

We just have one pot simples. Works for us both have very similar views on spending.

[Cornishclio]

We have had joint finances since getting married 34 years ago. I was a SAHM for 2 years and worked mainly part time after that. My OH was also never interested in budgeting and too disorganised re paying bills etc so it was left to me. In recent years as we are now much better off financially as our mortgage is paid off and our daughters are financially independent we also have sole accounts each and have the same personal spending money each month.

When we married and had no kids our salaries were similar and career prospects the same. We made a joint decision to have children and my career took a massive nosedive due to career break, child responsibilities and part time opportunities for promotion were not good. My OH career flourished but he did not have 9-5 job so could not be relied on to help out with the DC hence reason for me being part time. No way would I have agreed to take on sole child care without our finances being joint.

[MistressDeeCee]

This subject has made me raise a brow just lately, due to recent posts on here. An OP posts with an issue re. DH/P and mentions somewhere in post that they have separate finances. Cue loads of responses that don't address the original issue What? you don't have joint finances thats strange/odd/weird etc. & intimating its not really a relationship if your finances aren't joint, you may as well be flatmates is 1 thing Ive seen repeated often.

I don't share finances with OH and doubt I ever will. I don't want to, thats just me. We don't have any issue about it we share bills but, no joint account. But its each to their own isn't it? Some are happy to share some don't want to but I think its strange for it to be such a focus, let people deal with their finances however suits them best

[KeyserSophie]

Yes, I think it's about the spirit rather than the letter of the law. There are (mainly) women in financially abusive situations who have joint accounts and extremely equitable situations with no joint accounts. Tbh I don't think the issue is joint accounts vs. own accounts but the way in which the money earned by the two partners is viewed. Situations I find really odd are

• Women who felt compelled to save up in advance to "cover their share" of expenses during unpaid maternity leave rather than it being viewed as a joint dip in family income that would be covered jointly.
  
• Situations where there is a huge difference in earning power, and both partners are living to their own means rather than joint means.
  
• Situations where household expenses like rent or electricity are split down the middle despite a massive difference in earning power.

[Avidreader12]

Although it seems a good idea to keep some money joint for household bills etc and some separate for your own use to spend how you like it doesn't stop a partner from spending recklessly or running up debt like on a credit card. The main point is that you should both be open about finances and if one persons view of money differs widely then the relationship can easily suffer particularly if your partner is secretive about money/ spending.

[jlivingstone]

we have two joint accounts (savings and day-to-day) which we set up within a week of being married. I think we both have an individual account with fairly insignificant amounts (>£1,000) which are sat there earning interest - just because we haven't got around to closing them.

Joint accounts make everything so much easier. The idea of 'you pay for this, I'll pay for that' in a marriage is strange.

As I'm paid in cash (self-employed), I sometimes earn much more than them in a month and then far less. The cash is always spent first (rent, school fees etc) and the BACS salary for savings.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

We have been together 32 years. We have never had joint finances or joint bank account. Bills, mortgage, school fees, shopping, holidays etc got divided up but no particular hard and fast rule.

I don't know exactly what he earns and he doesn't know exactly what I earn.

[Questionsagaintoday]

We have a mix of both but that only works because we are equal earners with me earning slightly more than DH

So we gave individual accounts where salaries enter and individual savings

Then we have a basic joint current account to which we pay in half each of all bills and eats. It's empty each month end and we then take turns to top up if needed

I can see this wouldn't work If one of us wasn't working or earning not equally

I could never merge finances totally with anyone. Absolutely not for me. What's mine is mine alone.

[Toadinthehole]

Well I had only joint accounts until a year ago. Now I have only single accounts except for the mortgage.

DW has always been content to leave it to me. I prepared a budget which we agreed on, and it worked very well until she lost her job and took up cycling. The latter would have been fine except she paid no attention when I told her I was having to draw down against our mortgage to cover basic bills. Basically if she saw money in the account she spent it.

Instead of getting another job she tried to become self employed selling art. What little she earned didn't go anywhere near the joint account.

Like others here, I found myself thinking twice before ever spending so much as $5 on myself, while she spent thousands on cycling. When I complained, she accused me of being controlling about money.

Fine, I thought. So I ran up my own budget, opened my own account and told her that I was keeping enough back to cover the mortgage payments, rates and all household bills, plus I would save a certain amount towards house maintenance and holidays, and would remit her half of what was left over plus an amount to cover groceries and petrol. Yes, just like a husband from the 1950s.

And it has worked extremely well. I now have a bank account with a few thousand in it. I've paid for a holiday for the whole family. I can treat the kids, buy a shirt, have a beer, buy birthday presents, just when I want. I know that I will have enough money to pay the bills when they're due without having to run an overdraft. I've increased our mortgage repayments so we are saving a heap on interest. As for DW, well she has a job which seemed to turn up just as she ran out of cycling money now and can barely manage her own money. Call me financially abusive if you want. My view is the situation is much healthier now she is not completely dependent on me.

I have no intention to return to having a joint account with DW.

[Terrifiedandregretful]

I would never have got pregnant or gone on maternity leave without joint finances. I hate the thought of getting 'housekeeping'.

[Organon8]

An OP posts with an issue re. DH/P and mentions somewhere in post that they have separate finances. Cue loads of responses that don't address the original issue What? you don't have joint finances thats strange/odd/weird etc. & intimating its not really a relationship if your finances aren't joint, you may as well be flatmates is 1 thing Ive seen repeated often

This is why I started this thread. People say it is not an obsession but the amount of times I have seen a thread just one or two posts in starting to ask questions why they don't have a joint account/finances. It will start off as the husband or partner not pulling their weight or looking after DCs and then questions about money will quickly start.

[ArmchairTraveller]

Separate accounts for us, and a joint account for quarterly bills, subscriptions, insurances and the mortgage that we both pay into.
It works for us and has done for thirty years. How other people organise their lives, finances and relationships isn't my concern, if it's working for them both.

[toomuchtooold]

Toad from what you've said in your post you're not in the east being financially abusive and I don't think anyone on here would say you are but that's not to say that there aren't women being financially abused based on having separate finances/separate accounts.

There's also that whole subset of - not financially abusive exactly, but definitely unfair situations where everyone is pretending that maternity leave is a holiday and the DW is topping up her mat pay out of savings. Sometimes on here you even hear women saying it's out of feminist principles (i.e. can stand on their own two feet). But what's feminist about mentally accounting childcare to have no value/price? In these situations I always wish they would present the DH with a bill for 50% of the cost of a day and night nanny, as that's their fair share of the childcare. Or you know, just do the mental exercise. Childcare does actually have quite a high economic value as everyone knows who's used formal childcare for young children.

[Headofthehive55]

I suppose we do put in a share of our earning to our joint account for household stuff. 100%!

It just wouldn't work any other way for us. I agree it's a good idea that you have some money coming in from yourself but my fortunes have not been as good as my DH s so I couldn't pay my way in this house...id be in the shed!

Fortunately we have the same idea re money so it's not an issue!

[OOAOML]

We have a joint account for bills, and are paid into our own accounts. I would never just have a joint account, for various reasons including I prefer to bank online and DH is a complete luddite about it. I'm not desperately keen on the bank we're with for our joint account, but it doesn't matter much to me as it's just there for money to go into and then out again to pay bills. We're open about what we have, we discuss what we're doing (at the moment saving because we need to move house) but there is no way either of us would want to just share one account.

A couple of posters have talked about one partner having their salary paid into their partner's account - obviously I hope nobody is going to die unexpectedly, but have you checked if there will be account access in that instance for the surviving partner? I know of couples where one partner (usually the woman) has had no access to money in that situation, as their husband dealt with all the banking.

[Micah]

I also won't have joint accounts to protect myself. I don't have a full time job, but I do have access to DH's wages through his business accounts as he's self employed.

He and his ex had joint accounts, which he fully trusted her with, until the day he found out she was having an affair and had cleared out over 20k of joint money.

I have no doubt, should something happen to DH, she'd drag me through the courts for "her half" of our joint assets (they have two children together). So we have no joint assets. She's quite welcome to try for half of DH's sole assets- he doesn't have any.

[ouryve]

KeyserSophie Thu 10-Mar-16 00:28:30

Yes, I think it's about the spirit rather than the letter of the law. There are (mainly) women in financially abusive situations who have joint accounts and extremely equitable situations with no joint accounts. Tbh I don't think the issue is joint accounts vs. own accounts but the way in which the money earned by the two partners is viewed. Situations I find really odd are

• Women who felt compelled to save up in advance to "cover their share" of expenses during unpaid maternity leave rather than it being viewed as a joint dip in family income that would be covered jointly.
  
• Situations where there is a huge difference in earning power, and both partners are living to their own means rather than joint means.
  
• Situations where household expenses like rent or electricity are split down the middle despite a massive difference in earning power
  

___________

These things baffle me, too. As I'm a carer, the way DH and I split our spending depends on our relative incomes at the time, but it's divided broadly, rather than specifically. Currently, DH pays house and car bills, I pay for kid stuff and whoever rocks up at the checkout pays for the groceries. Same with big spends, but we generally club together for the really expensive things - I have more savings in my name than DH does, despite him being the breadwinner, because I'm not a tax payer, so get a better deal.

I've been in a situation not unlike toad's with my ex. Ex earned about £400pm more than me, but I ended up keeping all of my salary to myself just so I could make sure that all the bills were paid. And I could not get the joint account properly closed because ex was too lazy to get off his arse and go and sign a piece of paper.

[SukeyTakeItOffAgain]

My mother was always adament that she would "keep her financial independence" by never getting a joint account with my dad. She despised women who had joint bank accounts with their husbands. In reality the way they made it work was ridiculous, because she used any money she spent on us kids as a weapon to beat us, and by extension my dad, with. If she paid for something she'd continually tell us, in order that we'd love her more than him. She said she didn't trust him to manage money, even though his careful planning has helped her be in the position she's in now. She thought she was so strong and independent, but when my dad's dementia struck, she didn't have a clue about bills, accounts, insurance, council tax...anything. For a while she had no access to his money (and as he was on a good pension and she wasn't, he paid for all household expenses). It was farcical. In her strive for "independence" (as she saw it) she'd left herself worse off and for a while, in a sticky situation. It's OK now, but only after an awful lot of hassle. But all that's just a symptom of their deeply fucked up relationship!

DP and I have a joint bank account which we use for most things, but maintain our own accounts too.

[DerelictDaughter]

People are always over-interested in the financial arrangements of others.
What a waste of energy. We all start off doing what's best for us at the time and abusive shits will do whatever works for them.

[LagunaBubbles]

however might be good if he realised how much our kids cost me

Its such an emotive subject and how other couples manage their money doesn't bother me in that what works for them great kind of thing, but when children are involved I cant get my head round finances not being joint and how this works if its not regarding children - not necessarily joint bank accounts as some people have said. It takes 2 people to bring a child into the world. Again not saying its wrong but it is odd to me.

[neonrainbow]

Mine and dh's finances are completely joint. i don't understand keeping finances separate. It's like prejudging a split is going to happen. I trust and love my husband or i wouldn't have married him. It also means when budgeting for stuff we know exactly what we have.

[vimtoqueen1]

We have a joint bank account as I earn more than my husband and I always felt awkward at the end of the month when I had money to go out and he didn't - we were both paying for the same amount of bills at the time.
My mum and dad had a joint bank account and it worked for them so we talked it through and agreed it would be easier.
All money coming in goes into the one account and he is happy for me to deal with all the bills, direct debits and reviewing it online regularly.
We have a deal that if we are spending more than £100 on ourselves for example clothes shopping we check with one another that there isn't big expenses coming up before the next pay day so that we don't get left short.
As husband has just taken redundancy and will be stay at home dad for the next couple of years to save on childcare costs the joint bank account is the easiest solution for us.
We have friends that have separate accounts and others that have joint ones. It is just about finding what works for you and your partner.

[whois]

Consider this scenario.

A couple, married, no DC and no plans to have any. Both fit and healthy. Both clever and achieved good degrees.

One partner works very long hours 80+ in a very stressful job and is very motivated to earn money. They earn, for example, £100k.

The other partner doesn't want to do a stressful corporate job and instead works 35 hours in a job they enjoy. This partner does not do more life admin or housework - each do their own washing and they have a cleaner. This one earns, let's say £30k.

What would be fair and equitable in this marriage? its not always as simple as 'both should have equal spending money'.

Once kids are involved it becomes much
More about family income, especially as one half has to take a step back to look after them.

[Headofthehive55]

Unless you go down the route of owning a different share of the property via legal means, I think it's a better route to share. I do think you have to have similar outlook on money though.

If the scenario described led for the one earning the most to be the one paying for the other to have meals out etc I wouldn't like that as it would make me feel like I was being bought.

As it is I regard the joint pot as our money. And I get an equal say in spending decisions.