SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Great post! I have always felt it's most healthy for married couples to share finances. It's best to consider finances as "our money," instead of "your money" or "their money." My wife and I have always shared - but we got married young (at 21), and it never occurred to us not to share.

I'm saying this as someone who has always made at least twice as much as my wife, since she was a teacher for 30 years until she retired. I always viewed us as a unit - "two becoming one flesh." However, neither of us has been "overly" foolish with money, and we had the same financial goals. If one of us had issues with foolishly spending money, we may have considered splitting finances - but we never ran into this.

My daughter recently got married at 27, a little later in life than we did. It took her and her husband about a year before they combined finances. They have an interesting dynamic in that she makes more than he does (she's an actuary, he's a chemical engineer), but he's better at saving than she is. She really likes to travel to see her friends all over the country. But they're working through it.

When I went through marriage counseling at our church 35 years ago, my pastor told me the two most important things to a marriage were finances and making my wife feel safe. I have always taken this to heart. There has never been "financial infidelity" in our marriage from either of us.

Bigger, you need to teach courses in common sense.
My husband is a car nut. I will not disclose the number of cars and other vehicles we have owned but one time I caught him drooling over a one of a kind which he was going to buy. I felt the earth move and not in a good way. I asked him to think about it over night. The next day he said he was not going to buy it. This is when desire bows to common sense. He said he would have gotten so much joy out of it for a couple of days and spent the rest of his life regretting blowing through that much money.
As a social worker I found that money was often part of conversations with parents who chose to spend a couple of thousand dollars on entertainment systems, devices, you name it, but begged for money for food to feed their children.
In the US we have govt health insurance for many children and disabled adults. I have a job that provides our private ins so I have left it to my husband to manage our business but my name is on it.
I nearly lost it when I read how much Americans are in debt to credit cars, car payments, mortgages, loans etc. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs says we need food, clothing and shelter. We also need love, nurturing love, dependable love. We do not need the latest cell(mobile to you Brits).
A foster mother I work with teaches her foster children from Monopoly money. They need info about how much tax is taken out of their salaries. Gas(petrol), rent, food, fun, all take money. None of them have a clue yet they are told goodbye when they become 18. Yes, this needs to be taught in school.
So Bigger, none of us talk about money. We can discuss everything else but never that and it can have tragic endings. Recently, here in the US a father killed his family and himself over the amount of debt he was in. When I was young conversations were about family. With the info in that little square in our hands we see EVERY SINGLE DAY someone has a good life because of money and shame when they lose it…and we want what they have.

Originally the title was financial thermometer, but I changed it to barometer. Unlike a thermometer that gives definite information, a barometer gives an indication of an expected result. I’m not saying that all infidelity can be seen in the finances; a ONS at a bar, a quickie with a coworker at the Christmas party… don’t leave a clear financial trail. But I do think that openness in finances and that a couple work together in that field can be a good indicator – a barometer – of marital health.

I think we tend to make two big mistakes in personal finances…
The first it NOT to view our finances in a comparable way as a business might… You would never have a business that would rent a space, design a logo, print the business cards and still not have a clear idea of how they are going to make things work out. The two most important factors in a business are income in and expenditure out. No flashy logo can save a negative result.
A couple should (IMHO) have a plan, a joint view, on where they are headed and how they plan to get there. Like… are you going to finish your degree? When do you plan to have kids? One or two or more? Where do we head career-wise? How do we want to live? Where do we want to live? How do we plan to do so? What role do our (past) families play in our lives and all that.
Of course, this doesn’t need to be as detailed as a good business-plan, but if a couple have decided that in 5 years they plan on buying the family-home in a specific neighborhood then that can help them accept the dingy little rental they are in right now.
You don’t become financial stable by accident. You do so by intent.

The second mistake is precisely to view finances the way a business might…
Like… a business can calculate using MIRR and IRR and ROI that taking a loan with a lean against the business property to buy a bottling-machine makes sense because the financial gains outweigh the financial cost. Even then they might choose the base version of the machine that bottles 1000 per day, rather than the one that does 5000 because that’s all they need. With depreciation and all that there might even be tax-benefits to being in debt…
In personal finance we might lease a new vehicle behind the excuse that we need to get to work and home, and that’s why we get the flashy vehicle with the glittering paintjob, the loud stereo and the sun-roof. When a paid-for 2015 Civic could have gotten us just as fast from A to B. Still paying taxes on income…
It’s unicorn-rare that personal debt "pays off"…
Personally – I don’t think any debt other than a sensible mortgage makes "sense" for personal finances. I personally have only once financed a vehicle and I regretted it daily. I’m doing fine, and my "newest" vehicle is a 2017, bought used 2019 fully paid.

Gotcha beat Bigger - Still driving my 1997 F150 - bought used (very low miles)
I like the low "personal property taxes" and for some (dumb!) reason - NC doesn't require a vehicle that old to pass EMISSIONS inspection. ??? I keep it working properly anyway.

Also have a 1979 SeaRay - bought from junkyard and rebuilt (as a hobby?)- biggest expense is $200 year insurance.

Thanks for this post. I have loads of questions. I found out a few months ago that once we were married, my serial cheating WH stole all of the jewelry my 93 year old mother gave me. She gave me lots of jewelry in the 1970s and 1980s. Real semiprecious stones and 14k and 18k gold settings. I know he gave it to his brother to give to his wife who bragged that her H always gave her this type of gemstone that she hated. (My birthsone)

She bragged that her H gave her this type of jewelry for her birthday, anniversary and Christmas and she didn't know why because she hated this stone. I did not realize that these pieces were already stolen because I always put things my mother gave to me, away to keep. I never took things out of the box I just kept them nice. Now it's all gone. They left me one small bracelt, one necklace and two pairs of tiny stud stones. They have maybe $2000 worth of jewelry.

Last year I found out I was nothing to him, ever. He married me for my money and I even bought him a house. He used me to get his real GF to leave her H. She did. I've been married for 30+ years and he's been stealing expensive and ooak items from me the entire time. He paid her rent, dined out and even went on vacations with her. He gives small $100 gifts like my jewewlry, my designer wallets, and trinkets to his former GFs too. He still takes his HS GF out to eat on her birthday. I believe he is a narcissist.

What is the first step to getting this jewelry back? See an attorney or just make a list of missing stuff with a real police officer?

Do you think it's possible to get this stuff back if they stole it in the 1990s and it's 30 years later when I discovered it?

[This message edited by MarjiLann at 9:31 PM, Saturday, May 2nd]

Our finances have always been 100% joint. I do more of the day to day bill paying and management, and we talk through all the bigger stuff together. I don’t think we’ve ever fought over money in 26 years of marriage, and I can’t imagine a scenario where we would be on vacation and one of us do something that the other didn’t due to money. That sounds miserable and pointless to me.

There were no expenditures related to my husband’s affair; no financial trail I wasn’t seeing. We’re pretty conservative spenders by nature, and his affair was with a married work colleague during Covid, and fancy dinners, outings, gifts, etc. just weren’t part of it.

The complete enmeshment of our finances, however, was the source of considerable stress to me when I discovered the affair, because my 100% financial all in on the marriage would’ve left me pretty unprotected had we divorced. Part of my own journey to recovery in the aftermath of his affair was figuring out what a financial future without him might look like. We haven’t changed our financial arrangements, and I still prefer joint finances and 100% transparency, but my experience made me realize that 1) affairs can have zero financial trail (my husband was too deep in a fantasy bubble to even buy condoms🙄), and 2) joint finances can leave you pretty vulnerable in the event your partner decides to step out on you.