Fundamentally, no, it is not alright for a couple to have separate finances, unless you’re BF/GF and you’re just playing house and learning this shit.
An ADULT relationship is a partnership. All money is the family’s money. None of the money is embued with special essence and belongs to him or her because of who earned it. You are in the business of building and family. If you stay at home and clean the clothes, and that is your role in the family, that does not mean his role is any more or less important. He does not need to think about dealing with the stuff that you deal with, which frees him to deal with the stuff he deals with. In our home I deal with the house and DD and he deals with the income and the car.
Its the family’s money, and the family should have a goal as to where the family is going. Are we going to have kids? Do we need a bigger house? Do we have savings for a crisis? Are we going to start saving in the kids names? You make all your decisions together and you move through life as one whole family.
Now, I’m not saying you don’t have separate accounts. What I mean is you don’t have separate finances. We have separate accounts and all the bills come of DH’s account. And you may also have various savings accounts, ISAs etc, which you can’t do in joint names. The important thing is everyone knows where everything is, and no one thinks any of it in any of the accounts is theirs even if it’s in their name. It is just where that portion of the family money is at that time because that is where it needs to be.
For example, I have a LISA and the money we put in their is only accessible by me. We are saving for a house and DH is too old to have a LISA. We put money in there for the tax kickback. DH has an ISA where the bulk of our savings for our house deposit are at the moment. It’s in his name but it is the family’s house deposit. We keep a £5K emergency fund in my account. It’s there because if DH gats hit by a bus, I would need money to keep things going while I sorted out the estate and released what was in his account.
We budget and plan and walk through life together. We don’t play this is his and this is mine. We are not children, we have a child so we need to to act like adults. We trust each other. Because why the F would you marry someone you did not trust?
Each month we transfer the household budget from DHs account to my account and I manage the household budget. I don’t have to ask for money for food. I have a house to run, it’s my job, and the resources we need to do that are made available each month without question. If we don’t get paid one month, that’s what the £5K emergency fund is for.
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I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you or he are thinking of money as yours and his, you need to grow up and have an adult relationship. If you are embarrassed to ask for money, then your relationship is not based on trust, and it is definitely not mature.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say your relationship is based on power, which is not a good place to be, but I would say you are attributing power to money in your relationship which should not be there. It should be the two of you against the world, not the two of you against each other. Life is a lot easier when you learn to stand together and want the same things.