this is kind of unnecessarily hostile. i plan to be with my partner forever but i still have us maintain separate finances because i suck at money and she doesn't, and it also helps us to talk out big "together" purchases before we impulsively make them
Separate bank accounts is what helped this situation play out. If you are bad with money and your partner is not, then having them berate you every time you make a dumb, unnecessary purchase will help you get better with money (and help them loosen their grip if they're ridiculously tightfisted). You won't need help talking out the "big 'together' purchases" because you'll already have good sense from talking out even the piddling, small purchases. I say this from 18 years of experience.
considering the short timeframe, i think joined accounts could have easily made the situation far worse.
i've also been in my relationship for like a decade at this point and i'm not entirely convinced it would been for the better if my partner tore me a new asshole every time i made a mistake or a stupid decision :shrug-outta-hecks:
Amazing. Every part of that is wrong. You ALWAYS talk over a big decision involving money, and getting belittled for being bad with money does not make you get better, it makes you hate your partner. You are being very aggressive while espousing some really stupid ideas. Separate accounts make perfect sense in the modern world
It makes sense to have one bank account that is continuously overdrawn and another bank account flush with cash? It makes sense to have to constantly negotiate what debts and purchases are yours, mine, and ours every day for the rest of your life? Maybe separate accounts makes sense in a dual income household of two equally recompensated PMCs who never have to worry about money, but that kind of arrangement wouldn't work for my partner and me. Separate accounts just sounds like a different recipe for resentment to me.
it’s still possible to overspend on a joint account without your partner noticing.
Maybe in the days of paper checks and monthly snail mail bank statements but not really the case anymore with online banking.
you’re being needlessly aggressive here
I may have been needlessly provocative at the start of this thread but I didn't dismiss someone else's values and opinion as "some really stupid ideas" of which "every part of that is wrong".
If one is always overdrawn then you have big issues to address. And if you're out doing your own thing, the purchases are yours. You get your own lunch, your spouse pays for their movie ticket(as examples). You can divide tasks for what feels a reasonable cost to each of you, so one handles the cost of groceries and the other tackles the phone bill. Big purchases you can work on together and discuss how best to account for both of your expenses and pay-schedules. I don't know if it works in every situation, I'm not gonna say you're wrong about what works for you, but for two people of comparable pay and expenses two accounts makes sense. Even for people who worry about money, although I don't know if there is a point where that breaks down.
Why??? Joint checking accounts are an American specialty. In other countries typically husband and wife keep separate accounts and nobody thinks anything of it. Countries that allow it are typically American satrapies like the Philippines.
Smells like bullshit because when I google "countries that don't allow joint bank accounts", I get zero results to confirm the claim, but I do see a tweet about "72 countries where women are barred from opening bank accounts or obtaining credit."
So obviously these are nations with joint accounts or no concept of separate bank accounts. So clearly your claim that separate accounts is the norm and the joint account is a bougie American institution is sus.
nuclear bad take. partners should maintain some financial autonomy.
forcing spouses to put it all into a common pot empowers abusive partners to limit and surveil and grants extraordinary ability for mutual destruction to the one with the worst impulse control.
Oh no! Our joint bank account must mean my worst impulses are sending my abusive spouse and I towards mutual destruction! If you are truly living together as a family then separate finances are a farce and the matter of separate or joint accounts is immaterial to the function of the household. Perhaps instead of insulting people for doing what works for them, you should just do what works for you.
This guy came to us all for advice because what he was doing wasn't working out and we all supplied advice that worked for us. $8k worth of goods and burger wrappers didn't just appear on his doorstep overnight so this pattern of behavior could have been caught sooner if he could monitor their finances. A joint account is a perfect way to accomplish this because he would have caught the spending the first month she made the minimum payment on her shiny new credit card. How he was otherwise oblivious to how she spent her time and money throughout the day may be another concern, but he'd have had one fewer problem with a joint bank account from my experience.
If you are truly living together as a family then separate finances are a farce
"if you really loved me, you wouldn't have your own money." this is the exact phrasing an abuser uses to keep their victim from pursuing autonomy. it's called economic abuse and it's real, whether you want to believe in it or not. forced pooling of funds is a crucial tactic of abusers.
this situation came up because one partner engaged in reckless spending and the immediate damage was limited by the OPs ability to zero out high interest debt. now they can work on their relationship, strategize a way to rebuild the nest egg, and find out what happened without forking over 22% interest to chase bank or whoever.
having only a common pot would not have prevented this, as one partner could always go out and open a line of credit on their own without telling their partner or creating an opportunity to monitor its use. or are you imagining that having only a joint checking account prevents a partner from getting their own line of credit? them having all their money in a single joint account would give full access to the emergency fund to the reckless partner.
Abusers can manipulate normal social behavior to their own ends. That doesn't mean normal social behavior is automatically abuse. Separate accounts aren't a panacea against abuse either. An abuser could use income disparity and separate accounts to justify luxury expenses for themselves as their partner scrapes by. In a household contending with bills, children, groceries, home repairs, and transportation costs, too many expenses are shared to keep your finances completely separate. If you don't have shared expenses, you're more roommates with benefits rather than a couple.
And I guess an irresponsible partner could open a line of credit and never pay the minimum balance either, but you have to resort to crazy extremes in order to make your point. What does that say about you or your point if outliers are the only cases that justify it?
so, because you can't imagine how a couple can maintain separate finances except in one single common pot, it's impossible...? despite others in here saying they do it?
the logistics are simple: party A has their account, party B has their account, and there exists a joint A-B account. mutual bills are paid through the joint account. mutual goals are saved for in joint savings accounts. individual goals are saved for in personal accounts. surprises/gifts, miscellany/discretionary spending come from personal accounts. couples with unequal income can arrange whatever distribution and management responsibility through automatic direct deposits and create individual/shared budgets with total transparency, or they can just hash out shared expenses / proportional responsibility for them and keep the rest to themselves.
nothing i am talking about is an outlier. financial troubles are consistently in the top 5 reasons for dissolution of marriage and even among those that remain together, financial troubles are a consistent source of unhappiness. while there are structural causes of this, humans do get manipulated into surrendering independence in abusive relationships. impulse control disorders are real and can manifest suddenly. these are things that happen every day to people.
you're the one insisting that all other couples keeping personal accounts makes those relationships "a farce". yours is the extreme position here. and, FYI, your complete inability to recognize other, common household financial arrangements as being part of a healthy, committed romantic relationship among equal partners while lashing out at everyone with rude dismissals and personal attacks is saying something about you.
your complete inability to recognize other, common household financial arrangements as being part of a healthy, committed romantic relationship among equal partners while lashing out at everyone with rude dismissals and personal attacks is saying something about you.
If $8k is a chunk of money to you, how did you not notice these expenditures over the course of the year? Are you even living together?
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You're now a household, not atomized individuals. Why would you keep separate finances unless you are planning to divorce starting from day one?
this is kind of unnecessarily hostile. i plan to be with my partner forever but i still have us maintain separate finances because i suck at money and she doesn't, and it also helps us to talk out big "together" purchases before we impulsively make them
Separate bank accounts is what helped this situation play out. If you are bad with money and your partner is not, then having them berate you every time you make a dumb, unnecessary purchase will help you get better with money (and help them loosen their grip if they're ridiculously tightfisted). You won't need help talking out the "big 'together' purchases" because you'll already have good sense from talking out even the piddling, small purchases. I say this from 18 years of experience.
considering the short timeframe, i think joined accounts could have easily made the situation far worse.
i've also been in my relationship for like a decade at this point and i'm not entirely convinced it would been for the better if my partner tore me a new asshole every time i made a mistake or a stupid decision :shrug-outta-hecks:
Amazing. Every part of that is wrong. You ALWAYS talk over a big decision involving money, and getting belittled for being bad with money does not make you get better, it makes you hate your partner. You are being very aggressive while espousing some really stupid ideas. Separate accounts make perfect sense in the modern world
punishing people for coming to you with a problem just means in future they'll hide it
Exactly. The advice given was like saying parents yelling at their kids for bad grades will encourage them to do better.
It makes sense to have one bank account that is continuously overdrawn and another bank account flush with cash? It makes sense to have to constantly negotiate what debts and purchases are yours, mine, and ours every day for the rest of your life? Maybe separate accounts makes sense in a dual income household of two equally recompensated PMCs who never have to worry about money, but that kind of arrangement wouldn't work for my partner and me. Separate accounts just sounds like a different recipe for resentment to me.
it's still possible to overspend on a joint account without your partner noticing.
I'm glad your way of doing things works for you but you're being needlessly aggressive here
Maybe in the days of paper checks and monthly snail mail bank statements but not really the case anymore with online banking.
I may have been needlessly provocative at the start of this thread but I didn't dismiss someone else's values and opinion as "some really stupid ideas" of which "every part of that is wrong".
If one is always overdrawn then you have big issues to address. And if you're out doing your own thing, the purchases are yours. You get your own lunch, your spouse pays for their movie ticket(as examples). You can divide tasks for what feels a reasonable cost to each of you, so one handles the cost of groceries and the other tackles the phone bill. Big purchases you can work on together and discuss how best to account for both of your expenses and pay-schedules. I don't know if it works in every situation, I'm not gonna say you're wrong about what works for you, but for two people of comparable pay and expenses two accounts makes sense. Even for people who worry about money, although I don't know if there is a point where that breaks down.
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A lot of countries don't allow joint checking accounts. America does, though. That's why most spouses empty the account before filing for divorce.
Smells like bullshit to me.
Why??? Joint checking accounts are an American specialty. In other countries typically husband and wife keep separate accounts and nobody thinks anything of it. Countries that allow it are typically American satrapies like the Philippines.
Smells like bullshit because when I google "countries that don't allow joint bank accounts", I get zero results to confirm the claim, but I do see a tweet about "72 countries where women are barred from opening bank accounts or obtaining credit."
So obviously these are nations with joint accounts or no concept of separate bank accounts. So clearly your claim that separate accounts is the norm and the joint account is a bougie American institution is sus.
nuclear bad take. partners should maintain some financial autonomy.
forcing spouses to put it all into a common pot empowers abusive partners to limit and surveil and grants extraordinary ability for mutual destruction to the one with the worst impulse control.
Oh no! Our joint bank account must mean my worst impulses are sending my abusive spouse and I towards mutual destruction! If you are truly living together as a family then separate finances are a farce and the matter of separate or joint accounts is immaterial to the function of the household. Perhaps instead of insulting people for doing what works for them, you should just do what works for you.
This guy came to us all for advice because what he was doing wasn't working out and we all supplied advice that worked for us. $8k worth of goods and burger wrappers didn't just appear on his doorstep overnight so this pattern of behavior could have been caught sooner if he could monitor their finances. A joint account is a perfect way to accomplish this because he would have caught the spending the first month she made the minimum payment on her shiny new credit card. How he was otherwise oblivious to how she spent her time and money throughout the day may be another concern, but he'd have had one fewer problem with a joint bank account from my experience.
"if you really loved me, you wouldn't have your own money." this is the exact phrasing an abuser uses to keep their victim from pursuing autonomy. it's called economic abuse and it's real, whether you want to believe in it or not. forced pooling of funds is a crucial tactic of abusers.
this situation came up because one partner engaged in reckless spending and the immediate damage was limited by the OPs ability to zero out high interest debt. now they can work on their relationship, strategize a way to rebuild the nest egg, and find out what happened without forking over 22% interest to chase bank or whoever.
having only a common pot would not have prevented this, as one partner could always go out and open a line of credit on their own without telling their partner or creating an opportunity to monitor its use. or are you imagining that having only a joint checking account prevents a partner from getting their own line of credit? them having all their money in a single joint account would give full access to the emergency fund to the reckless partner.
Abusers can manipulate normal social behavior to their own ends. That doesn't mean normal social behavior is automatically abuse. Separate accounts aren't a panacea against abuse either. An abuser could use income disparity and separate accounts to justify luxury expenses for themselves as their partner scrapes by. In a household contending with bills, children, groceries, home repairs, and transportation costs, too many expenses are shared to keep your finances completely separate. If you don't have shared expenses, you're more roommates with benefits rather than a couple.
And I guess an irresponsible partner could open a line of credit and never pay the minimum balance either, but you have to resort to crazy extremes in order to make your point. What does that say about you or your point if outliers are the only cases that justify it?
so, because you can't imagine how a couple can maintain separate finances except in one single common pot, it's impossible...? despite others in here saying they do it?
the logistics are simple: party A has their account, party B has their account, and there exists a joint A-B account. mutual bills are paid through the joint account. mutual goals are saved for in joint savings accounts. individual goals are saved for in personal accounts. surprises/gifts, miscellany/discretionary spending come from personal accounts. couples with unequal income can arrange whatever distribution and management responsibility through automatic direct deposits and create individual/shared budgets with total transparency, or they can just hash out shared expenses / proportional responsibility for them and keep the rest to themselves.
nothing i am talking about is an outlier. financial troubles are consistently in the top 5 reasons for dissolution of marriage and even among those that remain together, financial troubles are a consistent source of unhappiness. while there are structural causes of this, humans do get manipulated into surrendering independence in abusive relationships. impulse control disorders are real and can manifest suddenly. these are things that happen every day to people.
you're the one insisting that all other couples keeping personal accounts makes those relationships "a farce". yours is the extreme position here. and, FYI, your complete inability to recognize other, common household financial arrangements as being part of a healthy, committed romantic relationship among equal partners while lashing out at everyone with rude dismissals and personal attacks is saying something about you.
anyway, i'm done. good luck or whatever.
Projection much?