To think women need not disclose exact savings to partners?

[ByWorthyGreyOrca]

I think it’s reasonable for a woman to maintain some financial privacy, even in a relationship.
For example, saying you have savings feels sufficient but I’m not sure the exact amount always needs to be disclosed. For me, it’s more about independence and having a sense of security.

AIBU?

There is a rather large thread thats been going on for a few days over a husband not telling a wife how much turnover his business has & how out of order she found it.

you aren’t a relationship or partnership if you are keeping significant secrets from one another.

I mean if you both agree not to disclose your own savings to each other fine but your poat reads like you would expect yours private but know his. Are you just interesting in the money

I think it’s really odd to be in a committed relationship and not disclose your financial position. I don’t have an issue with it early on but if my DH just said I’ve got savings when we were planning our wedding, house hunting, etc I wouldn’t have continued the relationship.

Inherited money in our house is family money as is any windfall we’re fortunate enough to come into. Money to be used for the benefit of the family.

There have been a lot of these kind of threads recently.

I wouldn’t tell anyone what I earned, what I owed or what savings I have, whatever my relationship to them.

I was taught to be financially independent so no joint accounts, pooling money etc. Bills to be allocated to each person.

I was literally just thinking this. Loads of weird savings threads that have a really weak AIBU.

Yeah, I do wonder if the info is being mined - a bit like a few weeks ago when every other AIBU was about grandparents babysitting

It depends. Partners with separate finances I guess it doesn’t matter. Couples with shared income yes you should be honest.

DH of 36 years is aware I have a savings account but neither he nor I feel the need to discuss how much is in it. I'm sure he also has a savings account, but equally I don't feel any need to know what's in it. We also have a joint current account and a joint savings account.

While we trust each other completely we don't need to know everything about each other. Like, although we know each other's phone passwords (we actually use the same one) we wouldn't dream of looking at each other's phones. We're married but we are both entitled to a bit of privacy.

For some partner is the appropriate term. My partner and I have a civil partnership. We are not husband and wife we are partners quite deliberately!

You will find there are two diametrically opposed views on this.

One camp will insist that nothing should be kept from your partner. There is no need for privacy in a committed relationship and you shouldn’t even have separate bank accounts.

The other side will say no matter how much you love and trust your partner, no matter how long you’ve been together, no matter how perfect your relationship is, every woman should have a secret emergency fund.

Of course the only correct answer is to do what works for you. And if your partner isn’t insisting on knowing how much money you have, you don’t need to tell him.

My partner and I have a spreadsheet that have pretty much every penny we jointly own accounted for. It gets updated every month and we use it to make joint financial solutions. We have a joint account which we live out of and a personal account each. Should we ever feel the need to escape we have money in our personal accounts to do so whilst having complete transparency on a day to day basis.

I’m wouldn’t feel the need to keep it secret. We both know in the rough ballpark how much each other has. But if they were too interested in the exact amount I’d be worried

Most women I know are the higher earners.

Does this advice extend to men who take on more of the responsibility at home?

Absolutely, yes of course. However there have been a number of threads on here recently with people talking about their 'partner' - who turns out to be someone they've been seeing for a matter of a few weeks or months. So when people mention their partner we have no way of knowing whether it is a short/recent relationship, or someone like you and your DP who have been together in a committed relationship for some time. It makes a difference in how one might answer the OP's question.

So men shouldn't have to disclose either so then all costs should be 50/50 for fairness

But women want to be treated like the mature intelligent self sufficient people they are yet this seems infantiling them

You've said 'women'. Do you expect men to do the same?

At the same time I see a lot of threads saying "you say partner, I assume not married" and then getting grumpy when the OP confirms they were actually
married as partner means not married.

There's nothing wrong with asking for clarity about the relationship without being judgemental about the language a person uses.

I am foreign and married with 0 savings. My then boyfriend, husband now asked me do I have savings back home. When he did it, something in me froze. I have never had a man asking me this. I did not know anything about marrying in the UK, that you share bank accounts, you go on house deeds etc. So....what happened was I am not on deeds of house but we have been married long enough now, he never shared accounts with me or told me how much he has.....I have a job and saved in the 10s of 1000s and bloody will never tell him.....let him discover it if I go first.

I would not call someone a partner if I could not share finances with them. That’s a boyfriend

You can’t do long term financial planning without accurate details and full transparency. It’s fine to have some money in an account only in your name. That provides a degree of safety from the other person going off the rails. I don’t want the kind of marriage where people don’t share all financial information though.

I agree with that, what’s wrong with boyfriend. The older we get the more fun a word it is to use in my opinion!

Is there a level of savings which you think should be disclosed? Are you talking £100, £1k, £20k, £100k?

I wouldn't be interested in a relationship with someone I didn't feel I could be honest with. Transparency and autonomy aren't mutually exclusive. DH knows how much I've got in my savings, I know how much he has in his. There's substantially more in mine, partly because I'm a SAHM and was upfront about not wanting to give up work if I didn't have enough money to leave him if necessary, and partly because it makes sense for it to be in my name for tax purposes. It's entirely reasonable to have a personal "oh shit" fund, but it's not something I feel the need to be secretive about.