To ask - does your partner/husband know how much you earn or what you have in savings?

[MerryPinkCritic]

I’ve been thinking about how open people are with their finances in relationships. Some couples share everything, some keep things separate and some… don’t even ask.

So I’m curious, does your partner know what you earn or how much you’ve saved? Do you think it’s healthy to be totally transparent or is some financial privacy important?

We pay 50/50 when it comes to bills, nursery fees etc we don't need to sit down and work that out multiple times. We agreed to 50/50 and that was that. Whoever pays for dinner when we eat out, it isn't something we closely monitor.

The only purchases we discuss are joint ones such as household items etc any other purchases we don't discuss at all unless it affects the other person such as needing them to be childcare for a weekend away. I have no desire to be in a marriage where I have to ''discuss'' buying myself something with my own money that I've earned.

1st marriage, all money was shared.

2nd marriage, finances are separate. I came to the table with assets and he didn't. He's a spender, I'm a saver. Didn't seem wise to merge finances.

He knows what I earn, but has no idea about my savings (which are pretty good).

I think he knows roughly how much I have in savings, but when I added everything up I was surprised. So he won't really know either!

Of course he knows. It wouldn’t be much of a partnership if my salary and savings were all kept a secret. I never understand couples were finances are so taboo, it’s like living with a flatmate 🤷‍♀️

Well then I would. But I trust him to be making sensible provisions for known future expenditure in the same way I do. He’s an adult he knows his responsibilities and I don’t feel the need to remind him in the same way I don’t need to know that he’s brushed his teeth or had his car serviced.

periodically we do talk about being more organised but it never really happens. I do have a spreadsheet that I created about 5 years ago with account details and passwords but that’s the sum of it.

as I say it’s not a secret and we both trust each other implicitly not to be squirrelling money away or gamble king the house on red but I suspect the truth is we both have a tendency to overspend and both want a set up where we can do that without oversight, although ironically neither of us would ever check the bank statements let alone challenge each other on expenditure.

Yes DH and I have a joint account, joint savings, joint mortgage.

No hidden savings. Our wages go in to the joint account, all bills and spending comes out of it.

We earn within 10k of each other - however, DH was the higher earner for a few years.

We would discuss big purchases that were out of the ordinary.

How do you future plan if you don’t know what your household has in savings?

I just future plan for myself based on my own savings. If it’s something I think he might be interested in, like a car, I’ll ask him how much he wants to put in. We’re both in professional careers so have our own pensions, plans for retirement, etc. I own the house we live in so I pay for that. I’ve only got 15k left on the mortgage so it’s not a worry, and I have enough savings to cover emergencies and repairs. I grew up in poverty with a single mother and her ever revolving series of boyfriends bringing feast or famine, so I like to know my life is stable. If he died or fucked off nothing logistically would change. Maintaining some independence is important to both of us and actually allows us to be more relaxed as a couple. I rely on him for lots of things but money isn’t one of them.

Just fired up DH’s laptop so I can have a look. Like I said he is an accountant…

He’s got a balance sheet and Profit and loss sheet for each financial year

Hes got another spreadsheet (with many tabs!)that tracks all his investments, pension contributions.
Other tabs tracking bills, mortgage payments, subscriptions and charity donations.

Then a forecast spreadsheet with target savings each year until he’s rich enough to retire.

He does a big update of everything in January every year for his tax return, but probably spends an afternoon every couple of months updating things.

Jointly we have a household budget which tracks all of our spending, savings, commuting costs etc and works out how much to contribute fairly. We put money in the joint account each month for shopping and household stuff but will both pay for other big ticket items then tot it up and rebalance if someone has ended up paying a lot more.

Before we met my approach to finances was to anxiously check my bank balance two days before payday to see if my card was going to work 🫣 I do acknowledge this way is better but I could not be arsed! Its definitely an area where I am very happy to delegate 😂

well each to their own I prefer that we share everything and by ‘discuss’ I mean ‘hey DH I’m buying X so you will see it on the online banking’ and even then only if we are talking hundreds of pounds, we both earn well and don’t need to feel possessive over our money.

We both earn well too, I'm the higher earner.

As you said, it's each to their own. It works well for us.

We've been married 40 years and we have no secrets. We have a joint account to pay bills, food, cars, petrol, holidays etc, and where savings go into, a joint term deposit account, and also personal accounts under individual control.

He knows what I earn, but not what's in the savings (although it's "our" savings anyway) He's never asked what's in the savings, it's only a couple of hundred pounds that I try to hang into for an emergency anyway, but it wouldn't be a secret if he asked.

@SallyMcNally A man after my own heart! I am also already mapping out a potential change which would impact finances in a couple of years as well as what we need to have the retirement we want by working out what our income would be if we retired tomorrow and then working out what else we need to do to get where we want.

If I was financially vulnerable I would know what my DH earned and had saved. I'm not, so I don't care.

Financial vulnerability would mean (to me) having dependent children, illness, no secure income, relying on benefits, struggling to pay bills, obvious disparity in wealth, future expenditure, large financial planning needed etc.

I have a spreadsheet which tracks all accounts, interest rates and investments. I'm not head in the sand. I'm just not in need of a husband's finances to achieve any goals

DH doesn't know exactly what I earn, nor my savings. His income is much higher than mine and he pays all the essential bills and any costs when we are together, and the amount I earn doesn't have an impact on our household spending. He transfers me money to max out pension and ISA contributions annually but he has no idea of the current amounts (it has grown a huge amount due to my investing strategy). But I have no plans to liquidate assets so haven't told him how much. We don't feel the need to discuss purchases and only really discuss money in the context of tax changes or other major events that might mean changing major financial strategy.

Yes. We have accounts in both our own and joint names. We keep a spreadsheet of all of them. I inherited a lot when my parents died so gave my husband half so we could attempt to minimise tax.

I how much he earns and how much he has in savings.

He knows how much I have in savings as we’ve just been talking about some work we want to do the house and if we can afford it. He doesn’t know how much I earn. He thinks I earn about the same as he does, but I actually earn about £10k more.

We have completely joint finances so we both know how much we bring home, have in savings etc.