Let's Talk Money, Honey: Tackling Finances as a Couple

Last year someone with a blue tick tweeted that he can’t understand why couples would have separate bank accounts. A lot of people replied in agreement.

It has stuck with me because plenty would declare the opposite, that they don’t understand people who don’t keep their own bank accounts, or don't have their own “fuck-off fund”, or who rely on their partner’s earnings.

There are many people who hide shopping and debt from their partner, even the exact figures of their salary, or hate the idea that they aren’t entirely self sufficient.

My view is there is no "correct" way to manage money between two people when we all have our own complex relationships with it. 

Money is the number one thing that leads people to Relate, the relationship counselling service told me, with several therapists confirming that finances always come up in their couples sessions. There are so many reasons why this is the case, but money equals power, and gendered assumptions about money, and this still lingering sense that “proper” men should provide (see First Dates), do no one any favours.

One therapist’s advice is to try and shake off any expectations about the right and wrong way of spending, saving or splitting money, and instead examine why you have those expectations and where they come from. Ideas about how men and women should behave? How you were brought up? Your own emotions or morals about money? Political or religious beliefs?

Some talk about money scripts that we tend to follow, including “money avoidance”,  a belief that money and wealth is bad, with a self-sabotaging tendency to feel undeserving of it, “money worship”, a belief that having more money is the solution to your problems, making you prone to buying stuff to make yourself feel better, “money status”, thinking self worth is bound up with net worth, meaning you are drawn to displays of material wealth, and “money vigilance” an emphasis on or anxiety about saving and frugality, and a reluctance to spend as a result. 

If you are reading from different scripts without acknowledging it, then tension is inevitable.

There are of course practical things that all couples would benefit from considering. If you are have shared bank accounts as our Twitter friend suggests, or any joint financial product, know that your credit files will be linked. That means if you or your partner has a bad credit score, yours will be affected, too, something particularly important to consider if you might want to get a mortgage in the next few years. 

If you are moving in together, especially if one of you owns a property and the other doesn’t, or you own it in unequal amounts, be aware that there is no such thing as common law marriage. If you are cohabiting you have no automatic legal rights to each other’s property, or stuff, in the event you split up or one of you dies.

Consider drawing up a living together agreement to help detail your expectations around this, because the one thing I think that all couples should do is talk about money.

Like long-term romance, or complicated feelings about salad, our relationship with money is not static, but ever evolving and takes constant self-reflection and self-restraint.

We should all work on getting better at losing our assumptions about it, and start being honest with each other about how it makes us feel and how we are most comfortable managing it.

With that, I wish you a very happy Valentines Day. I hope you and your lover(s) shower each other with gifts if you want them, and not if you don't.

📚 Laura Whateley is a journalist who has been published in The Times, Grazia, Refinery 29, Stylist, Elle, Red and GQ, and the author of Money: a user's guide, a handbook on personal finance for the millennial generation. Her own relationship with money is a work in progress. 

Find Laura on Twitter @LWhateley.