andrewducker | (Reply)

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I think the most relevant question might be, when people have a relationship they can't walk away from. As it happens, I've always expected to be financially independent, and more emotionally comfortable being secure with a status quo, not rushing to merge finances if that has upsides, but downsides which could be unlimitedly big. And I don't have any particular reason to fear being controlled, but many people do, and don't want someone else to be able to interfere in their finance. And I think many people hand over financial power to their partner when it might be better not to. So I might not have the best description of what most people do.

But I think the reasons people DO do that, well, the big one is shared commitments. Especially children. But other long term commitments like "neither of us have enough for rent and bills reliably but between us we usually have enough on average". Or "I'll keep working this job, you go get a degree, then get a better job, then we'll both be better off". Or owning a house or other assets together. Some of those, especially children, can mean that most outlays are essentially joint as long as you're living as a household.

If walking away when your partner can't support their contribution is expensive, or undesirable, or nearly impossible, you are massively affected by their decisions. And so you do have input into their decisions if you think they're spending joint money unwisely, or spending their money in a way which is likely to make them unable to keep up shared contributions, even if they're in overall charge of it.

For a small comparison, say, you're both sharing housework, you accept that when you do the chores, you do them your way, but if one partner says "don't do that, it damages the dishes/cupboard/floor/wall" and the other partner says "no it doesn't" then you need to pick one way or the other, because if it IS a problem both people will be affected, and if there ISN'T there's no point one person doing it the "careful" way.

And the other half of it is maybe, most people hope or expect to have joint finances (even if they have SOME separate accounts), because it makes more practical sense if MOST of their outgoings are joint. Or because they EXPECT to have that, and are more emotionally comfortable with it.

So my description might be something like: work out how much it makes sense to consider joint, then for that portion, both people pay in, and pay from that whenever it's appropriate, and both people have personal discretion money. And "how much is joint" might be "none" for lots of people and "all" for lots of people, even if my instinct is that it's better to actively decide than to assume. And "personal discretion money" might be "all of it" if you don't share finances at all, or might only be personal leisure spending if savings and household expenses are agreed to be joint, or might be somewhere between.