I’m not convinced my dh warned me the last time he replaced his car, but I may just not have been listening. We disucss stuff like new pieces of furniture and I ran the big ticket items and the general costs of the addition we put on the house. It got paid for out of a combination of money he’d inherited and money I’d inherited.
When we do taxes I go through all the credit cards making sure I’ve taken all the deductions I can. There’s one that only dh uses and I don’t actually check that one, but I could - it’s in the same expanding file.
We tend to discuss if either of us plans to spend a few hundred dollars on something but generally neither of us gets very excited. We commingle our assets freely, including H’s pension and his substantial inheritance. We rarely have ever disagreed about $$$ and have no money secrets in aware of.
I suppose the cause depends on the people involved. I think, in many cases, the situation is reflective of issues going on with the couple. The overspending and hiding of financial info. is just a symptom.
The cause could be a disagreement over what their priorities are or a disagreement about how to set priorities. I think it makes a difference how couples settle disagreements. Do they have equal say? Does the one who earns more believe that what they want should count more? I think people who grew up in homes with SAHM’s are more likely to have these situations if there was an imbalance of power and it carries over to their own marriage.
Sometimes, one spouse is a spender and the other isn’t, but other times one has a set figure in mind for a savings goal but hasn’t effectively communicated that figure to the 2nd spouse. So the 2nd spouse seems like a spender to the 1st when they’re really not.
I think some spouses use money as a weapon to control the other (similar to how some spouses use sex). I think situations vary depending on the people involved.
I don’t think most people who do this are horrible people. I do think they’d benefit from financial counseling, and maybe a little marital counseling wouldn’t hurt either.
I guess I’m surprised that it seems that most posters don’t make purchases without their spouse knowing.
You are better people than I am. I will buy an outfit or shoes or small things for the house without telling my husband. I think it would drive him crazy if I told him about every purchase I make. I mean, I bought sheets for our bed. I didn’t go over it with him, why should I. We needed new sheets and I bought the ones I wanted. Sometimes I buy him things I think he needs and I don’t ask him either. I give him what I’ve picked up.
H hates to shop for clothes or shoes or things like that. He does have hobbies and buys stuff for that.
We don’t make big purchases without talking about it. Cars, bikes, exercise equipment stuff like that.
I don’t believe in secrets, but I think that I don’t need to know everything.
I am lucky, my wife and I are very similar with things, neither of is particularly uptight about money, and we talk about things we spend money on, and neither of us resents if the other person wants to get something for themselves, in large part because neither of us is likely to go crazy with things. Everything is pretty much open, our accounts have been commingled since we started living together many years ago, and nothing is hidden. She has the same access I do to our 401k accounts, our savings accounts, stock accounts, so she knows what is going on, plus I don’t exactly hide anything. Likewise, if we splurge, it isn’t exactly one of us going out and buying a fancy car or something, splurges for us might be something like buying books on kindle, or for my wife, a supplement she wants to try or a new kind of eye creme or something, mine tends to be little things. I recently bought, after like 20 years of bonuses going to everything that needed to be done, a totally frivolous toy (a tube amplifier), and I think she enjoyed the fact that I enjoyed doing that.
I wonder about people who cheat, is it their spouse is completely out of synch with them, is the spouse only willing to spend money on themselves, or is it some sort of game, seeing what they can ‘pull over’ on the other person? Not claiming to be perfect, far from it, and I think everyone has secrets, but it just sounds like a lot of people don’t have the kind of trust and understanding when it comes to money.
i would not go buy sheets for the bed w/o telling my spouse. He sleeps on them too and he’d have an opinion. Plus he’d want to figure out how to get them the absolute cheapest and/or figure out some way to have his office pay for them, lol.
I think with purchases it depends, if it is something that we will share for example, or a major purchase like a car, it would be both of us, but for the most part we trust each other after all these years to know what is important or not. If I am working on the house, I don’t tell her what I am buying at home depot (though I’ll ask if she needs anything), but for example, if I was replacing bedroom doors, I would consult with her about the style and such, because after all, it is both our house. I think it depends on what I am buying, my wife wouldn’t care if I bought myself some new shirts because my old ones were getting stained, if she went shopping and bought new shoes or something, I don’t need to know unless she wanted to show them to me.Funny part about both of us is we are a lot more supportive of the other one buying things than buying for ourselves, so there really isn’t conflict. If I went out and bought an expensive sports car with money that was needed to fix the roof or pay tuition, she would probably be angry, but we both are responsible to a fault that way, so we trust each other.
There have been times when money was an issue in our relationship, when we were younger there were some financial pressures, some of the dumb things younger people can do, but other than that, it simply wasn’t a big deal, I guess because we know each other well enough to trust each other. And if something someone buys doesn’t work out, neither of us is the type to say “I told you so”, maybe because we had a-hole families who would do things like that, or would judge anything we bought with our own money growing up, so we refuse to be like that.
@Pizzagirl, I’ve had the new sheets on the bed for about a month (washed every week). H has not made one comment about them, I don’t think he’s noticed they are new. They are a completely different color than we’ve ever had. He’s not very observant lol!
"I think it would drive him crazy if I told him about every purchase I make. "
It would drive Mr. B totally batty! Nor do I want to hear about every tool he buys. My shoes are all on the closet shelves, open for inspection. It is the kiddos who wear the same shoe size I have to worry about and hide the shoes.
“i would not go buy sheets for the bed w/o telling my spouse. He sleeps on them too and he’d have an opinion.”
We do talk about buying things that affect us as a whole. A new $50 lamp for the bedroom? Yup. The lighting will change. A new set of memory foam rugs for the bathroom? You bet, if they feel different under our feet. Mattress? That required a few hours of research, and then I presented the summary to Mr. He approved the Costco purchase. Rebalancing 401(k) or contributing to some benefit plan? Absolutely.
I sure don’t tell DH when I buy clothes, though he knows that LLBean is a splurge for me. All our credit cards are joint. I don’t know what he buys for his Kindle. He doesn’t have any other hobbies except cooking. Neither of us abuses the trust, so there isn’t a burning need on wither of our parts to justify each purchase. I can’t access his 401(k) account online because of gov’t security stuff, but I see the statements, so no big deal.
I once had a clothing store card that I’d gotten without telling him ($300 limit – how much damage could I do? and it was for work clothes!) and he flipped out. This was about three years after we were married. His mother was notorious for setting up accounts, buying cr*p and digging the family into a big financial hole. DH is the one who got to deal with the debt collectors when he was a 13 yo. So, I understood where he was coming from, and he learned that I was not going to spend stupidly. Full disclosure lesson learned.
A car or major purchase (new roof, major appliances, HVAC, computer) gets the fine-toothed comb review. I do the legwork, he picks it apart and wants every detail. He wanted me to prepare a powerpoint presentation for a master bath reno. Seriously. So I did. Four years later, we still haven’t done the reno. The $$ of the low bid scared him, not to mention what the other contractors charged. We have a joke about major purchases – we like to take our time so we can say “goodbye” to our money. We need to replace some of the kitchen goods we got as wedding gifts in 1983, and DH jokes about me wanting to replace HIM next. It has become a running joke around here.
I bet Pizzagirl simply joked. Although a thread on cheating the office could take off! I have some stories about some folks I worked with. Unbelievable.
My H doesn’t want to know and doesn’t want be involved with most purchases. Now that he’s retired and with me a LOT, when we’re shopping, he pays no attention to whatever I buy. If I ask him for his opinion, he just says, “whatever you want, you know what’s the best one to get.” He truly doesn’t care. I doubt that he’s EVER noticed when new/different sheets are on the bed. I’m not sure that he even notices that there ARE sheets on the bed.
Well, I am probably putting myself in front of a firing squad here , but I squirrel away money …not to spend on anything extravagant or for myself , but to pay bills during the quiet times of our business. I have splurged on one thing for myself that I can recall in 21 years , but it wasn’t a secret. I discussed it with my husband before I made the purchase. It was something that cost $650.
I feel the need for a reservoir of emergency money for unplanned situations
I also have maintained my own separate bank accounts . I did this because back in the days when I received child support, I wanted to keep that money separate. I am a saver , my husband is not.
I have my own credit cards too , which I tend to not use often.
I don’t cheat and there is no reason for me to. H and I have separate accounts and I can get into his but he can’t get into mine. His pay gets direct deposited into his account and I immediately transfer almost all the money into mine - except for a few hundred $ spending money for him and the mortgage - which gets automatically withdrawn from his account. I have all the rest of the money and I take care of all of our finances - including his credit card bill. He loves that I do it all. He has no idea what our bills run and does not care what I spend on things as long as our bills are paid and money goes into our investment accounts (outside of his 403b.)
I think there is a big differences between sneaky financial goings-on and couples having different bars for sharing daily expenditures. One may have a general understanding that not every purchase is discussed, because a couple is in sync, bound by common goals or mutual understanding that the financial picture is working openly. There are people who have money issues the way alcoholics struggle with liquor and it all becomes a game of half truths, lies and self-deception. You can do that by spending, by gambling, being a show off or shopaholic, loaning money independent of the spouse, etc. All the means in the world could be available, but if there are trust issues with money in the marriage, that would be toxic to me. I value being straightforward and having each of us know and bear responsibility for our financial security.
I have an envelope with some cash, saving for a 25th anniversary trip next year. Other than that, no secrets and our lives are 100% tied together in every way. When we bought our Toyota, the title was in her name and the loan was in mine, but typically everything has both names. With equal earnings and equal credit scores things are pretty easy.
My father was dragging his feet looking for home after they retired, dragging his feet and rotating between the kids’ houses. My mother went out and bought a house without telling him.
It’s his own company, doschicos (physician in solo private practice). Any expense that can be paid for through the office is preferable to one paid with after-tax money. For example, his company/business pays for our home internet and phone service versus us paying with after-tax dollars. It’s completely justifiable to the IRS. There’s no ethical problem here or nothing that wouldn’t be fully kosher in the event of an audit. Nice try!
