None here (unless I’ve forgotten about an account, which is not wholly impossible), but my wife and I are both pretty conservative fiscally and have pretty much identical financial philosophies, so it’s never been an issue.
Not really a secret but I do have money stashed away in various places that my wife doesn’t normally see. A few thousand in savings bonds, some mutual funds that she isn’t interested in, a big chunk invested in my brother-in-law’s company, that sort of thing. We have very, very different methods for managing our money. I’m a saver, stashing away pennies like a crazed squirrel, while she spends whatever she has plus a little more in credit.
If it were up to her, we (including the kids) would dress much more stylishly, have a nicer home and better cars, and our credit cards would be maxed. If it was up to me we would all be walking around in thrift store clothes, sharing cars and pinching every penny until it screamed. Each of us would go crazy if we tried to join our money. So we balance each other out.
The bank charges retailers a percentage of everything that spend on your card. They make good money even if you never pay interest.
My husband’s “secret” account was just hacked. He only keeps about $40 in it at any one time, because he goes to… anyway, one of them was a 'bot chat site*. Even Google won’t put out the URL for it because it’s only out there to steal from it’s visitors.
It takes out less than $2 first, then takes just under $50 or if you have less than $50 it just cleans it out. There are a number of them, since it’s happened to him before…
He was embarrassed to have to tell me, but I already knew he went to questionable sites. I hope this taught him something.
He has to go to the bank today to get a new account. I’m just glad he didn’t use our main debit card!
*It’s a site that has a program that had several virtual people that can respond with real sounding answers when you talk to them. here is just one real person per room. That way they can’t compare notes about the charges.
If anyone wants to know the URL to know to avoid it, message me.
My wife and I have separate bank accounts, but they’re not secret, nor is the amount of money they hold.
Though we have very similar habits with respect to money, we had both had our own accounts for a long time when we got married, and saw no reason to change that just because we’d gotten married. We’ve had similar incomes all our married life, and have divvied up the expenses in a way that works for us both. We’ve never once argued about money.
This is the same way my wife and I work it. Got married at 36 and saw no reason to change. Also not once argued about money (or anything else for that matter. We are most definitely not the norm)
But neither of these are secret bank accounts. They’re just separate.
Its kind of nice because I’m frugal to be married to a spender. We’ve just had to learn to work with each others quirks - he’s had to learn how much he can spend before he sets me off. I’ve gotten great use out of him by saying “we need a new TV” and giving him a budget - he always goes over a little (its one of the things we’ve worked out), but he buys a much nicer TV than I would - I would have spent less than I’d budgeted.
This was my mum, after 62 years of marriage to the old fuck – she literally had no idea how many secret funds, stocks, and loose cash he had stashed away (he claimed all through their marriage how poor they were; I grew up thinking we were one step away from living under a bridge). It took her and my brother over two years finally to put together how much money and investments there actually were; tax time was a total nightmare, but fortunately, he had been filing legally, just not telling my mum anything.
Mr Boods and I have completely separate incomes and accounts (the key to a happy marriage), and I have money that I would have stayed schtum about to him except you have to lay bare all of your finances to get residency visas, &c. He was a bit surprised, as he assumed that I was close to impoverishment as well from my lifestyle and general miserliness.
Thanks to the asinine US tax laws that affect ex-pats, we’ll never have joint anything, as he doesn’t need to be dragged into that mess.
This is me and Mrs G in a nutshell also. I’m the squirreler. One thing that aids greatly with the age old shopper vs saver battle is how non-liquid you make your nest egg. If your savings is a simple card-swipe away, then frivolous spending and charging is impossible to stop. If you sock extra money away in funds, IRAs, non-depreciating hard goods, etc, then it reigns in the overspending. “Sure honey, that must-buy-now extravagant vacation package deal looks great, lets just sit down and get those transfer applications mailed out, get a brokerage appt, post our land parcel with our realtor, etc…”
Our egg is mostly all joint, it just is set up to kick, scream, and cry when we try to spend it 
Secret? No, Solely mine? Yes. It’s a bone of contention.
Seconded - though the account has a grand total of about 300 bucks 
In my case it was because I had a chance to join a particular credit union (a very large one) due to the client I was working with. I use it only for spare change (literally - I toss all my coins in a basket and periodically take them there to use the coin counting machine). All our “real” money is in joint accounts.
Arguably, all my retirement money is “secret” in that my husband doesn’t have direct access to it, and doesn’t bother with the financials any way. Hell, his own retirement money is like that too - he never looks at it.
:dubious: What you talkin’ about Willis?
Nah, at least as far as I know. All of our holdings are either owned jointly or, in the case of 401k’s, life insurance, etc., idividually with the other as sole beneficiary. This will greatly reduce the complexity when one of us kicks the bucket. My parent’s finances were set up the same way. When my father died we didn’t even have to probate his will, everything automatically passed to mom.
How did you find out about this?
My brother’s first set of in-laws were like that. It caused endless trouble when his father-in-law died; the mother-in-law did not even know how to write out a check or balance a checkbook, much less anything more involved. This must have been 20 years ago, but I’d not be surprised if there’s still money hidden that was never found.