Deals for two: how couples can save at any stage of their relationship | Saving money

Coupling up comes with its advantages: a shoulder to cry on, a built-in “plus one” for events and, more practically, someone to split the bill with.

While it’s not all about the money-saving perks, there are a lot of financial benefits to being in a relationship.

Whether it’s two-for-one meals out in the early stages of dating, sharing memberships and subscriptions, cheaper car insurance or tax breaks for married couples and people in civil partnerships, you can save a lot as a pair.

First throes of love

When you are in the early stages of dating, there are plenty of money-saving tactics and two-for-one offers you can take advantage of.

Restaurants Restaurants often offer deals aimed at couples – it might be two-for-one, or “buy one pizza, get another for £1”. At the Italian chain Prezzo, until 12 February you can buy a second main meal for £1 with every full-price one you pay for.

The Tastecard discount card gets you money off at restaurants, cinemas and attractions. You can get two-for-one meals at some restaurants, or 25% off an entire bill, as well as up to 50% off tickets to some cinemas and attractions including Alton Towers and Picturehouse cinemas.

Tastecard memberships start at £7.99 a month, or £79.99 if you pay for the annual subscription, but look out for free trials or offers. At NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland, for example, customers with Student, Graduate and paid-for packaged accounts have the option of a Tastecard as a benefit.

Dine-at-home deals Many supermarkets have “dine-in for two” deals throughout the year, and for Valentine’s Day they typically offer a premium version.

The Waitrose Valentine’s Day deal is a three-course meal and costs £20. It includes a starter, main, side and dessert, plus a bottle of wine, cocktails or non-alcoholic drinks. The offer is available from 7 February until 16 February and, according to Waitrose, can save you up to £18.65.

Marks & Spencer’s dine-in deal for two comes in at £25 and also includes a starter, main, side and dessert, and a bottle of prosecco, wine, cocktails or alcohol-free drinks. It is available in stores from 10 to 14 February.

The Côte restaurant chain offers a choice of at-home Valentine’s boxes, which it describes as “the perfect Valentine’s Day dinner date at home for two”. It includes a starter, main, side and dessert and is priced from £39.95 to £44.95, depending on the choice of starter. You can add a bottle of wine for £15.95. There are also premium and deluxe versions of the box costing up to £59.95 and £99.95, respectively.

Train travel With Duo tickets, you can get a second return ticket for half the price on some routes if you travel with one other adult at the weekends and return the same day on selected routes. That works out as a 25% discount each. When we looked, a day return for two people travelling from London to Cambridge cost £28.09 with a booking fee, working out at just over £14 each, whereas a single ticket at the same time cost £18.79.

Two Together Railcard Called the couples railcard, this gets you a third off train tickets when you travel together. It costs £30 a year. It can be used between any two named passengers who travel together often, such as friends or housemates, as well as those in a couple, but you don’t have to live together. Both people have to be 16 or over.

Trips and outings National Rail’s Days Out Guide offers a host of two-for-one deals for popular landmarks, attractions and restaurants across the UK when you travel by train. An adult ticket to Kensington Palace in London normally costs £20, whereas the two-for-one offer means it will only be £10 a person. For some attractions you need a printed paper voucher to get in.

Hotels If you are travelling with a partner, you can usually save on hotel rooms or rentals by splitting the cost. For instance, when we looked, a night at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Edinburgh on 14 February cost £265 for two guests with breakfast, working out as £132.50 a person. For a single person it was £248 a night.

Amazon Household With Amazon Household, you can share your Prime membership benefits with another adult, and up to four kids – members must have an address in the same country but do not have to live together. Each adult must have their own Amazon account, but only one needs to have a Prime membership for them to share the benefits, such as free next-day delivery. The standard Amazon Prime membership costs £8.99 a month or £95 a year.

Streaming A Netflix account is meant to be shared only by people who live together, but you can add an extra member outside the household if you are on a standard or premium plan for an additional £4.99 a month. For a standard plan without ads, it is £10.99 a month, and with an extra member, you would pay a combined £15.98, which works out as £7.99 each a month.

Disney+ standard costs £8.99 a month, and you can also add an extra member for an additional £4.99 a month, totalling £13.98. Divided by two, each person would pay £6.99.

Living together

If you’ve taken the step to move in together, it may be worth looking into where you can save money by teaming up on subscriptions and annual memberships.

Streaming music An individual Spotify Premium account costs £11.99 a month but the Premium Duo option for “couples under one roof” comes in at £16.99 and gives you separate accounts on the same bill. That means couples paying for two separate accounts could shave about £3.50 each off their monthly bill. To qualify for this deal, you must both live at the same address.

English Heritage With an English Heritage membership, you get entry to more than 400 historic sites and monuments across England. Individual adult membership costs £72 for a year, while the joint adult membership is £126 a year. That’s a £9 saving each on the joint membership. However, adult members must live at the same address to qualify.

National Art Pass You can get discounted or free access to hundreds of galleries and exhibitions across the country with the Double option. It costs £93 a year if you opt for annual payment by direct debit, or £124 when you pay by card. The pass is for two adults living at the same address. An Individual pass is £62.25 with direct debit or £83 by card.

The gym Some gyms offer a reduced-cost membership when you sign up as a couple. Nuffield Health offers a 10% joint membership discount when two adult members join together and pay via a single direct debit. You must live at the same address, and the discount is only available when you join in-club. Total Fitness offers 10% off two individual memberships when you join as a couple.

Car insurance Adding your other half to your policy can often save you money because sharing who will be driving the car is ultimately sharing the risk, says Rhydian Jones, a motoring expert at Confused.com’s car insurance arm. Also, your partner may have more driving experience than you.

Confused.com’s data found that the average cost of car insurance for a woman who is the only driver on a policy is £809, while for a man it is £996. When you add one additional named driver, who is not their spouse, the averages come down to £704 for a woman and £932 for a man.

“For a spouse, this generally brings the price down even further,” Jones says. “Women with their spouse named on their policy pay £544 on average, and men pay £602 on average.”

Bear in mind that this might not be the case if they have previously made insurance claims.

Life and health insurance Joint life insurance covers both partners under a single plan and pays out if either dies. “Joint policies are usually cheaper than two separate individual policies,” the insurance company Aviva says.

This is partly because a joint policy only pays out once – but there’s another reason, too, says the insurer Zurich: “Statistics suggest married and cohabiting couples live longer than single people, so insurers are able to offer cheaper cover.”

Meanwhile, Bupa says a couple buying joint health insurance could save 5% compared with buying cover separately.

In it for the long haul

There are a number of tax breaks and other benefits that you enjoy or can access if you get married or form a civil partnership.

Marriage allowance This often-overlooked tax break applies to couples where one earns less than the personal allowance – normally £12,570 a year.

It lets the lower earner transfer up to £1,260 of their personal allowance to their husband, wife or civil partner who is earning more than £12,570 a year. It only applies if the higher earner is a basic-rate taxpayer. The transfer reduces the recipient’s tax by up to £252 a year currently.

The person with the lower income can apply online. It is free, and claims can be backdated for up to four years (assuming you are eligible).

Some older couples – where one or both partners were born before 6 April 1935 – may benefit more by applying for the married couple’s allowance instead. This could reduce their tax bill by between £427 and £1,108 a year. You can claim this if the age requirement is met and you are married or in a civil partnership and living with that person.

Lower tax bills If you are married or in a civil partnership, you can share assets – for example, investments and savings – between you without the risk of creating a tax bill, says Sarah Coles, the head of personal finance at the investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Once you’ve shared the wealth, you can double the amount of money you can make from them before the taxman takes a slice. For example, you can share investments and both take advantage of your dividend tax and capital gains tax allowances each year,” she adds.

More state pension You may be able to increase your state pension, or inherit some, if you have, or had, a spouse or civil partner. There are different rules depending on whether it is the older basic state pension or the new state pension.

Sharing the financial load The economies of scale that come from being in a couple – particularly one living together – and being able to pool resources and share costs can have a huge impact. This applies even if you are not legally joined.

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association developed the “retirement living standards” to show what life in retirement looks like at three different levels: minimum, moderate and comfortable. It estimates the amount a single person needs to spend for a comfortable standard of living at £43,100 a year. Yet it’s not vastly more than that – £59,000 a year – for a couple.

There’s a close link between financial security and relationship status, says Susan Hope, a retirement expert at the pensions provider Scottish Widows. “Our research shows that 42% of women are on track for a below-minimum income in retirement, in comparison to 35% of men – and this rises to 60% for divorced women and 75% for single mothers,” she says.

Death benefits If one of you dies and leaves everything to the other, in a marriage or civil partnership, this will all be free of inheritance tax. If you are not married and you breach the inheritance tax “nil rate” bands, there could be tax to pay.

Most pensions will pay out to a spouse when you die. “If you’re not married, you can complete a nomination of beneficiaries form to ask for anything to pass to your partner, but if you don’t complete the form, there are no guarantees this will happen,” Coles says.