Actually, I entered with more savings than H but he had some equity in real estate. We both had good jobs but mine paid more than his. It was a 1st marriage for both of us. I figured we were roughly even, but I went on the mommy track and did a long SAHM stint.
Husband who loves to blame me for everything told someone two years ago that I was hiding income and expenses from him and preventing him from having play money. So now I account for every penny that I spend and every penny we take in. Since we don’t take in much it’s easy to do! He gets an allowance that he is not accountable for.
As a result of our poor years, we absolutely are open about all transactions.
The “it’s your business” petty cash sum has risen over the years. Currently it’s in the low hundreds per month. We share all receipts and I mean all, how else do you keep track, but don’t have to justify smaller stuff.
I am floored by friends who admit at tax time (or during a divorced) that they don’t about / have access to their spouses accounts. This is a community property state. How can you let years go by and not know what your spouses 401k was worth?
My mom and step-dad had a rather unhealthy approach to money (he claimed poverty and she had to budget from a too small allowance; divorce time showed he had been diverting money to accounts she didn’t know about). I had a pretty unhealthy approach myself, worried there wouldn’t be enough and being overly (?) frugal. Dh showed me how to be more healthy about money and we’ve always had transparency with joint accounts, both having access to all. I pay the bills and he takes care of the investments. He could easily access or ask about cc bills but doesn’t; just doesn’t care and trusts me to take care of it. He doesn’t shop much; much prefers experiences so, when he does spend, it’s for professional sports events, an extravagant dinner and the like. I enjoy periodic shopping and value that more, as a general rule, than experiences. If I told him about every purchase, he’d just get annoyed. He simply doesn’t care. I suppose it either of use were to spend more than $4-500, we’d check in with the other but, otherwise, while I’m happy to know (not to approve or disapprove but just to be told), dh, really, would get irritated. Thus, no secrets, just agreement on what information should be shared.
My mother used to hide the bills when they came in the mail from my dad. Growing up in such a financially inept household made me very cautious, and my husband is very conservative and truthful with money. We go over the bills every two weeks, and he sees everything I buy, and I see everything he buys. If it’s over $150, we have to ok it with each other. It’s worked well for the past 25+ years.
My primary career once I had the girls was the girls, but I supplement our family income by writing, editing and doing commissioned artwork. That goes in the main pot-it’s not my “mad money” as some people call it. It’s just “the money” not my money or his money. We’re both careful not to refer to it as that, even though he brings in the lion’s share right now. Ironically, he wants more than anything to retire, and I want more than anything to have a regular job, so someday I might be the lion’s share again. 
I’m working hard right now to get my BA before my sophomore goes to college so I can work full time (I did for 10 years before we had #1, while going to school at night), and our tentative plan is that all that money will go towards tuition for the two of them.
My FIL never told my MIL how much money they made; when she finally figured it out she was so mad that they’d lived uber-frugally for decades when they didn’t need to. Like, H’s first crib was a drawer, and his dad had a JD, and his mom didn’t know it meant they could afford a crib. Lot of resentment there. I like to think we’re the happy medium between H’s crazy frugal family and my trainwreck spendthrift family.
@GMTplus7 wrote
Nope. I can’t imagine having to feel like I need to hide money from him.
I don’t feel like I rely on my husband for money just because he makes 99% of the income currently. I feel like we rely on his paycheck to run our household. I don’t feel subordinate to him because of our roles-we’re both doing what we do best to run Dragons Inc. (aka raising our daughters and running our household).
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My MIL was an off the books cleaning lady for most of her marriage, so a very small amount of cash that she bought groceries with. My FIL handled the money, and when he retired, they took a lot of weekend trips. When he died, she found out that he had no real savings and his pension hadn’t included a survivor benefit. She was destitute and moved between relatives until she died a few years later.
@zoosermom That is a really sad story.
Most of the stories I’ve read here I wouldn’t call true financial infidelity.
I feel financial infidelity is done with malicious intent. It is a greed for money that overrides relationships.
For example a man planning to divorce his wife transfers property to his family member hoping to get it back after the divorce is final. This really happened. After the divorce he was not able to get back the property because the family member refused to transfer it back to him. Karma.
H and I keep all our money in joint accounts. Of course our Retirement accounts are separate but we make joint decisions regarding investing them. Assets that we came into the marriage with from our families remain separate but we share in the profits.
Big purchases such as cars or houses are made jointly. Aside from those items we both don’t feel a need to run something by each other. My H is extremely frugal and rarely spends money on himself but doesn’t question my purchases. He doesn’t understand the need of a new dress or shoes for every occasion but he doesn’t tell me not to buy something. When I feel he needs new clothes or an updated item I just buy or order it for him. At the grocery store I buy what I want and the same at restaurants.
If I have a trip coming up with girlfriends or my sisters I will squirrel away a few extra 100 dollar bills for guilt free splurges. Or if I want to buy H something and I don’t want him telling me he doesn’t need it do to price.
When it comes to our children he is also fairly generous and doesn’t question my spending. H also knows that while I do prefer nice things I try to get the best prices.
We live very nicely and I am grateful.
This conversation has made me realize that DH has far fewer issues with spending on stuff vs. paying for services. For a long time, I did a lot of that stuff, and his parents never owned a house, so they didn’t have to deal with maintenence, etc. He’s not handy and doesn’t want to be. Someone has to deal with this stuff!
After my husband’s death, I found an envelope with something like $514.80 in cash – more than he ever carried – he was an academic who consulted, spoke at conferences, and had a travel budget. Apparently, he was cashing reimbursement checks (for expenses charged to credit cards; I didn’t try to track down any honorariums, might have been some of those too). I have no idea what he spent the money on – but it probably wasn’t anything good given that he paid the credit card bills and I wouldn’t have noticed if he charged anything unusual anyway. For example, he scheduled a trip to New York to see an opera (I of course couldn’t go because our then-sixth grader was in school) and he did tell me that he was going to take his former student and her husband (they lived in NY and shared his love of opera) – after he died, I retrieved the tickets to send to the couple and discovered that they were $600 a piece – he had let me assume they were $80-100. Yes, we could afford it, but spending $1200 on folks I hardly knew probably should have been discussed.
I already knew he was a spendthrift – very expensive scotch, $200 meals when he was out of town, etc., but didn’t realize that he was quite that bad He made much more than I do and seemed to think this entitled him to spend much more (even though I gave up being a lawyer to mommy-track so that he could become an academic in another state). There were no secret accounts or separate money stashes or any evidence of a mistress, but I’ll never know exactly how much spending he was hiding.
My patient found out her husband had deposited $60,000 in a NY bank, because they sent her a letter that if there was continued no action on this account, it would go to the state. That money was his severance package. She’s found money in many different banks, and realizes how he was financially unfaithful to her, keeping her on a short lease so she wouldn’t leave him. Sad
My husband doesn’t indulge in things for himself , but he does sometimes buy things I wouldn’t agree with for the business…not because it wouldn’t be useful , but other things should come first. I am way more conservative when it comes to spending than he is.
There is going to be a business trip very soon that he wants me to go along for…our partner will be going which is more important than my presence . I am on the fence about it …on the one hand, it’s Italy and hard to turn down…on the other hand, that would require spending more money
I wasn’t thinking of roles. I was just curious about concerns of what would happen financially if a single-income household split.
There’s another thread running about a woman whose husband of 30 years is leaving her-- not a few woman get broadsided by this (no pun intended). At 30 years of marriage, most workers are at their peak earning years, while SAHMs w a lengthy employment gap face age discrimination when trying to find a job.
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MIL was an off the books cleaning lady for most of her marriage, so a very small amount of cash that she bought groceries with. My FIL handled the money, and when he retired, they took a lot of weekend trips. When he died, she found out that he had no real savings and his pension hadn’t included a survivor benefit. She was destitute and moved between relatives until she died a few years later.
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Because of situations like this, when folks with pensions retire, their spouses have to provide a notorized signature if their spouse doesn’t opt for the best survivors option. When H retired, he opted for 100% survivor option for me, so a signature wasnt needed, but we were both told that if any other option had been selected (even 75%), my notorized sig would have been required.
Years ago, before laws changed, I had a fellow co-worker whose mother-in-law had to live with them because unbeknownst to her, her H had opted for no survivor benefit…and he died 16 months after he retired…leaving her with only a too-small SS benefit. Thank goodness there are laws in all 50 states now in regards to this.
Yes, the survivor benefit protection regs were passed in 1976. (TEFRA, IIRC, and it’s a federal reg.) My grandfather died six months prior to the point where my grandmother would have received a benefit for his 31 years of service. She lived 31 years after his death and really could have used the money.
I wonder… is it possible to set up some type of post-nup agreement that entitles a SAHP to x% of salary (perhaps after typical bills?)? This would seem (to little naive me) like a good way to protect a SAHP in case of later divorce (and perhaps hidden money).
I’d personally be more than happy to have some % of my paycheck go automatically to Mr R’s account if/when he becomes a SAHD. It seems only fair since he is “giving up” his income for the sake of our family… perhaps that comes from growing up in a generation when I saw a LOT of my friends’ SAHMs get screwed over in divorce.
Mom2, my MIL had a third grade education and couldn’t competently read anything beyond a recipe, so she didn’t understand what she was signing. She trusted her husband. He was not uneducated, but he was a moron.
In HI, SAHP are pretty rare (mostly due to very high COL). I am one of the few I know, tho I do know many who took “mommy-track” and earned significantly less while doing lion’s share of kid-rearing and ed responsibilities.
I’m sure partners can agree to whatever they think is “fair” and mutually agreeable. Somehow, I think couples who try to be “fair” are less likely to be the ones shafting the SAHP.