I was married to someone who had a very different financial plan (not one, just spend, spend, spend).
Now I will NEVER share my finances with another.
I hope the wife changed the locks to the house.
This thread is making me glad I lived with my husband for several years before marriage and glad I found someone with the same financial mindset as me.
My husband and I are both frugal. But I’m very ethical and he’s not. That didn’t come out until after we got married.
We have all the same accounts, and my husband tracks every dollar. However, I admit that sometimes I pay cash when I don’t want to be tracked. Like today I bought a cookie at Panera Bread that I didn’t want tracked ( I really need to not buy cookies 8-| ) and when I gamble, I always claim I lost half of what I really did. Oops! But that’s not really financial cheating, is it? It’s just protecting my pride 
Sometimes husbands and wifes have a bit of separate money that they can spend as they wish. They don’t need to go beg and plead to spend $500.
We have shared accounts and I pay the bills. He sees them, so no surprises. We have similar views on spending, so we know neither of us will go out and spend big $$ on junk. I do get frustrated that there are things around the house that need to be done, and DH is not willing to pay for them. I just started working PT and would like to apply my earnings to getting someone to clean the house every 2-3 weeks. My energy is limited and I would rather use it on things that I enjoy and where I can make a difference. Cleaning toilets and scrubbing floor are not among those things.
DH is vehemently opposed to having someone come in, but neither he nor S2 (who’s living at home) will do anything to help. They just ignore the grime.
So let’s say I am seriously tempted to commit financial infidelity here. But it shouldn’t be infidelity to say I need this support and I have to do this to preserve my health.
@CountingDown I’ve told many young couples I know that getting a housekeeper every two weeks is cheaper than marital counseling or divorce. Most chuckle but then go hire someone. 
@doschicos I’ve found that even offering an above-average wage it is impossible to hire someone with any sense to clean house. Apparently no one wants to be paid to watch The Price is Right while clothes are in the washer and dryer.
I guess I’ve been fortunate, @EarlVanDorn. I’ve used the same reliable woman for 15 years. She has an opening if you want to hire her? 
H and I have joint accounts and also each get about $150-200 in cash every month to spend as “petty cash.” We just check that the charges were actually made by one or the other of us and pay the charge bills from our joint checking and are fine with it. I never felt the need to hide purchases from H and he from me.
^Same here @doschichos and I have given that very same advice to young couples as well. Actually just talked to S and his girlfriend about this over the holidays as they plan to move in together this summer. I’m pretty sure she cares more than he does about a neat, clean house so a bi weekly housekeeper will remove one source of stress…
That said, most of the married couples I know have some amount they are comfortable spending without running it by their spouse. In my case, my H has very little interest in shopping for anything, especially for the home, and that works for me. Matters less to me that he is disinterested and more that I get my way on most purchases. No need to hide anything as he usually doesn’t even ask how much it cost.
Financial infidelity as described in OP seems pretty commonplace regardless of gender from what I’ve seen among some relatives, classmates’ parents, colleagues, and denizens of one online guitar forum where the average forum member tends to be 50-60 years old and male.
It seems especially common on the last as I read with amusement at how married men especially those in their 50s and 60s describe the sometimes convoluted ways they hide their electric guitar purchases from their spouses and explain it away when their spouses wonder about the “new guitar”.
My Mississippi relatives and some colleagues who grew up in rural areas where gun ownership is accepted have recounted takes of neighbors and/or relatives doing the same for gun purchases because they either already have a massive gun collection and/or the spouse strongly disapproves of gun/hunting pastimes.
My cousin told her husband-to-be that she will always lie about how much she spends on her hair. They’ve been married for 30+ years, so I guess he’s fine with that.
I was very surprised when a friend told me that her H paid the credit card bills without looking at them. We always check ours. H and I don’t mind if the other spends a reasonable amount of money ( a few hundred dollars for us), without running it by the other one first, but we usually mention it.
H prepares our taxes (I’m the CPA ), but I review them very closely. I really don’t get how someone hides income from a spouse unless they own a business or are paid in cash.
So what is the amount where you all would say - I won’t spend this until I’ve informed / discussed this with my spouse? Or is it based on whether the item would be “visible” - eg spouse won’t really notice if I buy a new pair of pants, but he will notice a new lamp in the living room?
I would think that as long as our accounts are solvent and savings are on plan, that a spouse can buy something frivolous without having to go through their partner.
I pay the bills, but H has a spreadsheet to track the big stuff (loans and savings, things like that). I don’t think I need to tell him about every pair of shoes I buy and he doesn’t need to tell me about what he spends on his hobby. The reality is that I know more of what he spends because he likes me to enter our cc number when he buys stuff but I never say anything.
Now his brother and his wife will buy expensive things and try and hide the purchase. Sometimes it’s like one is trying to outspend the other. He makes a lot more than H though so their splurges might have a bigger threshold than ours. But it seems to me that their spending has a element of deceit to it.
Like I mentioned at one point it was 10. Right now we want to buy a house so we are watching due dates on credit cards. Hubby is tracking that so I just check which card to use to not go over 30% of the balance.
I remember in our hamburger days Oprah said at some point money is just numbers and you don’t really feel the need to spend. I’m at that point now… not Oprah money, but that philosophy. Back when we didn’t make much a little splurge was a big deal. Now I’m not panicked about how we’ll pay the mortgage AND eat and keep on the power.
I think a lot of desire to spend comes off when you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck.
Living an hour from the mall helps with that too…lol
I don’t really spend anything without my husband knowing about it. I hate to shop and don’t really drive, so if I’m spending, he’s driving. Our problem is him. And food. He can and does spend $150 or more per week in addition to generous grocery budget picking up prepared food here and there or deciding he doesn’t like what’s planned for dinner and then go out and buy all the fixings for something else entirely. Plus my son is a bottomless pit and must be fed every time his butt hits the seat in the car. I don’t play along with that because there is actual food in the house at all times, and the expense of all this sloppiness (in addition to my husband’s weight) was wearing on me, so I had to shut it down. He’s actually glad I did.
Purchasing savings bonds directly from your employer is another way to hide money from your spouse. Unless they are checking the payroll stubs they probably only look at the net amount directly deposited to the accounts.
I had a couple of coworkers that squirrelled away enough money for a surprise motorcycle purchase.