Banking

jamiebrooke19 · June 2014

I'm getting married in September and my fiance and I want to have a joint bank account. I was wondering what bank should we use? I have never opened a joint bank account. Do you have any advice on where to go?

vlagrl29 · June 2014

we opened an account where we banked at. We both belonged to commerce bank. We have since opened accounts at community america because the interest for savings is better. Does he have a bank he belongs to?

mana8503 · June 2014

We banked at the same place but the locations wasn't working for us. So when we decided to get a joint account, we chose a new bank that has branches close to home and work, with less fees. Then it was just going there and setting it up. Getting everything moved over and closing our old accounts took a month or two though.

hoffse · June 2014

My rules about choosing a bank:

1) I don't want to pay fees to bank with them or maintain an account

2) I don't want to pay fees for bill pay

3) I want a physical branch within a reasonable distance of where I live

Other than that, no rules. FDIC insured, obviously, but all regular banks are.

A joint account is exactly like a regular account. The only difference is you are co-owners. That means you both the right to spend every penny in that account at any time.

Not trying to scare you, but that's what a joint account does. H and I keep everything joint, because we have similar spending habits. We also want to know that we both have easy access to money if something awful happens to the other. If we did not have joint accounts and one of us died, the other would have to wait for weeks to access that money. Having accounts locked down is really the last thing you want to deal with when a spouse passes away or is severely injured. We know that if we decided to get divorced it would be a race to the accounts (and I would likely win, because I'm more of a planner than he is) but we dated for a decade, so divorce isn't something we plan for.

I do suggest opening the account with maybe $50 and just keeping it like that until after you've gotten married. Then deposit checks you receive as wedding gifts into the account. Don't spend it until you know the marriage has actually happened - and then you can start merging your other bank accounts. Even though H and I dated for a decade, he did not have access to my stream of income until after we were married.

jessica490 · June 2014

hoffse said:

My rules about choosing a bank:

1) I don't want to pay fees to bank with them or maintain an account
2) I don't want to pay fees for bill pay
3) I want a physical branch within a reasonable distance of where I live

Other than that, no rules. FDIC insured, obviously, but all regular banks are.

SITB-I agree with this. We used to bank with Webster Bank, but once they started #1 above, we changed to Bank of America. It's very convenient, there are no fees and they are located all over the US, so that's why we like them.

brij2006 · June 2014

Exactly what @hoffse said. Especially the last part about keeping things separate until after you say "I do." H and I dated for 8 years before getting married, and he had purchased his home and I lived with him for 3 years. We still didn't combine money until after the wedding, but always had a joint budget so we knew where the money was going each month.

formerlyGDaisy09 · June 2014

Go with one of the banks you already use. H and I purchased our house 5 months before our wedding, we opened our joint account at the same bank we had our mortgage with, untill our wedding we just made sure there was enough money in the joint account to make mortgage and house-related payments (sewer, water, electric, propane). after the wedding we began merging everything else.

Joint accounts make things easier, however, if your spending habits are different, it can make things difficult. Our Joint account was great for a while, but recently I've been rethinking my comfort level with it. H is not as great at tracking his spending (we use a secure google doc to track our account so that we can each see where things stand remotely) H will pay bills, withdraw cash, etc without checking the ledger (he overdrafted the account on Monday because he paid the propane bill and a slew of other things without checking if the money I'd stashed in savings for propane needed to be moved).

H and I also have different thoughts on paying off debts, H would prefer to make minimum payments and maximize what he has to work with now, I'd rather pay debts off faster and deprive myself of thing now. (I think some of this is exhaustion on H's part from agressively paying down debts for the past 2.5 years) We're taking a mini break from agressive payments (now that the CC is taken care of). But there is definitly an argument that maybe we should think about keeping everything but the living expenses seperate so we can each take our own approach with our own debt. tradeoffs.

CuriousKiddosMama · June 2014

We both had separate banks when we got married, so to start with we just put the others name on each account. After the mortgage was paid off, we closed all the accounts (checking, savings) at one bank and ended up sticking with our current bank. Like somebody said, we looked for no fees- no ATM fees, no checking fees, no online payment fees, that sort of stuff.

hoffse · June 2014

Vikingsfan 71713 said:

We both had separate banks when we got married, so to start with we just put the others name on each account. After the mortgage was paid off, we closed all the accounts (checking, savings) at one bank and ended up sticking with our current bank. Like somebody said, we looked for no fees- no ATM fees, no checking fees, no online payment fees, that sort of stuff.

Yeah, this is a good perk to look for as well. If you are with a bank that doesn't have plenty of physical branches where you live, work, or travel often, then look for a bank that doesn't charge a fee to use random ATMs. Most of the big banks do charge these fees to uses ATMs outside of their own - but some smaller banks do not.

Also remember - you can get dinged by the bank AND by the ATM machine itself. So the very best bank does not charge a fee to use a random ATM and will actually refund you any fees that the ATM itself charges.

We have a Wells Fargo account as our primary bill pay account. There is a branch one block from my office and less than half a mile from our (hopefully) new house. They also have ATMs all over my hometown and my H's hometown. So most of the time we just go to a Wells Fargo when we need cash. However, they do charge if I use that card to pull out cash from a non-Wells Fargo ATM. And of course, they don't refund any fees charged by non-Wells Fargo ATMs

To solve that issue, we also have a checking account with Fidelity. They don't have branches/ATMs everywhere, but they do not charge ATM fees, and they also refund any fees charged by the ATM itself - including ATMs overseas. We don't use this account for our daily expenses, but we keep a chunk of money there in case we need cash immediately and there is no Wells Fargo in sight. We also use it to withdraw foreign currency at foreign ATMs when overseas. Fidelity's checking account also doesn't charge a conversion fee when withdrawing foreign currencies in cash. They only charge the exchange rate. It's one of the few I have found that does this.

Mom987 · June 2014

Charles Schwab also had a checking account that will refund all fees because they definitely don't have ATMs sitting around, so we would use that one if we were out somewhere.

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