Financial Infidelity

12 minutes ago

3 min read

In their marriage vows, couples promise to love each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Everybody likes the better, richer, and healthy part of the vows. The worse, poorer, and sickness part can be a real challenge, especially when those challenges involve a couple lying to each other about their finances.

Financial infidelity means hiding financial information or decisions from a spouse in ways that violate the couple’s trust and agreements.

When Financial Secrets Affect a Marriage

Over the years, we’ve met many couples who lied to each other about their finances or kept their money completely separate without shared accountability. Separate accounts are not necessarily the problem. Secrecy and a lack of responsibility toward each other are.

There was a husband who invested a significant portion of their savings in an expensive piece of property with his ex-girlfriend and did not tell his wife. A wife was forced to leave her job due to illness and used credit card cash advances to maintain the family’s spending level without telling her husband.

Another couple maintained separate accounts and had divided the family expenses so each paid “their fair share,” with no accountability to each other. Then the husband’s finances took a hard hit from several unexpected household bills and a dental emergency.

When we met with them, the wife told him that his dental bills were not her problem. Then it hit her like a ton of bricks—she had run right into the worse, poorer, and sickness part of those vows. His dental bills were her problem precisely because of those marriage vows.

Spouses reviewing a household spending plan together with a notebook and calculator. The title "Honesty about money is part of the promise we make in marriage.

Sharing Financial Decisions in Marriage

The way a couple deals with money reveals a lot about their relationship and their marriage. If one person controls all the money, especially by restricting their spouse’s access to it or excluding them from decisions, money can become a source of power over the other person.

It is important that each person in a marriage has input into how money is allocated for regular expenses. It is equally important that each has some agreed-upon “mad money”—money they can use as they wish. That is not a bad idea. What is a bad idea is lying to your spouse about spending and hiding financial information from them.

Couples need to have open and honest discussions about finances—both before they get married and throughout their marriage. Finances can be an ongoing source of conflict, and one of the best ways to address that conflict is to develop a process both spouses agree to. This matters whether one spouse stays home to care for the family or both are employed, and regardless of who earns the higher salary.

Start with a regular conversation about income, bills, debts, and upcoming expenses. Agree on how much each person can spend without checking with the other and which decisions you will make together. A shared spending plan can help turn those conversations into practical commitments.