Click In Love Forum

[Will]

Should couples share a bank account or keep their own finances separate? What are the pros/cons of both ways? If they should share, when in the relationship is it appropriate to do so? How will a shared account affect the outcome of a possible divorce?
These are the sorts of questions that eventually raise their heads in a relationship. Anyone got any comments on these points?

[Margaret]

This is a tricky subject and hard to generalise on. I think there are many different types of relationship and each has a different agenda to cater for. Ultimately however, any relationship which involves children should result in the distribution of the family wealth to both partners. A woman must not need to beg for money from her partner to afford food and other necessities for their children. She has probably given up work to look after the children and should not be left at the mercy of her husband or partner's generousity. I think women should either be given access to a shared account where the money from their husband's work is deposited or they should receive a healthy monthly allowance into their own account. I even think if a woman is staying at home, cooking, cleaning and looking after the children that she should receive the majority of her partner's take home pay. After all, she is running the family, so what does he need all that money for?

[Anna]

To my opinion a family or people in a long-term relationship should have joint account. You cannot be together with somebody and pretend that you are still single. This is the attitude that most people bring into relationship in western world. Men and women get financially independent from each other nowadays, they don’t need to stay together of any reasons except of love. But the thing is that, that love is a feeling and feelings can change with a time, that is why divorce rate as an indicator of independency is very high also.

[Will]

That is an interesting point you made about divorce and the potential connections with joint bank accounts. I wonder is there a correlation between the two. I can understand some people wanting a separate bank account for pratical reasons; but I can also guess that many people have a separate account for selfish reasons. Maybe the potential success of a relationship can be statistically quantified by a parameter such as a joint bank account. It makes me think if there is actually a formula for marriage success based on such input variables.

[Josef]

I would like to ask your opinion on what you think about following situation. My girlfriend is Russian and she claims that it is tradition in Russian culture that man should pay for woman. I agree to do this only in reasonable way (I can pay in restaurant for her but not pay for her rent or insurance). So my question on you: have you ever faced with the same problem and how you dealt with it?

[Will]

I think money is just one aspect of a relationship where a couple can show their commitment to each other. Men generally earn more than women, so tend to contribute more in this area, but women address the imbalance in various ways (work harder at making the home comfortable for example). The important point is that a couple need to keep the relationship, as a whole, balanced. If the man is constantly giving and the woman is just smiling, looking pretty, then I would not consider that a healthy relationship. On the same note, if a man is not helping his partner financially (assuming she earns less), then that is also not healthy.

[Anna]

And what do you think about woman who hides her higher income from her parter trying to avoid hurting his pride?

[Judith]

I think that partners in a relationship (married or not) should have separate bank accounts. The main condition for love is that that two equal and independent persons posses the equal power and self-esteem. How could partner with less or no money have the same power (willpower, strength) and the same self-esteem?

[Will]

Two separate bank accounts is a good thing, to a degree. However, usually it is the case that the woman will have less money than the man. This may be because she is not working due to having children, or because employment equality and salary is not yet totally equal between the genders. Whatever the reason, if two people in a relationship have separate bank accounts, then it is important to make sure that the wealtheir partner contributes money into the account of the less wealthy partner.
However, one has to ask themselves why two people who live together, pay bills with their sharded income, love each other, etc, should then determine to keep two separate bank accounts? The answers to that question I am sure will be very revealing.

[angelinadavid84]

Money issues are a big problem to every one... i want to know if we are going to other country then we cant carry cash then how the money will be transfered without having any account in that country...