Joint bank account

[Mama1209]

Hi, me & my fiancé get married this year. We have been together for 10 years, have 4 children between us. We have never had joint accounts, but I’ve suggested we set one up as I’m terrible with finances/ planning. We both have a decent income, which is pretty similar. We currently half all bills as fair as we can. I’d like the account for all of our bills, food, holidays, childcare etc so that we can tf a set amount each month and the rest is our personal spending/ saving money. This way I will know what I have left over to spend/ save and I feel it will be fair in that we are dividing everything equally. Currently I find hard to keep track of what we have each paid. All the bills come out of my account and he pays me a set amount each month. This is stressful for me as working 6 days a week with 4 kids you can imagine things can slip my mind! I also have dyslexia and suffer with anxiety and depression so find the finances a lot to deal with.

When I’ve broached this subject, my fiancé says he’s happy to set up a joint account, but that any of my “personal financial” outgoings should be kept to my personal account. I understand he does not feel responsible for my debts, but I feel the “family car” should be paid for jointly. I have another 1.5 years to pay on the finance agreement (out of 5) and we have been together 10 years in which I have always paid for the family cars. He has work vehicles which me or the kids never use. If we go anywhere we use the “family car” he also uses it for short journeys on his own! I take the kids to school etc in it too. I also feel my petrol, tax, insurance etc should come out of the joint account but he argues that he wouldn’t put his work vehicles through. My argument is the “family” doesn’t use his work vans, we all use the car, even for food shopping etc!

Then we get to my credit cards/ loan/ store card. This is debt I have accumulated in the 10 years we have been together and as I’m self employed, I had to live on credit for my last maternity leave (where I still paid my half of the bills). I don’t spend excessively or live lavishly, any credit I’ve used has been for the family or household, so to me I think he should be ok paying half, especially since we are getting married and he’s happy to spend on my credit accounts!

I feel I’ve been a bit of a push over in the past and tried to keep things “fair” but to the detriment of my own financial and mental health.

Interested to hear others thoughts and what they do for their household finances thanks!

I’m going to rock up and say all personal income should go into a joint account and then all family bills be paid from that account. Whatever is left over should be apportioned fairly between savings goals and equal contributions made to private pensions for each of you, and only then should equal £ in spending money be passed on to personal accounts for frittering away.

The problem with the you can only be financially independent if you hoard your money in separate accounts and then fight over what’s a joint expense or not is that you inevitably have the kind of financial abuse the OP has experienced where she has been expected to pay 50% of all family bills plus 100% of other family bills ( eg the family car, and jointly used credit cards for day to day living expenses) that her DH willfully refuses to admit are family bills even while on maternity leave….

Even women to seem to think it goes well get to retirement and often find that while they’ve been taking their money left over after bills and putting it in savings or a private pension, their DH has been spending his left over money living high on the hog and saving none of it and now is going to be living off her savings for his entire retirement. Or vice versa, sometimes it’s the woman that’s the spendthrift.

His attitude sucks big time, but it can be difficult when children from previous relationships are involved.

The first thing I would point out is that when you get married the legal perspective will default at all your incomes being joint incomes. Your money is his and his is yours. Same goes for debts.

You should at least have a joint account like you describe and both should put in 50% of all shared bills and this includes the family car and associated expenses, e.g. money for petrol.

Your business expenses aren’t his and his aren’t yours, but the family car is not a business expense is it? Maybe you should sell the family car and get one through your business like he does?

Before you get married you need to have a frank discussion about what would happen if you lost your job, or he lost his job. Who would pay the bills? What if one of you had an accident and could not work again ever? Are you a couple or not?

If you are a committed couple you have proper joint finances (all wages into a single joint account) and treat all the kids equally.

I don’t see how anyone could want to marry someone who is not committed…

No You’re wrong debt is Not automatically shared. If husband has debt in his sole name it’s not his wife debt too.debts are shared only if co-signed by both parties or the spouse is a guarantor

Plus committed couple does not equal shared finances at all,that’s archaic
commitment is a behaviour, a set of values
plenty on mn have the traditional shared finances and unstable uncommitted relationships. Shared Money doesn’t equal shared commitment

If you're "terrible with finances/ planning" why on earth are the bills all being paid out of your account? That makes no sense. What usually happens if one partner in the couple is good with budgeting and the other is terrible is the good one takes responsibility for all the bills with the terrible one paying a set amount.

From what you've said, the only debts you've accrued are through unfairly having to contribute the same amount whilst on maternity pay as you do when working. That's not being terrible with finances, that's being with an awful person who has exploited you.

Do you actually know what his take-home pay is? If he's running his own company I would assume he is keeping quite a lot of money inside the firm.

I don't think a joint account is going to solve your fundamental problem.