Before we got married, Annikki had no bank account. She used to get paid in cash on a Friday morning. By Friday night she would have spent all of it at various local shops in the area!
I had a bank account in Barclays Bank on Finchley Road in London. Since I only got money transfer twice a year from India, I had to budget my life and live strictly within that budget.
At that time we were only allowed £600 as the student transfer plus the fees for our college, which was a princely sum of £240.
It was very difficult to manage on £600. That is another story I will blog another time.
When we moved from London to Shrewsbury after I graduated and we got married I started our joint bank account.
Ever since then we have always had joint bank accounts as there was no saying my or your money.
We lived of a strict budget and the sum spent on our wedding, a grand sun of £100 overdraft from the Barclay’s Bank in Shrewsbury was cleared by us in one year
When we moved to Indi,a again we had only a joint bank account. There Annikki was in charge of the money and budgeting. She had a few extravagances as I would be travelling round India almost 20 days s month.
On one such trip I returned to find my office room had been turned into a zoo with birds, and even a mongoose as a pet.
That is also another blog for the future!
When we moved back to Finland we started our Nordea account. As child benefit was paid only to the mother of the children, a Postipankki account was started in Annikki’s name. But she converted it to a joint account.
That Postipankki account has over time become a Danske bank account but we hardly use it
Because Annikki got a loyalty card from the S-Group, they started a bank account to pay the monthly bonus.
Annikki again converted it into a joint acount over two decades ago.
Last week we found that the S-Psankki account was not working.
All our salaries, now pensions are all paid into our Nordea account and we transfer s small sum for our monthly living expenses to the S-Psnkki account as we do almost 100% of our shoppang in Prisma.
Today we went to the customer service of S-Pankki to find out why our bank account was not working.
The lady went through all the requirements as our names, address, email address and finally the telephone number.
Then came a shock, as she said that our account was stopped because we have the same telephone number. She said the Finnish law demands that we must have our own phone numbers as they have to send text messages (OTPs) to us individually for the verification code.
Annikki, who is quite meek and mild, was flabbergasted at this. She said on our family we had only one telphone and we did not intend to get a new phone justfor the convenience of the bank.
I told the lady that the Nordea bank had no such requirement. Even on Paypal the same phone number is used for both of us.
Annikki was ready to stop the S-Panikki account altogether as we only use it to get the deposit of the monthly bonus.
Better sense prevailed and I told the lady that Annikki would not be using her access to the account and only I woulkd use it so only one phone number would suffice!
We think it is stupid to ask customers to have separate phone numbers for the convenience of the bank.
The Nordea system is more relevant as they provide one with s code calculator and with that both of us can access the bank without access to text messages ffom the bank.
The only reason we keep the two banks are because the Nordea one is used by me as my Personal
Identifier and the S-Pankki one is for Annikki.
I hope this new set up will not make it more complicated for us.
Annikki has no intention to buy a phone and the iPhone does not have a dual SIM option!
