Hacker News Reader

Comment by itsmemattchung | Hacker News Reader

Wife and I have been together for 8+ years and finances is still the #1 area we struggle with (more than sex, more than children), an area we are actively working on improving. When we first had our hiccups, someone suggested we divide our finances as such:

- A shared account (shared expenses) - An account (for my eyes only; buy whatever - no questions asked) - An account (for her eyes only; buy whatever - no questions asked)

Far from perfect. We're now revisiting our setup and perhaps this article might nudge us in a different direction.

View on HN

Don't merge your accounts together. You have the right setup - accounts-wise. Changing it to joint likely won't solve issues, and untangling from joint is difficult.

My wife and I use a pretty simple system which we picked up from some friends of ours:

80% of each of our post-tax income goes into a shared account for stuff which is unambiguously 'shared' costs - for example rent, utilities, groceries, savings, stuff for our son, eating out together, etc.

We each keep 20% of our income to do what we want with. This fixes almost all feelings of inequality (I make a bit more than my wife. Personally I'm not that bothered, but my wife feels very strongly that she does not want to be 'supported' by my income, and that her disposable income should be based on her income, not our net income).

Every now and then we agree to move a cost into the 'shared' category even if it's clearly not a shared cost (e.g., my wife's phone bill comes out of the shared account because my phone bill is paid by my employer).

Sometimes we also 'treat' each other, by taking a cost like a dinner out together as a personal expense (often on pay day, for example).

As an exception to the above, my wife is on maternity leave at the moment so we agreed we'd just sum up all our incomings and each of us gets 10%. This is also working pretty well so we might not change it back after she starts working again, but we'll see if she raises this inequality thing again.

Obviously YMMV, but this system suits us well

May I ask what specifically some of the issues have been? I know it's digging into a personal area so feel free to ignore this, but I'm curious what kind of issues can arise.

Issues can be categorized into three buckets: my challenges, her challenges, shared challenges. We're working through many of these with our couple's therapist but here's the gist:

  1. When wife would spend beyond our defined budget, I would get angry (stemming from fear) and let that boil inside without ever communicating it verbally

  2. When wife and I decided for her to quit her job to parent our first daughter full time, initially was elated and then I felt a financial pressure I've never experienced before

  3. Wife had a domestically violent partner before and interprets budgeting as controlling behavior

Full disclosure: lots of vulnerability factors for the both of us. I grew up poor and although I have money now, there's lots of emotions tied to finances.

I don’t understand how you can write (1) and not perceive it as an easily solved communication problem with your own wife

Lots of things about human emotion are dumb but understandable, especially re: money.

because of point 3. for example my wife didn't like me doing detailed accounting of all of our expenses do i had to stop that. she hasn't spent to much money so that issue didn't come up but i can imagine it being a problem to tell your partner they spend to much if the partner is sensitive about that.

That’s not an excuse to let things boil up without talking about it. If you fundamentally cannot communicate with someone you should not get married

that is not fair. it is easy to say, but sometimes very hard to do. things like these are not always predictable, and especially money handling often doesn't even come up as an issue until after you are married for some time.

But this is not only predictable but acknowledged. It’s not ideal to fail to communicate and not realize it. It’s not ok to identify as someone who just doesn’t communicate and bottles up their emotions until they’re problematic.

It might not be easy. But to do otherwise is a recipe for failure. And we’d be dumb to not acknowledge that. You shouldn’t marry someone you’re not comfortable talking to About difficult things. That’s like the whole point of having a trusted partner.

You shouldn’t marry someone you’re not comfortable talking to About difficult things.

you keep saying that, but generally you can't know how your partner reacts until the issue actually comes up and especially with finances it rarely comes up before you start living together which often doesn't happen until you get married.

it is impossible to vet your partner on every aspect. when you get married you start to build trust, and you find out your partners sensitive points and learn to avoid them. that's not even an issue of trust, but a question of how you communicate to keep a healthy relationship. in my case i simply stopped the detailed accounting and everything was fine. in the case here the person had difficulty dealing with that. we don't know why, or how they could resolve that, but telling them that they should have predicted that and not married this person is really unreasonable.

Albeit illegal in most places I've lived, I have never heard of anyone getting in trouble for living with someone they aren't married to.

i don't think it is actually illegal in many places, but that is not the point i am making. what matters is that many do not live together before they get married, and thus do not have the opportunity to get to know each other at that level, and, more importantly, can not be faulted for failing to know each other well enough to predict every possible problem that may come up in the future.

I’m not saying they should have predicted anything. I’m saying they should communicate. You don’t have to solve the problem. You do have to talk about your feelings.

they would have had to predict that communicating their financial concerns is not welcome. i am very open to talk about my feelings, but if a topic makes my wife angry, then i'll stop. the problem is not the ability of the sender but the reaction of the receiver. you can't control how your message is received, and therefore you can't blame the sender for failing to communicate in this case, much less suggest that they should not have married this person, because in order to avoid that they would have had to have known in advance that this issue would become a problem.

No, that’s bullshit. The wife can set her own boundaries on what she is willing to accept for finance but she can’t rule out talking about feelings about the issue.

Not talking about it is not a solution. That’s baked into the premise. You have to talk to your partner about things that are important to you, hard stop.

yes, but when a topic upsets your partner, then you first have to figure out why, and work on resolving whatever is causing that reaction before you can get to the actual problem that is bothering you. depending on the problem, and the partners willingness to listen, this can take years.

and i am arguing against the claim that if they can't communicate about every important issue, then they should not have married. which is where i want to call bullshit. because such things are just not easy to know in advance. especially you simply have no way of knowing what kind of issues might come up if you didn't experience them in your parents, your own previous relationships or your friends or others. but you can't experience everything, and even for those issues you do have experience with, you can't predict if they are going to be a serious problem or not.

if that is wrong please tell me how to know in advance what issues me and my partner are going to fight about in the future.

> yes, but when a topic upsets your partner, then you first have to figure out why, and work on resolving whatever is causing that reaction before you can get to the actual problem that is bothering you. depending on the problem, and the partners willingness to listen, this can take years.

Aka communicating

I don’t care about your argument. You don’t need to know in advance what will be hard. You just need to be able to talk about things. It’s not ok to actively acknowledge you are not talking about something that is bothering you that will boil up into anger. That’s unhealthy and toxic for both parties.

If you say “hey I’m feeling anxiety because of this, can we talk about it sometime?” And they say “no”… they’re not a good partner.

right, i agree with everything you say here, even, or especially the last point. what bothers me is your previous suggestion that "they should not have married". really, that's the only thing that i can't fit in, because the decision not to marry someone requires predicting problems.

You do realize that setting a budget is by definition controlling behavior? You are controlling the expenditure of the household. I'm not suggesting you are wrong for that, but it is controlling behavior. So your wife observed controlling behavior and then equated it to something in her past.

It isn't controlling behaviour if you both have equal input into designing the budget, and both agree to and support the idea of having a budget in the first place.

it can be intended to be not controlling, but perceived as such. i used to do accounting to track and understand my own behavior. and when i tried that after getting married on all our expenses, the point was not to control her but to understand our expenses and allow for self control or restraint if necessary (realizing that you spend $100 on coffee each month can help you change your behavior). but it made my wife uncomfortable.

If you read the post, it's clear that is not what happened here. OP set the budget. Wife did not follow it.

There’s a I’me assumptions that were made here. To clarify, we set the budget together.

Based on the account you provided, your wife only agreed to it as a matter of conversation. Not as a matter of practice.

1. You have to communicate otherwise the other party doesn't know. However, this would be a huge deal for me.

2. I felt this pressure when we were deciding if my wife would stay home or if we would do daycare. I told her I don't want a pressure of single income. In the end daycare has been great for our kid. The feeling of pressure is completely normal. Single income to support a family clearly is more riskier than two incomes.

3. Your wife needs therapy. Budgeting is not controlling, it is basic personal finance. She can contribute to the budgeting discussion.

4. You also may need therapy. I too grew up poor and know the feeling. I know people who took that feeling, budgeted and became millionaires but one does need a healthy balance of spending and saving.

We do as the above and I think it is the only thing that makes sense for us. The problem we have is too much is not enough for some. They don't need to spend they need to horde. It causes problems and I think it is actually some other need that is poorly expressed. Never underestimate the ability to have problems in relationships.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com