My husband and I share everything except our finances – here's why I refuse to have a joint bank account

It’s nobody’s problem but my own if I rack up a huge bill on a poorly judged wine habit, and given that my husband seems to have invested his income in esoteric cryptocurrencies I’m quite glad I know nothing about it anyway

Not having a joint account means we’re completely accountable for our spending habits and money problems (Getty)

I’m currently somewhere in the interminable timeline of buying a house, which is bringing out all my worst qualities: impatience, selfishness and having rather short arms for long pockets.

It’s also meant that for the first time ever, I’ve snuck a look at my husband’s bank account. Not because he showed me or anything – our solicitor had to check we weren’t laundering cash and we sent bank statements casually attached to an email.

Of course I looked!

The thing is, David and I have always managed our finances completely separately. We share an address, a love of house music and rioja – but that’s where it stops. I don’t know how much he has in his bank account (and vice versa), and I never have.

This house, a Victorian terrace in East Dulwich, will mark the first time David and I have bought anything together, if you discount the Breaking Bad DVD set we went 50-50 on in 2014. We’ve got a joint mortgage and at some point will probably have to buy like, a sofa, or a wine fridge for the rioja together.

We’ve been married almost three years, together for 11. And in that time, while our lives have become further entwined, our finances have inched further apart. He even jokes that the only reason I didn’t sign a pre-nuptial agreement before we got married is because they’re not legally binding. I even pay him rent to live in the lovely Borough flat he owns.

So, reader, it’ll come as no surprise when I say we’ll never, ever open a joint account. Why do we need to?

That’s because we don’t share our money, nor day-to-day essentials or even meals. For dinner, I buy discount sushi from Itsu; and he buys fancy microwave meals (I suppose it doesn’t help that neither of us can cook). We take it in turns to buy washing powder and dishwasher tablets. We send each other bi-weekly emails entitled “debt” or “you owe me” where we primly ask to be paid back the £28 for train tickets the other booked. It’s not everyone’s idea of domestic bliss but to me it all seems dreadfully civilised.

Plus, there are myriad practical reasons for not opening a joint account. Banking is so efficient there is no need to open an account to cover these “household items” that other couples always argue they need it for. Anything we do buy can be logged on an app – we use Splitwise, more on that later – or transferred instantly from my bank account using just my thumbprint. Or you know, we just take it in turns.

Then there’s financial freedom. Thanks to keeping a gulf as wide as the Suez between our finances, it’s nobody’s problem but my own if I rack up a huge bill on a poorly judged wine habit, and given that David seems to have invested his income in esoteric cryptocurrencies, I’m quite glad I know nothing about it anyway.

Last year, this long-term stinginess was formalised via the aforementioned debt-logging app, which we now use to fling increasingly spurious costs at one another. David charged me 50p for some batteries he bought for our wall clock last month; that £2 coffee I bought him went straight onto my Splitwise log. There’s a unique type of joy from looking at the Splitwise tally to find I’m in the black – which is, ahem, not often the case.

Not having a joint account means we’re completely accountable for our spending habits and money problems. I’d help him out in a crisis, of course; but the “all that I have, I give to you” I promised when we got married doesn’t always have to stretch to what’s in my wallet. I’m a pragmatist. Plus, I think he’d answer that he wants to keep my grubby hands off it anyway.

It’s all in my upbringing. My parents have been married for 35-ish years and have never shared anything more significant than a Tesco Clubcard. They have never needed to, reasoned my (very sensible) mum. I’m with her on that one.

Dealing with our finances independently takes away the issue that so many couples fight about: money. And on a lighter note, it gives our pals something to laugh over whenever they see us fastidiously adding up what we had in a restaurant before throwing our separate credit cards in the middle.

I’m sure it’ll all change when we’re arguing over who will pay for the white plantation shutters I’ve got my eye on for our new house, but I suspect we’ll still be the (self-styled) “cheapest couple in Britain”, and I’m very happy for it to stay that way.