joint or shared checking accounts

[Matthew Vanecek]

The type of relationship you are involved in will have a direct impact
on the answer to your question, and you did not specify the type of
relationship between you and and your partner.

If this is a marital (or life-partner) situation, the joint account
represents a single entity (the couple) that incurs expenses.  Benjamin
explained this pretty well, so I'll try to just touch on my previous
experiences.  When my wife and I had separate accounts, and she gave me
money, I would use "Wife's income" as the balancing account, and when I
gave her money, I would use 'Wife's Expenses" as the balancing account.
It was a real pain, but we were too lazy to change for a while.
However, as we expect out commitment to be a lifelong commitment, we've
consolidated into a single set of joint accounts, and I manage the books
as if we were a single entity (with disparate sources of income, of
course).  If I need to denote who incurred an expense, I use the Notes
field.  We expect this to really give a humongous boost in managing our
finances (and it has, not to mention the required increase in
communication!).  There are many good books on handling finances within
a relationship--Dave Ramsey or Larry Burkett are my favorite authors on
the subject.  Definitely worth investing in.

If this is a non-business relationship that is non-permanent and non-
cohabitative (d'ya like my new word? :) ), you should NOT use a joint
account.  Just do a rotating buy (I buy this time, you buy next time) or
something, and kindof don't keep strict track of whose turn it is to buy
(bad for the relationship, I'd imagine).  The non-permanent is the key--
even if you're living together but don't plan on staying together (or if
you are not living together), DON'T USE JOINT ACCOUNTS!!!!  You could
have a "Partner's Account" to record money that you give her or she
gives you, just to balance the books properly, but I wouldn't try
managing her money.  Rent, bills, etc., should be handled in typical
roommate fashion (sans skipping out, though!).  Key words in this
situation: Shit Happens, and you got not as much legal recourse as is
available in an official life-partner situation.

If this is a business relationship, you really ought to consult an
accountant.

On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 13:17 -0800, Adam Monsen wrote:
> I have a joint checking account with my partner, and I'm rather
> confused about how this could best be handled in gnucash.
> 
> We deposit equal amounts, and generally split everything paid for with
> funds from the account. For instance:
> 
> her: deposit $10
> me: deposit $10
> both: buy dinner for $20
> 
> Net profit should equal out, but my income and expenses will be double
> what they "should" be, at least for my individual accounting needs.
> 
> The only thing I can think of is to just leave her income and expenses
> out of the picture. For instance, here would be an interpretation of
> the above pseudo-transactions:
> 
> me: deposit $10
> me: buy dinner for $10 (half of actual bill)
> 
> This seems kinda ugly. Maybe it's better just to enter all the data
> (including her half) and have separate accounts for expenses, like
> Food:Dining *and* JointChecking:Food:Dining, and separate income
> accounts, like Income:MyOwn and Income:Hers. This sounds a bit ugly
> too. For now, I'm just entering all funds into the joint account from
> Opening Balances, and expenses in the accounts I already use, like
> Food:Dining. This will skew expense budgets, but I guess since we'll
> be sharing money are budgets are generally different anyway. Weird.
> 
> Anyone have any suggestions on how this could be better dealt with?
> 
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