Joint accounts: A greek gift?

Joint accounts

A joint account lets you manage any money you share with your partner, housemate or others. It’s really convenient for shared expenses, but there are always risks to giving several people control of a single account.

What is a joint bank account?

Did You Know?

Almost a fifth of married couples don’t use a joint account and of those who do, a third use it only for shared expenses and keep their own accounts for everything else.

Source: MoneySavingExpert, July 2011

With a joint bank account, two or more people are able to access the money in the account. Joint account holders can all pay into the account and pay bills, write cheques or withdraw cash (although sometimes more than one person needs to agree to this).

Joint accounts are mostly used by:

• Married couples, civil partners and couples who live together
• Housemates who have shared expenses

If you need longer-term access to someone else’s finances – for example, if you have an elderly relative who’s having trouble keeping on top of their money – a joint account is not your best bet.

Top Tip

If you have any doubts about whether to set up a joint account, don’t do it. Even if you want to split everything 50:50, you don’t need a joint account to do this.

• A straightforward way of sharing money and managing expenses, like bills and mortgage or rent payments.
• Some couples find that having a joint account – and having clear guidelines for how to manage it – can help prevent arguments about money.
• If one of you has a poor credit history, it’s not normally a good idea to open a joint account. Just living with someone, or being married to them, will not affect your credit rating but as soon as you open a joint bank account together you will be ‘co-scored’.
• You lose some privacy. If you use the account for personal expenses, the other account holders can see the transactions.
• If one of the account holders takes money out of the joint account, there aren’t many options for getting it back.
• If the account becomes overdrawn, each joint account holder is responsible for the whole of the money owing; so you could become liable for repaying the other person’s debt.