I came here to answer the question in the title. And the answer is...
YEEEEESSSSSSSS!
It is absolutely incredible to me when I find out my married friends aren't open with each other about money, or that one of them doesn't want to get involved with it, or that they keep everything completely separate, or or or --
I'm always like hey maybe you guys should think about getting synced on your finances ps (unrelated) did you know money stuff is like THE MAIN THING THAT CAUSES DIVORCE? [citation needed]
I get it, money is stressful. Pretty much any time you've got a sample size of two people, one of them is going to be more comfortable with finances than the other one, and getting married doesn't change that. So yeah, it's easy to default to some kind of power imbalance around money in a relationship. And thanks to the ridiculous amount of time it took (1974! OMG!) for women to get financial independence, it's probably going to be more common for the imbalance of power to lean toward the male partner. But that's not good news for anybody, because having all the financial power in a marriage turns out not to be a good recipe for a successful marriage.
It's hard to do hard things. But if people DON'T talk openly about money with their spouse, they're in real trouble.
Yes, we always have. Always had a shared bank account, always discuss big purchases, or decisions about investments, I pay the bills, he balances the check book so that we both can see the ebb and flow of our income and output. Sometimes he made more money, sometimes I did, and I do know that it helps that we have very similar attitudes about things like saving and debt. For purchases, in most cases the role I play for him when he wants something special for himself is to say...go for it, and vice versa. When there is some concern on one of our parts about a large purchase (I tend to be the optimist about our finances, him the pessimist,) we talk it out until we find a consensus. And I suspect all of this help explains why we have been together for 53 years.
So Interesting! I love hearing how people go about this issue/non-issue for some who seem to have it figured out :)
I came here to answer the question in the title. And the answer is...
YEEEEESSSSSSSS!
It is absolutely incredible to me when I find out my married friends aren't open with each other about money, or that one of them doesn't want to get involved with it, or that they keep everything completely separate, or or or --
I'm always like hey maybe you guys should think about getting synced on your finances ps (unrelated) did you know money stuff is like THE MAIN THING THAT CAUSES DIVORCE? [citation needed]
I get it, money is stressful. Pretty much any time you've got a sample size of two people, one of them is going to be more comfortable with finances than the other one, and getting married doesn't change that. So yeah, it's easy to default to some kind of power imbalance around money in a relationship. And thanks to the ridiculous amount of time it took (1974! OMG!) for women to get financial independence, it's probably going to be more common for the imbalance of power to lean toward the male partner. But that's not good news for anybody, because having all the financial power in a marriage turns out not to be a good recipe for a successful marriage.
It's hard to do hard things. But if people DON'T talk openly about money with their spouse, they're in real trouble.
Yes, we always have. Always had a shared bank account, always discuss big purchases, or decisions about investments, I pay the bills, he balances the check book so that we both can see the ebb and flow of our income and output. Sometimes he made more money, sometimes I did, and I do know that it helps that we have very similar attitudes about things like saving and debt. For purchases, in most cases the role I play for him when he wants something special for himself is to say...go for it, and vice versa. When there is some concern on one of our parts about a large purchase (I tend to be the optimist about our finances, him the pessimist,) we talk it out until we find a consensus. And I suspect all of this help explains why we have been together for 53 years.