Comments about ‘Money talks: Honesty over finances improves marriage relationship’

This is very sound advice for a strong marriage, combine incomes and responsibilities of finances in the home. Handing a spouse a bill for his/her share takes marriage to a low level commitment. His and her accounts are marriage splitters when crunch times appears. The only reason I can think of to keep and maintain individual accounts is to set themselves up for a future divorce. Instead of working to stay together they plan for a failure. The thought of remaining life time partners is lost with this kind of thinking and are preparing for divorce before a marriage even gets off the ground. Women are usually given the responsibilty of management of household expenses but both should be fully involved. Combining incomes creates a stronger marriage that share in all decisions in purchases, savings, and future family needs. Children pick up on this seperation of finances and work the parents to get things they want. Along with parents sharing money management the children should be included to learn how its done. A sound marriage requires combined planning and goals of finances and needs. A marriage goes beyond the bed sheets, it includes combined incomes, goals, and money management.

In my experience, it is not how you spend the money you have that causes problems. The real issue is debt: spending the money you don't have!

Credit cards are like alchohol to an alchoholic - if you can't handle them, stay away from them. Period. Spending money may bring the joy of a temporary "high", but the crash of debt and loss of love at home always destroy the "joy" of reckless spending.

Even open communication won't stop a "joy" spender. And sound financial advice is no help either. Sometimes you just have to take away all of their money and credit and treat the illness to cure the problem.

When my dad passed away unexpectedly some 20 years ago, all of his accounts were inaccessible to my mom for some time b/c they were only his name. So was the house. She had never worked after having children and had only a small amount of money in her own childhood savings account. She had no credit in her own name. She couldn't sign a check to pay the electric bill. Seeing my mom go through this made me very posessive of the checkbook early in my own marriage. But we have worked it out - I write most of the checks, and my husband balances the checkbook. That way I have the sense of control I need, and he sees exactly where the money goes. When each spouse has a debit card on a joint account, keep one central checkbook and constantly help each other remember to record ALL debits. I would suggest, too, that a wife have one major credit card in her own name, use it just for gasoline or a couple of small purchases, then pay it off each month. That way she has some record of good credit in her own name.

Before marrying 20 years ago, our LDS stake held a 6-week marriage prep course. In it we filled out a financial questionnaire. (A lot of couples broke up after learning the results.) It helped us right from the beginning to talk about financial goals. We have the same two credit cards incase 1 gets lost or stolen--we pay them of monthly. We each have Pocket Quicken on our Palms; we immediately write down what we spend and it reconciles so we know how much money we have let in each of our budgeted areas. We talk about any purchase that's out of the norm before buying it. We talk all the time about where the money goes, how much to give to our Church offerings etc. We rarely spend our money on consumables like eating out--he takes a lunch to work each day. I'm a stay-at-home mom and my husband makes a modest income, but we've been blessed through simple practices like these to be able to pay off our home and be completely out of debt before our children have even left home. We don't do any fancy investments, just simple economy, but we're happy.

Innately, females love to spend, males love to save. I have 3 sisters who love to shop. They buy things and then take them back the next day. I have heard that finances is the number one issue in marriage. Being cheap seems to have a negative stigma in our "buy now and pay later" society. I do not understand why being cheap to save your money is so bad? I love to watch my savings account grow. My sisters tell me i can not "take it with me", but it buys me a sense of security knowing i have tons of money to bath in if I ever get the itch.

"finances.." I hope you aren't too proud to take correction because your statement was SHOCKINGLY off base.

PLEASE don't assume your wife and daughters will be shop-a-holics. It is demeaning to them and to you.

And you are in for a real shock if you think your sons are hardwired to save.

Who do you think squanders money on sports betting, ATVs, boats and season tickets? Women? Not usually.

And who do you think clips coupons and watches for sales? Men? Again, not usually.

How you deal with money is a personal inclination, not a gender based one, and can be greatly influenced by how you were raised. If mom loved to shop, she may have affected your 3 sisters, but trust me PLEASE, women are not hard wired to spend money.

My wife is frugal, as am I. We tried to teach our 7 children to be as well, however 3 of our 4 sons spend money as soon as it hits their pockets, while 2 of our 3 daughters are savers.

Honestly, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION BETWEEN SPENDING AND GENDER. Please, get those incorrect and sexist thoughts out of your mind for good.

To Screen Age:
AMEN about your comments to "finances"! My friend's HUSBAND has such a compulsive spending problem that they will most likely end up losing their house sometime in the future. SHE is the frugal one, NOT him.

Bless you, Screen Age. Bless you.

My husband and I have separate accounts. While I sign on his and he signs on mine, we don't get into the other's money. He pays the major bills- house payment, utilities, car, etc. I pay the grocery bill and kids expenses- piano lessons, school expenses, clothes etc. He can look online at my account and I can look at his to see where the money is going if we feel the need. We discuss big ticket items and we each have credit cards in our own names and we pay our own bills. He doesn't have to account to me for every penny and I don't have to account to him. It works for us and we've been married 25 years.

gender has little to do wit it. past experience and attitude is what it all about.

Perhaps in your family the women shop and the men cope, but that isn't always a gender-specific response with money.

In my family three of the wives are the ones who hold the purse strings tight and their husbands are the ones who like to spend. In these three cases without those tight reins that the WOMEN hold, the families would be in big trouble. One daughter actually gives her husband a weekly allowance because he got them into trouble once by spending too much money on his toys.

In another case, a son and his wife divorced mainly because her debts and "shopping therapy" got them so deeply into debt that they were stressed all the time. She's on her own now but in financial trouble again, even after going through bankruptcy in the past.

Some people have feelings of entitlement regardless of their income and juggle credit cards. It is less stressful to do without than wonder which bill you'll pay this month.

People: Didn't you ever learn about compound interest? It works AGAINST you with credit card debt!

Sometimes men, sometimes women, are irresponsible with money. So the RESPONSIBLE ONE should be in charge of the finances, right?

One question.

Why do so many ads show the woman pressuring the man into spending on houses, home improvements etc?