There are a couple of threads going on about people who have no ability or desire to manage money. It’s not only frustrating to be married to one of these, but it’s downright dangerous.
Who has a secret savings account to guard their financial future? I have one. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but if I didn’t, all that money would have gone down the rat-hole a long time ago.
…Nobody who would answer in the affirmative in this thread.
I do. It’s easy to transfer money from savings to checking in the same bank and then spend it, but setting direct deposit for “the budgeted amount” to checking and sending all overage to a different bank altogether quietly accrues into serious cash without any effort or willpower or thought.
Not a secret, but my husband’s not on it.
I think everybody should have some private money.
Years ago when I got divorced, we could both see it coming. I started ratting my part of the money away as hard as I could and built up a good chunk of cash. All off anyone’s radar.
My husband and I each have accounts that the other isn’t on.
Mine is for exactly what the OP says, his is his allowance 
If he has money, he will spend it on stupid stuff.
(That’s why I bought him a toy helicopter for Christmas. He’s really a kid at heart.)
I did before I split with my ex-fiance. After I realized he was going through my mail (including credit card applications), I got pretty secretive–opened a PO box for all of my mail and opened a savings account in a new bank. We already had separate accounts, but it just seemed like a good idea.
My mother in law had a secret savings account for years where she kept a mid 6 figure inheritance. Unfortunately my father in law was the one who filed the taxes.
Keep an account secret from your spouse… whatever floats your boat. Don’t declare interest & dividends from that account on your jointly filed taxes for a decade… Enjoy your audit and hope you just pay a big fine.
Mine isn’t secret as much as its just not obvious. To me or my husband. Its really a pretty small amount of money, don’t know why I still have it stashed, or really why I stashed it to start with, but I throw $100 into it each month. It would be enough money to get an apartment for myself if I needed to.
I have definitely non secret accounts to guard our financial future. He is on them, but I manage them because my husband is good at making money - AND spending it. He’s not so good on long term planning with it.
My wife and I have small but useful separate accounts, and each has a sole user credit card. We saw our mothers have to deal with trying to pay bills when their husbands died and the joint accounts were frozen. That’s a different reason from the OP’s, but still related to individual financial security.
yeah…this was my first reaction to the OP.
There is no such thing as a “secret” account; --you may be able to keep an account secret from your spouse, but not from the IRS.
And if your spouse gets mad at you, you can argue with him. With the IRS…not so much.
One of my coworkers was a man in his early 70s, in very good health. Once we asked him how come he was still working. He said he had two reasons for it: one, he actually enjoyed the job; two, “if my wife knew we have what I actually consider enough money to retire, soon we wouldn’t have it, because she would have spent it.”
He had a bank account and some investments she didn’t know about, but it was him who did the taxes: the IRS did know about that money.
Not secret savings, but separate accounts for non-household funds. We’re joint on all of our accounts, but I manage the bills and normal expenses, and he manages his own fun money. It’s worked well that way for 31 years.
Years ago, my husband worked with a man who kept everything secret from his wife. She had no idea how much money he made, nor did she ever know about his bonuses. All she did was sign their tax returns where he told her to sign. I never did understand that mindset. Whatever worked for them, I guess, but if he dies before she does…
I have $10000 in an account my wife doesn’t know about and she has $10000 in an account I don’t know about.
We have separate accounts for travel and such and I maintain a specific credit card used only for groceries.
I would add she is an accountant but I get to manage all the finances and she is happy with that.
Nothing is secret, but all our accounts are separate. As are our CC’s. Luckily, neither of us are unreasonable with money. We each have general idea what’s in our liquid funds.
I keep closer track of my retirement accounts. My Wife is more of a hands off person, but knows that as we age, we may need to make adjustments in the way the money is invested. I’ve been doing a little gentle prodding there. We are pretty much even in how much we have.
I make a little more than my Wife, so we adjust bill paying to account for that. She handles some, I handle a little bit more.
There is not a general household fund, but my savings is considered the ‘big’ household fund. Remodels and such. I inherited some money and we just put it in my savings since I take care of contractors or whatever.
Big decisions like cars and such we talk about.
That sums up us, except we are in our 40s. I COULD retire on what I have stashed, but he likes to spend and wouldn’t cut his spending that much. So we work to spend. And we both don’t mind working.
And yes, I do the taxes and pay the bills. He can get into the bank accounts online, and usually when he does I have to explain to him that money isn’t there to go buy a Tesla with. He generally doesn’t bother to look, since I obsess about money, I do a fine job tracking it, and he thinks bills getting magically paid and someone magically making his financial life work is wonderful - he won’t push it.
In my own case, it’s not really secret, and it’s not really a savings account. I have a brokerage account and almost all the money is invested in conservative instruments against our retirements. He knows of its existence and the amount, because he does the taxes, but his name is not on it and he cannot access it. He also knows it’s necessary because he knows he’s addicted to spending money.
A pox on banks that bombard every household with pre-approved credit cards. They’re well aware that a lot of people have addictive personalities, and this is how banks can drain households of their resources.
How was this not discovered during the divorce proceedings?
I assume because it was cash. Squirrel away ten or twenty bucks every few days and you have a nice nest egg. Just be sure that they don’t find the duffel bag.
No, I don’t. All our accounts (except for individual retirement accounts) are joint. My wife pays most of the bills and I do most of the taxes. Neither of us spends money easily and it works for us. My credit card payments are on automatic withdrawal. (Aside: why does the bank allow us to do that, ensuring that we always pay it all and never pay interest?)