<p>My mom has huge accounts that she alone controls. I think it consists of every $ she’s earned since she went back to teaching in the 70s plus funds from a family business her mom started decades ago. Dad controls the rest of their money, tho she does get some minor input and credit cards. She’s VERY conservative so she can sleep and night while dad LOVES moving funds around. It works for them but is very different from our arrangement where H & I comingle all our cash and nearly all our assets. We have very few “separate pots” of money and put most of it in our joint checking or brokerage accounts.</p>
<p>I think you asked the wrong question: “what do you plan to do with the money?”</p>
<p>Because I’m wondering if her answer would have been “surprise my sweet hubby with a night in a luxury hotel and a fancy dinner that I paid for all by myself!”</p>
<p>I could never in a million years imagine that I would do anything other than tell my wife immediately.</p>
<p>We have everything commingled except pension/IRA money. I don’t even have a solo credit card. OTOH, I do most of the financial stuff, so I know where it all goes. It would be delicious not to have to explain/justify an expenditure, even though DH is generally fine with what I spend (since I am as thrifty as he is, if not more so).</p>
<p>My H and I have always co-mingled our money. With our businesses, we have separate bank accounts, but still all the accounts are linked up if we need to make an infusion into an account that is running short or that needs bills paid. I always panic a little when leaving town, worried that he knows passwords and where things are, if the worst happens and I am not back to deal with all the bills/taxes. Morbid, but it’s something that I worry about.</p>
<p>My grandparents had a fairly twisted marriage of 50+ years. She kept a pile of cash with my dad (after my mom died), so that if she needed to escape the abusive marriage, she could.</p>
<p>She should have. But never did. </p>
<p>Eventually she took the money back and used it on who knows what. </p>
<p>I have seen some couples keep their own money in separate accounts. One family I know has a kid getting ready to start college and she said her husband is taking care of it. I don’t know if she even knows how much he makes or how much money he has in savings and checking. When she went on a trip with her daughter, he was inquisitive of the expenses and questioning her on how much she would be spending. I think he wants them to be separate, but he still has power over her buying. She hides the credit card bills. Seems kind of weird to me!</p>
<p>We gamble. Can’t hide wins if we’re getting win/loss statements:) We always compare our win notes on the airplane home. Oh, and I don’t have a cell phone.</p>
<p>It’s comments like this (Post #21: f you would not tell your spouse, why would you get married?) that drive me to despair about . . . “the cult of the couple.”</p>
<p>You know, it’s that expectation that “the two of us” will share every windfall of money down to the dollar, that we will go every where together as a couple, that we will be honest and tell each other everything.</p>
<p>That is nonsense - except for those that like that sort of thing. For the rest of us, the imperattive of 100% sharing is a ticket to the madhouse, becasue it assumes that once you get married there is no longer any reason to be an autonomous individual; all is subsumed to the couple.</p>
<p>Separate vacations are a great idea . . keeping a small windfall is fine . . . NOT examinng your spouse’s credit card charges is a good thing. (Although there was the CUTCO incident. . .)</p>
<p>Because Frost’s obervations about neighbors have utility in marriages, too.</p>
<p>I have the same fear about not having a clue where $$ is opr how to get at it. Having been through this with my parents (managing the finances), it is very stressful, and since my DH travels a lot it spooks me big time. When we get through taxes (ours, business and dads) we will hopefully sit down with older s (who is the executor of our estate, should anything happen) and go over the “where everything is and how to get at it” excel spreadsheet.</p>
<p>One of my staff members regularly takes vacations separately from his W. Sometimes he brings along his 6 year old D & sometimes not. We have friends who have some joint funds & some separate funds. The H helps out his family with some of HIS money rather than HER money or THEIR money. I find it all too confusing, but it works for them & helps her keep her resentment of his family down.</p>
<p>For H & me, the above arrangements would not work well. For the couples involved, it seems to keep everyone happy, so that seems like a good thing.</p>
<p>There is no one “right” or “wrong” way, as long as the people in the marriage are happy, that seems like a good thing to me! As was said, it helps if whomever is supposed to be the executor can find all the assets and make appropriate payments & collections in case of need.</p>
<p>I think anyone who intends to practice public accounting should also be required to have a psychology degree. They are going to need it 
After 25 years, I am still fascinated by couples’ relationships with money and each other, and how much some don’t communicate about these issues.</p>
<p>The surprises that arise most often are gambing winnings and stock sale losses. Sometimes very large surprises.</p>
<p>I never try to hide money coming in from my wife.</p>
<p>Money going out is a different story.</p>
<p>I think there’s a huge difference between taking a separate vacation/getaway, and having different hobbies, and not sharing financial windfalls (or I guess downfalls too).</p>
<p>My wife and I have different hobbies, and sometimes go on conventions once a year for those hobbies (my S often comes with me these days). We know what money we take to spend, and if we have fun with it, it’s great. If an ‘exceptional’ hooby-related purchase opportunity comes up, we make a quick call (such calls are extremely infrequent and have always been answered ‘yes’). </p>
<p>Now maybe its because money, while never plentiful and always up & down, has never been desparate for us, thankfully. As we look to pay for our S’s college and repump our bashed retirement efforts, things do get a little tighter, as I’m sure many other posters to this forum are experiencing as well! ;-)</p>
<p>But the original topic for the thread was about not being honest with windfalls. Sorry, but to me you always be honest with them. But I understand different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>I couldn’t imagine not telling DH about money found or won. Our finances have been combined since the day we married. Neither of us would dream of making any type of large purchase without consulting the other. For the first 25 years of our marriage, keeping track of the finances and bill-paying were my responsibility. I don’t recall ever talking about it … it was just something that became “mine” … probably due to the fact we were both very young when we married and I was the more responsible party in the relationship at the time. Last summer, I’d had enough … I told DH I was tired of handling all the finances and, had I ever decided to just walk away from the marriage, I could easily have done so with lots of money since he never had any idea of how much money we did or didn’t have. I told him it made me feel more like a parent than a partner. He was surprised because I had never voiced my feelings about it before (I’m what Dr. Phil calls an accommodator). We now take turns doing the banking and we pay the bills together. We keep an online check register and each of us knows on any given day what our balance is down to the penny.</p>
<p>I would definitely tell H if I found or won money. I would also tell him exactly how I was going to spend it :).</p>
<p>Every couple is different and if she doesn’t want to tell her husband that is her business. For myself I would share, but like blankmind, I would share by telling my husband how I was going to spend it. I have a very generous husband who is happiest when I am happy. :)</p>
<p>$375? Child’s play. Luckily I have a very accommodating CPA, who accounts for my $30k escape fund on our taxes without spilling the beans to my husband.</p>
<p>I would not tell my husband if I won $375 because he would spend it on more useless junk and I would use it to pay my DD’s college expenses or send my little guy for an extra week of summer camp. I would tell him that I’d gotten a small bonus at work because that would be all mine and when I do get a bonus at work, I usually tell him it’s about 1/3 of what it really is. He has NO money sense.</p>
<p>“$30K escape fund”? Wow, that brings to mind a lot of interesting questions and issues. Fascinating how different each of us & our spouses and marriages are about finances. I guess that’s why psych courses are helpful for accountants, as was previously posted. </p>
<p>I am fortunate H & S & I have money sense. D is still developing hers but continues to improve. :)</p>
<p>I won $28 at bunco the other night while DH was at the NCAA tournament with our boys. I told him about it when I remembered–not a big deal but I can’t imagine not sharing even the little wins.</p>
<p>I would absolutely tell my H of my winnings, but just like blankmind in post #54, I would tell my H how I would spend it too! :)</p>
<p>Chances are we’d put it toward a vacation…we try to put money away for vacations as often as we can!</p>