One should be careful with this arrangement if they live in a community property state, because each spouse could be (at least partially) responsible for the other’s debts (and any damages awarded in a lawsuit). Not knowing how much gets borrowed (or gambled on margin shorting stocks or trading options) could be a recipe for disaster. In such case, a solid Separate Property Agreement would make sense. Talk to a lawyer licensed in your state!
That seems basically like pre-negotiated discretionary spending amounts for each spouse, rather than each having to ask the other permission each time when buying (or otherwise using the money for) something of interest to just one of them.
Early in a relationship I would be very reluctant to talk about how much money I had. If I were reasonably wealthy then I would make an effort to not appear to be so until I was quite confident that money was not a significant attractant. I think that if I were single the richer I was the poorer my car would be.
However, I think that you need to talk about this and be open before you talk about marriage. I definitely would not wait until after marriage.
I do agree with “weathering a few storms”. I think that you need to see how someone reacts when something goes wrong before you get serious in a relationship.
I think my kids are pretty quiet about their finances unless and until they know the others in their life pretty well. They want to be liked for themselves. Both kids had fairly old vehicles for a long time (tho they were well maintained).
My friends have made their separate and joint finances work well for them ndd their lives. I’m glad not to have to deal with what I view as added complications to our finances.
There is no single right way—as long as the couple is happy with how they choose to handle things, it’s ok.
Love this, @DadTwoGirls. Our debt-free son’s salary is public record, his (significant) development pay isn’t. He owns a beautiful home but drives a 2006 Mustang that he paid cash for and rebuilt himself. Driving around town, I’m sure he doesn’t look like much.
Though we plan to die with a dollar, we probably won’t, and our son’s trust is healthy. I’m with those who say that general finances and how each handles money need to be openly discussed in a serious relationship that is headed toward marriage and, once married, zero secrets or surprises, but I agree with @Nrdsb4 that the full scope of assets, the “good” news as @3SailAway put it, can wait until later, even after marriage.
Not having come from a family with significant assets, and not having given my kids much more asset than their excellent educations, I find the “keep the assets a secret in case the SO expects more” approach to be deeply troubling.
That, to me, indicates a lack of trust. If you don’t trust your partner’s reaction to you having money, that’s a problem. As far as one who makes a third of the other one “expecting” the affluent one to pay, that might indicate a problem, but that the affluent one wouldn’t already do so just out of a sense of fairness, generosity, caring, also does.
I guess I just have a different set of expectations of how we treat one another. I wouldn’t build distrust into a relationship as a policy.
I think my girls’ bf can read the cards pretty well. Both started dating when poor college students, and they were pretty poor. Now one is working as a professional as is her BF. I know they’ve done some financial planning together as they want to buy a house, but so far keep separate finances. They have insurance policies listing the other as beneficiary (through their jobs). There will not be big financial surprises.
Other is dating an army man. His salary is public record. I’m sure his mother is listed as his beneficiary. She makes nothing, owns nothing, and will inherit little. No surprises.
It is perhaps an indication of how unrepresentative these forums are when this kind of discussion is mostly about unusually large assets or trust funds and the like rather than debt that may be a more common concern generally.
You need to talk before you get married. I lived with my husband for a couple of years before marriage and had a pretty good sense of his attitude about money - paying credit cards on time for example. He bought a used car without a loan during that time. He didn’t know that I would inherit a fair chunk of change, because I didn’t know it either. He had a small college loan which we paid off, I think a couple of years into the marriage, because I got so irritated about the cost of postage from Germany, back in the days when you mailed checks!
I’m with those who side on telling once it’s clear the relationship is serious. I would be angry to learn significant “good” or “bad” news after marriage. Speaks to a lack of trust either way. I knew going into marriage that dh had some student loans when we married, and I promptly paid them off as I am debt-averse. But I’m glad I knew about them before we were married.
It’s a keep your finances private unless and until you know you are serious. I absolutely don’t see that as troubling whatsoever. It takes time to establish trust and to know if a relationship is actually going to be “the one.” Simply dating someone doesn’t give you the right to know everything about them. It’s up to each person to decide when their finances are actually someone else’s business and they are the best judge of whether or not their relationship is to the point where how much money they have or will have will actually be relevant to the person they are seeing. Huge debt and spendthrift ways would be more relevant to me than the fact that they might someday come into some extra money they didn’t earn themselves. But that’s just me.
D1 actually told me that she had taken our lawyer’s advice to the extreme. She finally realized he didn’t mean don’t tell a partner everything “ever.” If she could do it over, she probably would have told him much earlier, though it’s not a huge thing between them, so she doesn’t have serious regrets.
I think both girls feel a little embarrassed by having a trust fund because it sounds kind of silver spoon to them. The only reason they have them is because we established an education fund for them when they were babies and bought a piece of property that we believed would sell and provide enough for their educations. Well, it didn’t ever sell until after they graduated, and the terms of the trust required any remnants of the proceeds to be given to them at 25, 30, and 35 years old, at which time the trust is dissolved. We never thought there would be much left over after they finished school, but that’s what you get when you assume!
@garland , I wasn’t talking about hiding significant assets from a serious significant other. However, I do believe that being open about family money when dating is not always the best policy. In many cases, this is money young people are planning to use to go to graduate or professional school, buy a house, or give them the option to stay home with a baby. IMO, none of those things need to be discussed when dating, unless the couple is approaching engagement.
I did date someone who turned out to have untreated bipolar disorder. In hindsight, I should have known he was unstable, but I was young and naive. He was drawn to me because I said things that revealed family assets. Even without the risk of issues like mental illness and addiction, I think most people would prefer to know that they are loved for themselves before discussing finances.
This is so true. If you look at the entire population of students who go to college, with skyrocketing costs even for public universities, you know the amount of debt is off the charts. A young couple starting out today even with the minimum student-only federal loans given, they’d be $50k+ in debt. And that’s a burden when housing and everything else is so expensive.