Do you have housekeeping money?

Yes, I have housekeeping money which comes out of our joint account. This way I can pay with cash and keep track of what I spend. I can have more if I need it and I keep a reserve to draw upon in a separate place in my bag and a card as well but this method, for us, suits us the best. I am 78 so perhaps I have an established method which suits.

I had to have a bank account when I started work in 1953 (I was 16) as we were paid by cheque by the City Council.

When we were first married (1962) and saving hard for a deposit on a house we had a joint account but DH drew out £5 in new 10/- notes which had to do for the week. It was quite a struggle but we had saved the deposit on a new house in less than a year and celebrated our first wedding anniversary sitting on the carpet in the new house and eating a doughnut each from Betty’s.

For many years we have each had our own account and paid into the joint (housekeeping) account in proportion to what we were earning, and this pattern persists. We never argue about money although we have very different attitudes. It must be awful to disagree about something so important.

To open her own bank account in the good old days, a woman needed to be 'recommended' by a man. So a married woman needed what amounted to the permission of her husband. For a young woman it would be her father. It was in my case I remember.

I don't know how you had one Calendargirl but I had one too but it had to be countersigned when I opened it. I think that was done by my father. Maybe some banks allowed it before they had to in law.

No, never. I've always earned my own money. When I got married, we briefly had a joint account, but he was such an idiot with money, I quickly learned my lesson and we got separate accounts. He'd run up debts, but in his name only.

We used to go halves on bills and the mortgage.

My mother did all the admin for my father's business and was responsible for household finances. I think in those days women had more control than we imagine.
We have a joint account and our own accounts as well. My husband does all the shopping and cooking so I don't need a housekeeping allowance.

I've never had housekeeping money and haven't worked outside the home since we got married. I have access to all of the bank accounts. We are a team and both work in the best interests of our team.

No, absolutely not! We both work and our salaries go into a joint account that we both access. I would hate to rely on another adult for money as my granny (and my mum to a lesser extent) did.

Since DH had a stroke in 2010 I have all the money.

If he needs anything he asks me. Oh, the power

Seriously though. We've always shared everything. My mother had a housekeeping allowance because that's what they did in the fifties. Once we were all at school she went back to teaching music. I presume she had some money of her own then but I never asked.

My mother was given housekeeping money, by my father, every Friday night and she would separate out money for rent, milk bill, insurance etc, and whatever was left over was to feed us all for the week. There was never enough. On the otherhand, my father smoked and drank, ran a car and spent the majority of his wages on himself. It was so miserable, and caused so many arguments between them, that I knew from a very young age I would never accept that. As soon as I started work in 1970, I opened my own bank account and kept that separate throughout my marriage.

Gracesgran I'm sure I had a bank account from about the mid sixties. I was single then. My salary was paid into it, we didn't get pay packets.

Gracesgran I too had my own bank account from when I started at university in 1967. I don’t remember my father or anyone else having anything to do with it.

I'm not sure what you want me to say janeainsworth. I mentioned the date on which, by law, all banks had to offer women a bank account in their own name. I don't mean to be rude but, interesting though it is to know you had one prior to that date I have no idea why it is relevant to my original comment.

That may be so GracesGran, but I'm fairly sure that many banks pre-empted the law. I, and all my working friends, had our own bank accounts in our own names in the mid-late 60's, without any need to have them countersigned.

As Callistemon mentioned, I had a Royal Navy Allotment book when we first married. The Navy insisted upon it, it wasn’t optional. That was my ‘housekeeping’ money in that I bought our food and paid the milk and newspaper bills out of it and I’d had some left over from my £10pw in 1972!

We have always had a joint account, though, so I never had to manage on my allotment. If I needed more money, I’d get it out of the bank. Money is one thing we have never argued about over the years.

My father used to hand over his entire pay packet to my mum and she would give him his pocket money. She was better with money and paid all the bills anyway, so it made sense.

I suppose what janea said is relevant because you had said in your original post that women couldn't open a bank account in their own name until 1975, Gracesgran, but some of us remembered that we did.

However, when applying for a mortgage later on after I was married, my salary could not be considered.

Fine Bathsheba. I think the law brought about societal change. If you don't, why not just say so?

Your friends (how many I wonder) may have had there own bank account but what about older women and those in cash paid jobs? I really doubt you were anything other than a small proportion of all the women in the country. Your sample is far too small to convince me otherwise.

This is not about you or me but about changes in society.

I remember having to go to the Post Office to 'draw the allotment' and the woman there was extremely rude and treated us as if she was giving us her own money when in fact it was part of our husband's salary, SueDonim.
I remember DH saying it was necessary because some would not make any arrangements for their wives to receive any money at all when they were away.

GG where on earth in my post does it indicate that I have an opinion one way or another on whether the law brought about societal change? . I was merely commenting, as have several others, that I and many I knew were able to open a bank account in our own names way before any law was in place to allow this. Keep your knickers on!

To add my two pennorth, I worked in a bank from 1967 and when a woman got married she produced her marriage certificate and we changed the name on the account to her married name and we took a new specimen signature.

I hear what you say Bathsheba but all I did was to note the fact that the law was passed on that date. Each of you addressed me to say you had bank accounts before that date. That is relevant to you but almost irrelevant to the fact that the law being changed meant a societal change.

My knickers are firmly in place, thank you and there really is no need to make personal attacks. If you believe that prior to the change of law everyone was happily getting bank accounts then say so. Otherwise, your comments, interesting though they may be to you and others who already have bank accounts are not relevant to the changes that came, after the law was passed.

If you see it differently, leave the personal comment out and put your argument forward. It would be interesting to hear it.

Another example of the lack of equality in banking and money pensionpat and an interesting one. Could the woman keep her account in her "maiden" name then, if she chose to?

I remember that this was way before BACS, but we were required to have a bank or building society account because we were paid by cheque which we then paid into our accounts, and we had cheque books.
It was the mid-sixties.
I kept one of my accounts and still have it now.

She was a cheeky so-and-so, Callistemon! I don’t recall having any trouble myself, thank goodness. The allotment was a sensible thing to have in place in those pre-internet banking days. My Dh, before I knew him, had been away for 18 months at one point. Imagine men having to send a tenner home from every port they visited!