My husband and I share a bank account, and I don’t care who knows it. This detail lumps us in with many Boomer couples who have typically shacked up together financially – for better or worse, richer or poorer – for the duration of their married life. As (geriatric) millennials, our joint bank account therefore renders us something of an anachronism, but we’re used to this by now. We are outdated and unfashionable in our approach to many things, including (but not limited to) childcare, housework and car management. Research by TSB in 2024 bears out just how unmodish we are: just one in every eight people in a partnership share their finances entirely with their partner, while the vast majority (88 per cent) prefer to maintain some level of financial independence and keep their own, private bank account for jollies and dresses.
Whoops! See what I did there? I angled the private bank account wheeze solely to women; how frightfully gender normative of me. But further research released last week by Co-op would back up my hunch that of the married minority that still opt for joint bank accounts (call us the Jointies), it is largely the women in such an arrangement who still keep a bit on the side (53 per cent) – with 64 per cent of women saying that they have had a ‘negative experience’ of sharing finances.
And what of my experience as a Jointy? When I got married ten years ago (with no dowry to speak of but many oil paintings to my name), my husband did the decent – and expedient – thing and immediately opened a joint bank account for us. If he had misgivings, he gallantly didn’t show them. Off we marched to HSBC in Notting Hill Gate, where I signed my name as Mrs Byrne all the while vaguely wondering who that woman was. And the dissonance between my conjugal banking persona and my actual, more reckless, self has continued ever since.
Because in a lifetime of financial illiteracy, it is only the joint bank account that has managed to keep me on the straight and narrow. There’s never a great deal of money in it, and hundreds of pounds fly out every month for all sorts of glamorous things like food, dog worming tablets, diesel, children’s pants etc, forcing me to see our cash position in real terms. After the monthly plundering of the account has occurred and I feel like buying something for myself, I am frequently stopped mid-transaction by the knowledge that I will have to explain my purchase to my husband. Many have been the times that I have aborted an internet shopping indiscretion on the grounds that I am under surveillance, or queued up to pay for an item only to mutter something and scarper off, leaving the shop assistant bewildered. Big Husband is watching me.
Given the disparity in our incomes, I’m not sure it works in quite the same way for him. But as a writer, I feel pathetically grateful to have a joint bank account at all. When I feel sad, I simply self-soothe with the words of Robert Graves: ‘There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.’
In a lifetime of financial illiteracy, it is only the joint bank account that has managed to keep me on the straight and narrow
On poetry, the joint account offers very little. But it can provide the occasional haiku of a relationship, seen fleetingly and numerically: a curious amount of cash – £50 or upwards – withdrawn for an undisclosed reason; a payment made to a mutual friend with the reference ‘DIN’; summer holiday costs transferred from friends bearing the reference ‘SUN’.
Of course, the joint bank account is often anything but sunny. Officially, it exists so that couples can manage housekeeping expenses efficiently: there can be no arguments about who paid the Thames Water bill when it flies out on standing order. Unofficially, it can cause marital mayhem, especially if you find yourself on the wrong side of the gender pay-gap. ‘Housekeeping,’ one friend tells me forcefully, ‘is by its very nature a feminine secret and transparency ruins it completely’ – while another confesses to secretly withdrawing small sums of cash over a prolonged period to pay for illicit Botox sessions in Knightsbridge.
I couldn’t possibly comment since I prefer to pre-empt secrecy through last-minute declaration: moments before a large exit of funds from the account for unavoidable personal reasons, I like to send an FYI with an alarm emoji and a dollar sign. I am told by my co-Jointy that this is indeed alarming, but that he prefers to be forewarned. As I say, there is some (rather bad) poetry and very little money in it.
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