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Hi all, My wife is a stay at home mum. Historically she has held Amex cards on and off to help collect avios points through welcome bonuses and companion vouchers. However it seems the main Amex cards all require a personal income these days (household income doesn’t count). Does anyone know of any avios collecting credit cards with reward bonus etc that do not require personal income?
In this situation, you can set up regular payments to your wife which Amex will accept as her income but this can’t just be a one off arrangement if she intends to keep the card. Many full time mums have their own cards on this basis.
How does this work if you have a joint bank account which all the household income is paid into?
In this situation, you can set up regular payments to your wife which Amex will accept as her income but this can’t just be a one off arrangement if she intends to keep the card. Many full time mums have their own cards on this basis.
Would the mom pay taxes from this “income” 🙂
I guess one can arrange a standing order from the main pot for that purpose.
How does this work if you have a joint bank account which all the household income is paid into?
Obviously it’s not going to wash just to move cash around inside a joint account! The original question refers to a stay at home mother which is suggestive of a reasonable amount of income in the household such that a standing order of £1,700 -£3,000 might be possible. This is a very standard arrangement such that a stay at home mother has her own funds to spend as she wishes.
A great many spouses will have their own bank accounts in addition to any joint account as this seems like quite a fairly basic element of independence and the taxation of women has been independent for over thirty years. The spouse would be free to spend the standing order in any way they wish but if asked re household income, clearly it can’t be double counted.
Au contraire, a joint current account means that monies can be accessed by both partners equally, regardless of who is the higher earner (or sole earner). I would consider getting an “allowance” as very 1950s. Obviously savings accounts are different in that it’s advantageous to be able to use both people’s ISA allowances, etc.
Au contraire, a joint current account means that monies can be accessed by both partners equally, regardless of who is the higher earner (or sole earner). I would consider getting an “allowance” as very 1950s. Obviously savings accounts are different in that it’s advantageous to be able to use both people’s ISA allowances, etc.
It’s not remotely 1950s! Having been asked to help review the bank and credit cards of dozens of couples, I can safely say that not a single one operated just with a joint account. I think it’s actually very unusual for people to close down their pre-relationship accounts. Joint accounts are also often a vehicle for coercive controlling behaviour and on separation, an all too frequent occurrence, it’s hugely advantageous already to have a separate account.
I was very pleased to give my wife a significant monthly allowance into her own account to reflect my respect for her incalculable contribution as a full time mother who forwent a successful career to carry out that important role. There is absolutely nothing 1950s about giving her the financial independence to do exactly what she wanted.
On a more trivial note, my wife often buys me presents or organises surprises which would be difficult to conceal or really consider as any sort of gift or surprise if the money came a joint account.
We are all different but I’m also definitely not 1950s!
I lived and worked in Switzerland and France. Having spent so many weekends flying back to the UK and OH to Europe I gave up my career to return to the UK to be with OH. Ever since I have had a monthly allowance paid into my account by OH. It’s enabled me to surprise OH with foreign trips, presents etc. Just wish I’d found HfP sooner!
I have been able to give something back to society through voluntary work, sometimes part time work and also full time Mum. The “allowance” enabled me to spend time in the US as a fully paid up “Sorority Mom” when my daughter was at Uni in the US and I was able to spend time in Australia when my son was at Uni there without worrying about work.
Even though OH has recently retired, I still get my “allowance”. It works very well for both of us and I can’t see it changing.I was very pleased to give my wife a significant monthly allowance into her own account to reflect my respect for her incalculable contribution as a full time mother who forwent a successful career to carry out that important role. There is absolutely nothing 1950s about giving her the financial independence to do exactly what she wanted.
To me, that sounds like you think of your salary as your money and that you were very generous sharing it with your wife. I, on the other hand, think it sounds controlling. In my relationship with my husband, we paid our salaries into our joint account because we viewed our salaries as joint income, not mine or his. And we both spent as and how we liked, not being beholden on someone else’s “generosity” to grant us that freedom, whether we were or were not at that time contributing to the pot. In fact, we’ve only ever had joint current accounts since we moved in together and I honestly think it would have been a dealbreaker if he and I had different attitudes to our finances.
It’s amazing how these threads morph.
Anyway, as a public service announcement, no matter how you organise your finances:
– if you share a home and a life together then I’d strongly advise having a joint account from which all household bills are paid.
– perish the thought but if something happens to the (only) person whose account all these bills are paid from then it makes life much more difficult for the survivor. Banks want to freeze the deceased person’s account and utility providers want to shut the account and reopen in the new name.
– a joint account keeps operating and therefore the utilities can be more easily switched over as a simple name change.
– you really don’t want them dealing with this just because you fancied trying the fugu.And as an observation, everybody’s relationship is different so no be so judgy.
Thank you all for your comments. Without wanting to fuel the fire around management of a couple’s finances, the majority of income is transferred into a joint account which we both access for our spending needs. I wasn’t clear if I could count this standing order (or half of it) as income? Anyone got any idea?
It’s amazing how these threads morph.
Right on the nail.
Fascinating discussion, though – and I can totally see both points of view!
Thank you all for your comments. Without wanting to fuel the fire around management of a couple’s finances, the majority of income is transferred into a joint account which we both access for our spending needs. I wasn’t clear if I could count this standing order (or half of it) as income? Anyone got any idea?
How dare you bring the thread back on topic!
Assuming this means that your salary goes into your personal account, and you then transfer the bulk of this into a joint account then I’d suggest:
Salary into your account:
– transfer enough from your account into joint account to cover household bills
– transfer a set amount each month into your spouse’s account. This is her income and is forevermore lost to you.
– up to you whether you do your spending from your own account or joint account as before.It probably also depends what sort of sums of money you are talking about. If you earn £500k net then you could keep the existing arrangement but do £3k per month to you spouse’s account which would equal £20k ISA, £3k SIPP, and a small balance for a modest birthday pressie for you.
Oh and wait at least three months before your wife applies.
@Froggee – yes the morphing is remarkable! I offered a tried and tested solution in response to the original question that was met with an uppity non sequitur.
Your comment re joint accounts continuing after death is very wise (and if I wasn’t clear, it’s easiest to have both joint and individual accounts) but there is a slight wrinkle in that, on the premise originally posited, we are talking about a single income family. If the income earner were to die prematurely/unexpectedly, the funding of the joint account can come to a sudden halt leaving the other partner nothing with which to pay the household bills, school fees etc. – I have seen this happen to a couple of families. It is therefore helpful for there to be sufficient funds immediately available for the survivor to pay bills pending probate which can take a horrendously long time, in England at least.
@poshboy91 – no, the payment you are already making into the joint account isn’t going to work. This either needs to be done properly and transparently or not at all unless you want to risk serious issues for your wife.@JDB it still staggers me that there are so many sole breadwinners who genuinely think that the money is theirs. I try to work on the premise that people are nice and therefore a sole breadwinner would already ensure that the other half was in enough funds to have their own savings assuming there are indeed household savings. Given the likely tax benefit it shows a shocking lack of trust of the spouse not to do this.
A random non sequitur. A long time ago I remember meeting a director of a very large and successful Taiwanese tech company. We had gotten to know her quite well over the years. She was a very impressive lady. I have no idea how but we got onto the topic of how her and her husband had moved back to Taiwan from academic careers in the US. He stayed in academia but she went into industry.
Somewhat cheekily my colleague suggested that she must be the breadwinner and therefore wear the pants in the household. Her response was “oh yes, but I still let my husband pay the mortgage so he feels important. And also, I don’t think it does a man any good to have too much spare money”
@froggee love it.
An hilarious side on this is a friend of mine just inherited approx. £550,000 pounds from the sale of her late Mums house.
She dumped the money in her & her OH’s joint account that they had had for 40 years before deciding what to do with it.
Son then said oh you can put 5K in a higher paying account.
She was bored one evening so rang up but guess what they wouldn’t let her open this piddley little account of 5K, and the youngish female CS person kept repeatedly asking her where her money came from.
She said well it’s a joint account and my OH is self employed and all our monies have gone into this account for years.
Oh how we laughed with circa a 3/4 million in an the account.
Needless to say this is the ‘wonderful world of Barclays’ who have no concept of a homemaker or indeed their value in society where only ‘paid’ work seems to count.
I’ve told her to just says she’s retired in future – people seem to vaguely understand that.
I’m in a similar position, as my wife is also a stay at home mum now. She therefore is no longer eligible for a BAPP, which is quite annoying as a family of 3.
We hardly use the joint account, and I pay into her own personal current account, and her savings, too. I wasn’t sure if she could claim this as income? If so, then she would be eligible.
Not sure how others see it, but I consider the money I earn as all 3 of ours, and my wife’s money as hers, and I have no say in how she spends it (even if I don’t think its a good use of the money at times).
@Froggee those same people who think the money is all theirs (and it’s not always men) get a very nasty surprise and get very angry/nasty when they discover on separation/divorce that it’s not all theirs at all.
I thought we’d have this issue with the barclaycard avios card but during the application I recall reading that regular payments in to an account in my wife’s name would count as income even if it came from another family members account.
So I have a sole barclays current account where my pension is paid and I have a barclays joint account with my wife where lots of direct debits and standing orders get paid from. I transfer £1.1k per month to cover those outgoings. My wife doesn’t personally use this account for personal use but Barclays accepted this and allowed the card application.We’ve never had joint accounts, we’ve never even had a conversation about it. Although I’m not sure that counts for much when most of my wife’s spending is on a supp credit card to one of my accounts!
We’ve never had joint accounts, we’ve never even had a conversation about it. Although I’m not sure that counts for much when most of my wife’s spending is on a supp credit card to one of my accounts!
Same here, never had joint accounts. All my spending as the wife was a supplementary on my OH’s card which I paid of every month.
We never had a joint account until it became apparent to me the downside for Mrs Froggee if I decided to expire without giving the statutory notice to her.
Other than that our finances remain completely separate. Or as she says “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is ours”.
Jumping on this thread as I’m in a similar situation in that I am the majority bread winner and my wife works part time. She is currently a supplementary card holder on my BAPP (which we use for 95% of our spending). As we are a family of 3, she would like to apply for a BAPP, however her own salary is less than £35k. Currently, both of our salaries are paid into our joint account, which we pay all bills from.
Would Amex accept both salaries which are paid into the joint account as my wife’s “income”? I don’t actually think this has been clearly answered?
Thanks!
@macy312 – I think this has been answered and the answer must be no because you are trying to double count. The process discussed at the start of this thread is very simple but in order for it to be acceptable to a card provider, it must be done in a transparent manner, no fudging, no double counting or you risk creating serious issues for your wife.
What we are talking about is a regular payment – standing order to her own account and then applying after at least three months of this and clearly if you were thinking of cancelling it thereafter that would be quite inappropriate and again risk issues for your wife in respect of her application declarations which need to be taken very seriously and made in good faith.
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