Hiding money from your spouse, for the sake of the marriage
Hiding money from your spouse, for the sake of the marriage
A study from the National Endowment for Financial Education finds that 15 percent of us with mingled finances admit to having a bank account our partner doesn’t know about.
Among them, two of our listeners, Laura and Scott. Last week on Marketplace Money, we asked them why they hid money from their significant others.
Scott: “I love my wife. We’ve been married for five years, but she is a saver. That’s a good thing … but I believe in more of a balanced approach. I decided for the sake of our marriage, I needed my own allowance or my own discretionary spending account. My wife watches the credit card statements, if she sees that [if] I went out to lunch on a Friday with the guys, she gives me a hard time … I want to be able to see my friends, and travel, that’s important to me”
Scott adds that he’s set up a money-market account that is deducted from his paycheck that his wife doesn’t know about.
Laura: “I have some investment money that’s a larger sum than I make in two years, it’s a good amount of money … but it just kind of sits there. I’m kind of cautious of using it for anything. It’s there as a safety net. My situation is that I’ve been in a relationship for a couple of years, a serious relationship though we’re not engaged, so I’ve yet to bring it up. I’m afraid that if he knows about it, that it’ll change some things. He might want to use it for that car he’s been thinking about … and things that are beyond our reach right now.”
This week, we invited Laura and Scott back onto the show to see how things are going. How do you feel about keeping money away from your significant other? Here’s what our Facebook followers had to say:
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