Do both your salaries go into one account?

[frolicmum]

I've lived in the UK for 10 years, came here for university and am German, met hubby, stayed etc. Since about 2017 when we bought our first home, we have shared accounts meaning that both our salary go into one account.

All my German friends who are married have this, every single one and not one over here (none German, all British).

Why is there such a cultural difference? I'm just interested to know why after you bought a house, are married and have children, why isn't everything "ours" but still very much my money, your money.

I am just interested how everything is managed & why. Maybe there are people that have one account, it's not like that's the first thing I ask everyone, obviously, I just don't know.

Everything joint as soon as we engaged - met in our 30s. I wouldn't have married him otherwise as separate accounts wouldn't work for me in a marriage. Sharing money is part of being married in my opinions. We have similar attitudes to spending and never argued over money.

We have separate accounts , and it will stay that way once we get married.
He earns more , but he's shit with money.
I earn a (small) fraction of what he does but I'm a saver , so when things go tits up I get us out of shit.

It evens out. If we shared, my wage would just get lost in his day to day spending.

We have separate accounts. We are reaching our twilight years. When we got married I had the bigger income and capital so we had a pre-nup. DH ended up earning a great deal while I was a sahm. We have similar attitudes to money and I have lways had everything I wanted. I have worked since dc were both at school for pin money to begin with but now six figures (still considerably less than DH). He has paid the mortgage, paid the school fees, bought a second home, paid all the bills. I have bought the DC's clothes and extras, my clothes, and pay for my car and the occasional extra holiday. Oh, and I tend to buy stuff like a Hoover when it breaks, bed linens, plants, pay for Christmas, birthdays, etc.

We are not especially accountable to each other: I once bought plantation shutters for the entire front of the house, without consultation and he grumbled. I reminded him that he bought our home in France without consultation.

Having said that we sort of know what each other has and he has shown me here all the paperwork is re investments, life insurance, etc. When the dc were smaller he transferred 6 months expenses to an account in my name in case the worst happened.

I think there are rarely problems if you are both cautious with money.

Hell no, separate accounts all the way!

Joint current and savings accounts, other than ISAs but is joint money. Joint credit cards. It's works great and is nice and straightforward.

We've been together a long time, since late teens, joint money once we moved in together and got engaged. My parents had separate accounts and I consider my Dad financially abuse.

Friends with separated finances are not on their 1st marriage and/ or have children not with their current partners.

My husband has been bankrupt and as a result we cannot have a joint account.
We still pool our salaries though but separate accounts as no choice.

One account for us.
If you are going to share children, sharing an account is really the only way to compensate for the biological and social realities of child rearing.

So it's not just me who finds this weird....

In another EU country: we had joint account, salaries went into that, we both had bank cards to it.
Here, we have separate, as I came 6 months before my boys and his employer insisted on him having a bank account in his name and wouldn't use mine.
But we have full access to each others accounts and we always know roughly how much is on each.

All our bills come out of dh's personal account so I transfer my wages into there. We then work out what's left after the bills and put that amount into 1 joint account but we actually workout a spending budget for each week and transfer that into a different joint account each Friday and that's the one we use on a day to day basis

Thanks everyone for all your insight. It seems there are a lot of different opinions and having read it all, you've got to do what works for you and as long as you're happy with the situation as to how you manage your finances - that's great.

I personally disagree when someone says "we're different people", I'm not my husband and he's not me but I wouldn't check what he spends, neither does he. Bigger purchases are being discussed but I believe most people would do that even if your accounts are separate. For birthdays, Xmas etc we do have CCs we can pay with to "hide" what we bought, I never use it except for surprises. We haven't invested much money as the extra cash is missing - bought a house in London, then had a child but planning on buying a second home in Germany. We do want more children so it'll be some time until we have extra cash and that's ok.

Everything goes into the one current account (joint), though there's a fair discrepancy in what we put in as dh is a doctor and I'm disabled and only get PIP. It's all still our money though, we're married and hold everything jointly including mortgages.

1 account since we got married 14y ago.

No, and no joint account either.

I really don't see the point if you're open and honest with your partner

Everything goes into a central joint account; we also each have a personal spends account and get exactly the same amount into that monthly regardless of who earns what.

We don't. However amongst the people I know (that discuss it) we seem to be in the minority.

We don't have a joint account I should say.

Each have own ac into which salaries paid . Each pay same amount by dd into a joint ac each month which covers all basic outgoings plus about 20% for things like going out, kids clothes. I have my own cc. Own savings. Although we are seeing a financial adviser to make a further shared plan for investments (with my inherited money but I see inherited money as 'ours' because really what else am I going to so with it except ensure a comfortable future for us and kids?) . I like this set up as I have autonomy after our basic living costs are covered. It is made easier as we earn similar amounts.

No because I am self employed & get paid at irregular times of the month so I let it build up then split between joint current & savings accounts. It’s just easier for me to keep track of it that way

Partner is freelance so he keeps a separate account so he can work out tax and business expenses etc.

We have a

• joint account for saving, mortgage and bills
• joint account for every day spending
• current account each
• savings account each

It works for us, but we also don't have children yet.

We have a mix. Salaries are paid into our separate accounts and we both have various separate savings and investments, though the majority of those will be cashed in when we buy a house and go towards that regardless of whose name they were in. We also have a joint savings account that cash gifts from our wedding etc went into. Most of our expenses go on a joint credit card we get rewards on though so we just split the bill and pay it off in full each month. Any that can’t go on that card are loosely split between us (I pay insurance, he pays for the WiFi etc).

Ours do. Everything into one account, pretty much all bills go out of the joint account again. I also have the account that I had when we met, with a few direct debits going out, and a standing order to cover them from the joint account. We do have separate ISAs, with a direct debit going out to each from the joint account every month. We don’t touch those though.

We do this. Have our own accounts which we transfer the same to each of us for private spends.

Because i know me, and if my partner spent £50 on something, i'd feel like i had to spend £50 to make it fair. So we would end up with no money!

We keep our money seperate, bills money into joint account based on income, so i do 60% as i earn 60%of our joint income.

Rest of our money is to do what we want with.

We do. Everything is "ours"

Tbh I have no idea what our friends do.

I've always had a joint account with DP since we got married. It makes it so much simpler with bills etc and we pay ourselves an "allowance" (both equal plus our monthly fuel cost) for our expenses, and another to a joint savings account. We do both have savings accounts from before our marriage though, we just don't use them.