Which joint account do you prefer? Starling or Monzo? Another bank?
OH has a Monzo account as do I, but I’m slowly venturing over to the dark side (literally, Starling app looks nice in dark mode).
Though possibly easier sticking with the one account setup (Monzo, save him a further credit search).
Does anyone have preference one over the other?
We generally do our bills as he pays rent, I pay all other bills, split difference and I pay him whatever the difference is so it’s equal.
Food shops and all else seem difficult to keep track off pinging split bills all over the place, and feel it’ll be less stressful having one account.
There is trust, and we don’t intend to do one over on each other, and it’ll be soooooo much easier to just throw £700pm each into the account every month and not worry about the rest.
I used to watch Starling closely but haven’t for a while now.
Do Starling provide a feature like Monzo’s Bills Pots on a Joint account? This is absolutely priceless for us as it ringfences all known Scheduled payments, Standing Orders & D/D’s. Simply dump a single amount into it to cover the bills and forget about bills. Well, bills that aren’t CPA’s like Netflix/Amazon/Disney+/Spotify/etc.
Of note - you can’t jump to Plus/Premium tiers on a JA, so payment of CPA’s via a Virtual-card-linked-to-a-designated-payment-pot isn’t possible. You can’t have an overdraft either, if that matters.
If you are both Monzo Personal account holders then I’d stick with the devil you know.
I don’t have a Starling joint or personal account, but I would say, for what you want to do, they are much of a muchness.
I’d probably use whichever one I used for my personal banking just to have it all together and wouldn’t switch to one or the other.
The new top up feature from Starling could be quite handy, but if you’re both putting in similar amounts in each month and building up a surplus, I’m not sure it would be useful anyway.
The only other difference that I can think of is how they handle direct debits. Starling will bounce if there’s not enough in that space, although will give you warning about it. Monzo will take it from your main account.
Seriously though, the Joints are pretty much the same. I prefer Starling because I admire its ethics and tech/app, but that’s a personal preference over and above my view on both banks’ features.
Weigh up features and what’s important, and keep it simple.
We wouldn’t really pay anything from pots/spaces as that’s what the joint would be for.
He’s not as out there for tech etc as me so probably worthwhile setting it up with Monzo.
I pay my own premium account as it covers my phone, he’s also not fussed about it, rocks a 2019 phone, but he is covered on my travel insurance I believe.
He also doesn’t use digital wallets and has Monzo standard account so maybe a different colour card would work better so he doesn’t confuse the two.
The Joint account card is the same Hot Coral (or salmon, or pink depending on card provider) as the standard Personal account, with the differentiator of ‘Joint Account’ in the top left.
As a reference, I’ve photoshopped a screen grab from the monzo website to show what the Joint Account Hot Coral card looks like next to the Personal Account Hot Coral card:
Personally, I’m not sure if the ‘different’ design is different enough. I’m OK, as my Personal account is a white metal card - not much chance of mixing those up - but MrsW leaves her Personal Account card stashed away in a drawer somewhere for this reason.
Pots have been available with Monzo Joint Accounts since launch in late 2018 (could be wrong here, memory of a ), and Bills pots available since they launched - 2019?
I’ve used both and there’s not much in it really. Monzo has the get paid early feature, but once you’ve used it once it’s not much different as the time between paydays is the same.
Starling’s sideways card niggled me a little bit, but so does Monzo’s gaudy orange one.
and has Monzo standard account so maybe a different colour card would work better so he doesn’t confuse the two.
), and Bills pots available since they launched - 2019?