Hide your expenses, do not mention income, spontaneously buy something just for yourself from the family budget. Can such actions be called financial treason? And how dangerous are they for relationships in a couple?
It looks so innocent… Just think — on Friday I left work early to go for a massage. She didn’t tell her partner about this: the procedure is not cheap, why make him nervous? Then it happened again, and again, and again. Once I bought myself a gadget for fitness — there were such great discounts! And here’s the bad luck: the gadget fell out of a sports bag in front of a partner. I had to say: “New? What are you talking about, I have had it for a long time!”
You didn’t mean to cheat on your partner. But they cheated.
And why on earth, you think, should I account for every penny? After all, you didn’t borrow a lot of money, didn’t mortgage your apartment. We are talking about nonsense, about a little squandering.
However, you can look at it differently. This «nonsense» is nothing but treason. Financial betrayal. And she’s very seductive, says psychologist Maggie Baker, author of Money Geeks.1. For example, in America, according to its data, there are 33% of such unfaithful partners.
The fact is that in the depths of our souls we do not consider these silences a lie, whether it be our secret spending or secret “stash”. “Relationships between partners involve loyalty, but financial infidelity does not mean that we cheated on a partner with someone else,” Maggie Baker explains the logic of our self-deception.
Secret accumulations
Yes, opposites attract. But opposing attitudes in financial matters are a source of tension in the family. For example, if one of the partners aims to save money, and the second spends with ease. Do you think which of them is more prone to petty deceit, a spender? Not at all!
William Sweet, a certified financial planner in Tuxedo, New York, often encounters such couples and argues that it is the frugal couples who prefer not to tell their spouse about their savings.
It would seem that you can see your logic in hiding the stash from a wasteful partner. But experts do not agree with this. “One way or another, the couple has some kind of agreement (at least implied) about how the money should be spent. And if one of the partners violates it, it undermines the trust and increases the distance between them, ”says Maggie Baker. In addition to emotional problems, there are also purely logistical ones, adds William Sweet. For someone who does not know about the partner’s hidden money, it is more difficult to make the right financial decisions.
What to do?
Talking about finances, if you tend to save money, and your partner is determined to spend, is always difficult: your words can be interpreted as criticism or condemnation. The best way out here is to resort to the help of a psychologist, says Maggie Baker. “You can say: “I agreed on a consultation, I would like us to go there together. I know we look at spending differently, but in order to plan for our future, we need to be like-minded.” This is a more forgiving option than saying, «Let’s sit down and talk about our views on the family budget.»
- Can’t part with money
Secret spending
It is impossible to tell a partner literally about every purchase you make — after all, our lives are so hectic today. Another thing is when we deliberately distract the attention of a partner from some of our expenses.
This is what designer Megan Harris had to do.2, knowing how painfully her husband, who grew up in a low-income family, experiences unnecessary expenses. When it turned out that their son needed a special school due to learning problems, Megan — and she then made good money — began to pay for her studies from her own funds. In order not to upset her husband, she did not tell him that studying was expensive, 3 thousand dollars a month. However, he didn’t ask. On the one hand, she protected her husband from stress. On the other hand, she had to save a lot to pay for school. And the husband, not realizing it, sometimes made expensive purchases. In the end, Megan became very stressed, and she suggested that her husband pay for the school himself. Moreover, by that time she had moved to another job, where she received less. There was a conflict. The husband began to say that the school was not so good, that it was necessary to find a cheaper option.
What to do? William Sweet believes that two vital topics crossed in this conflict at once, children and money. Therefore, it is necessary to approach it especially carefully. When discussing this or that school, one must, of course, look at the value for money. But it’s not only that. “For good family budget planning, taking into account the personal characteristics of partners is even more important than making financial calculations. So the only solution is to find a compromise,” he says.
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Money as a secret weapon
When Rebecca Philips got married, she earned four times as much as her fiancé. At first, this was not a problem. Until one day she bought herself expensive outfits for a new job. The husband was indignant at such extravagance. Rebecca didn’t see anything wrong with that — after all, she had earned the money. She wanted to dress beautifully, and she continued to buy expensive clothes for herself, but … she hid them in her wardrobe to avoid conflicts. The husband, meanwhile, was spending money from their joint account on his hobbies and on the business he was about to start. The more she earned, the more he spent. She had to secretly open a separate account from him … just before their divorce.
“The trouble is that Rebecca and her husband did not discuss the problem that had arisen, but decided to act with cunning,” Maggie Baker comments. — She — because she did not want a repetition of the conflict. He reasoned something like this: “You work so hard that you don’t have time for me? I will repay you by spending your money!”
Of course, this is not about money, the psychologist notes, but about improperly built relationships in a couple. He lacked attention, she lacked understanding. «Instead of saying it directly, they preferred to express their feelings in hints.»
What to do? The best way is to be open about your feelings, says Maggie Baker. “No one says it’s easy. Nevertheless, any couple needs to learn how to talk about complex issues. And the money question is usually one of the most difficult. Avoiding open discussion, partners unwittingly fall into the funnel of passive-aggressive communication. Often this leads their union to collapse. But if they catch on in time, it can still be straightened out.”
1 M.Baker «Crazy about Money» (Holistic Wealth Press, 2011).
2 Names of heroes changed.
For details, see editions of The Time.