Do You Trust Your Spouse?

Makingourway has posed a very good question, Do You Trust Your Spouse?

For my husband and I, we have a great deal of trust. I take care of all of the finances and he trusts me to pay the bills and make sure we have money. If we don’t have any, he knows that I will let him know. I trust him because I know for any purchase over $35 he will talk to me about it.

We actually combined our money a few years before we were married. He had a car payment to make and I had a checking account. Instead of getting a money order, he gave me cash to write a check for him. Before long, we just had his check direct deposited into my account. I wouldn’t advise pre-marriage joint accounts for everyone. In our case, it worked because we are still together.

Sometimes, though, I think he trusts me too much. I could easily hoard money for myself and he wouldn’t suspect a thing. He never looks at our financial file and he rarely even looks at his own paychecks (he hands them over to me still in the envelope). I have tried to get him involved in things but it just doesn’t interest him. One of my biggest concerns is his financial health if something happened to me. But it’s hard to show someone when they show no interest.

One thing I’ve thought about doing is making a little “manual” of how I do our finances. In it, I will list monthly recurring bills (e.g. phone, gas, cable) as well as all of our debt payments and when they are due. I will also list all accounts. In a separate document I will have all of the login information and account numbers. I think having something like that would help put my mind at ease a little.

Posted by Tricia on July 27, 2006 at 10:48 AM in Money & Relationships | 6 Comments »
You can leave a response or trackback from your site.

Newer Posts Older Posts

Chitowngirl responded:
Posted: July 27th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Just be careful to put that information in a safe place!!! =)
D responded:
Posted: July 27th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Hello Tricia,

Here is what I do – maybe it will help. I linked back to you.

Will My Spouse Be Ok If I Die

Always a good idea to keep him in the game.
Tricia responded:
Posted: July 27th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Chitown – Oh yes, that info will be under lock & key

D – Great post! It’s just hard to keep him in the game when he doesn’t want to play. I look at our finances as sort of my hobby and he looks at them like a chore.
Donna responded:
Posted: July 28th, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Hi Tricia,

Your husband is kind of like mine. He feels the less he knows the less he has to worry about. Although he does the home accounts, I do the accounts for our business. What we do is about every 6 months we sit down and just go over where the money is going in both our home accounts & our business. This saves us each from having to worry over the day to day details of paying bills but gives a chance to see the overall picture. Your idea of a little book that tells him what to do is good. Just knowing what needs to be paid would be a good idea if you weren’t able to handle things for some reason. Under quickbooks there’s a reminders sections that lists out what needs to be paid & when. When I had our daughter he was able to look at this and see what needed to get paid without me having to do anything.

Good luck
Donna (from prosper)
Tricia responded:
Posted: July 28th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Hi Donna!

That’s great that you and your husband split the duties. With my husband’s budding business, I will be taking care of that as well. I think for us, the manual will be the best bet. I also try to have automatic payments for the big bills like the mortgage and student loans. I figure the more automated everything is – the easier it will be for him. There is just so much information in my head that it really would be a disaster if anything happened.

Thanks for stopping by!
Sonja responded:
Posted: February 18th, 2007 at 1:06 am
My husband is a lot like that to. I think he actually likes to be in the dark because it means less responsibility for him and the knowledge that I will just bail us out.

He used to be much worse. I’ll have to give him credit that he’s gotten a lot better. I still can’t trust him with money (let alone a check book or a credit card).