Bored Druid ThreadFollow

Wow, you have really awesome parents Digg. Although granted, I really don't have much room to complain. Almost every time I have been strapped for cash and needed some extra to pay bills, my mom has helped me out. I always hate asking though. =/ I do it to myself though, as I really suck at budgeting. I need to work on that, and stop living outside my means.

Out of curiosity, what do you guys think of sharing a bank account when you live with or are married to someone? My mom and step-dad each have their own bank accounts, and they're responsible for the different bills. My step-dad pays the mortgage and property taxes, and my mom buys the food, pays utilities, etc. I thought that was a really neat idea, so when John and I moved in together, we tried to set up something similar.

It didn't really end up working out though. I had purchased a box of checks when I set up my checking account initially, but John never did. When he first moved up to Eugene and lived in a tiny apartment right off campus, he'd just walk down to the property management company's office and pay his rent in cash. So when we got into our old house, when it came time to pay rent, he'd just give me whatever money we needed to pay it, and I'd write the check and mail it off to her. Everything else was in my name anyways, because he has no credit. The internet and TV, water and electricity, and our cell phones were all in my name. So we got into the habit of just moving his money over to my bank account, and I'd pay all the bills. =x Suddenly, not so separate. I'd like to try it again when we're living together again in the future and see if we can get it to work better.

I think it's nice from the standpoint that if something happens and you break up/get divorced, it makes it easier to figure out "what is yours and what is mine." Plus my mom has always stressed to me that I should always keep a spare $300 tucked away, in case I ever need to leave a relationship suddenly. I'm guessing she means if my partner turns abusive out of nowhere or something. Of course I've always sucked at saving money, so that's never happened lol. I get where she's coming from though, and I think it's a good idea.

I don't see the harm in having a joint account for food, bills and other necessities as soon as you're in a relationship. Makes shopping and paying bills much easier since you don't have to figure out who pays what and when. In case of a divorce/split, settling the joint account would be a matter of dividing by two since both put equal amounts of money in it.

Nothing prevents you from having a personal account on the side for savings and such, as long as you're able to pay your share of money to the joint account.

My parents had (and still have, even though they've been divorced for 10 years) a shared bank account next to their own accounts to pay shared bills when they were still together and now it's purely to pay for stuff for the kids. I think it's a pretty elegant system where they both keep their own money and pay an equal part of the shared stuff.





Also, you guys still use checks? What the..? Why no internet banking?

The only issue I can see with having a joint account versus separate accounts is if person A and person B both try to spend the last $100 in the account and the checks go out before they can talk to each other. Also, if one person is more financially responsible than the other, I suppose there could be an issue. My girlfriend is a lot more careful with spending money from my account than she is spending money from her account, even though it's all "our money".

If that happens, you've got a whole lot more problems.

I'll just leave this reply here.

Looks like you have one ***** loose.

At least you can tighten it, or loosen. Loosen's probab;y the better thing to do here.


On a sidenote, you can get sharper spikes for that thing as well.

I rarely use checks. That box of checks I ordered when I first got my bank account up there? That was 4 years ago, I still have one of the books of checks left I think. The boxes come in packs of five, and I'm guessing there's about 25-30 checks per book? Pretty much the only thing I used checks for was paying rent. That and occasionally floating money, which I know is technically illegal. I mostly just did it to buy groceries when I knew money was coming in.

I use checks to pay my rent, but that's about it.

I pay all my bills electronically and nobody can automatically deduct money from my account. It's the exact same as a check only digitally and instantaneously.
Well that and my bank takes part in a paying system for internet shopping so I don't need a creditcard or paypal for that.