laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (11/15/83)
I may be getting a silly impression here, but I think that the "shared finances" people in net.singles are working by sympathetic magic, rather than cause-and-effect. It is an oversimplification to say that sympathetic magic works by effect-and-cause, but it gets the point across. Now, far be it from me to tell people to STOP doing this, but the arguments that they are using could be construed to be the 'cause and effect' ones you generally get from scientific sources, which they are not. The proposed train of thought goes like this: 1. So and so had separate accounts. 2. So and so's marriage didn't last. QED Generally there is talk about "complete partnership" and "total sharing" necessary to make a marriage work. i don't understand that either (after 25 years my parents still have separate bank accounts) but I can see what this is going to lead to. People are going to get shared accounts, even if they have serious qualms about them. This is sympathetic magic. My marriage may not have this wonderful "total sharing" at its foundation, but I am going to emulate these RESULTS of this "total sharing" (such as the shared bank accounts) and fake it out. This may be silly folks. Let us assume for a minute something that I do not believe -- that there is only one sort of successful relationship and this is the "total sharing" one. Well, if you do not have that total sharing attitude (evidenced by your desire for separate bank accounts) then your marriage is going to fail. All you have done is made it more difficult for you to settle when this inevitable breakdown occurs, because your combined bank account will not make you a 'total sharing' sort of person all by itself. It will, however, give you an endless supply of arguments. Now, suppose that you are not a total sharing sort of person, but you still want to get married. Presumably you want your marriage to last. This means that you are trying to do something despite the claims of the firm advocates of the "total sharing" world veiw that your relationship is doomed. If it is any comfort, you are not alone. There are also couples making a sucess of it who do not have the much-lauded "communication skills", though, since generally communication is not what gives them thrills it is not surprising that you don't hear them screaming their successes over the rooftops. If you are one of these people then you are going to have to come up with an arrangement that you can live with. NOT THAT YOUR NEIGHBOURS CAN LIVE WITH. If you do not already believe that 'total sharing' is the only way for a relationship to work, then they are going to look upon you as weird and perverse anyway, so don't let it get to you. And DONT think that you have to emulate the effects of what they consider "good grounds for a successful marriage", because the effects without the causes may be at best arbitrary and at the worst, dishonest. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
keesan@bbncca.ARPA (Morris Keesan) (11/15/83)
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Several years ago there was an article on this in something like
_P_o_p_u_l_a_r _P_s_y_c_h_o_l_o_g_y. I'm reporting all of this second-hand, as it was
reported to me at the time by my office-mate, a software engineer with a
Ph.D. in psychology, when her style of financial management came up in
conversation, and I told her I thought it was bizarre. She and her
co-habitant, who might as well be married, since their relationship is as
stable and permanent as any marriage, and more than many, have separate
finances, and share their mutual expenses (e.g. mortgage payments,
entertainment, food) exactly 50/50, to the extent of keeping track of which
one owes the other how much. They started doing this when they first started
living together, and weren't sure the relationship would last, and have kept
it up because it works well for them. Anyway, the gist of the aforementioned
article was that there are a few basic categories of financial management
styles, with the "split expenses exactly" being at one extreme and the
"share everything totally" (shades of Karl Marx) at the other. Different
couples fall into different categories, and the categories turn out to have
very little, if any, correllation with any other aspect of the relationship,
such as closeness, sharing, success (as in longevity), etc. Mostly all that
you can tell about a couple by the way they manage their joint finances is
what type of money management works best for them, and to some degree this
reflects the way the feel about money, but not about each other.
My wife and I fall somewhere into a middle category. All of our money is
in joint accounts (with minor exceptions like the money my parents-in-law hold
in trust for my wife). We each have our own checking accounts, which are both
joint accounts, but one is "mine" and the other is "hers". When my
mother-in-law heard about the checking accounts, she said, "You kids today.
You're setting yourselves up for a divorce," but the truth of the matter is
that we thought it would be a nightmare to try and balance a checking account
with both of us carrying checkbooks and writing checks on it, never mind
knowing how much is in the account to write a check on it. When we got
married, we figured out what our monthly expenditures were (roughly) for
things like rent, groceries, entertainment, utilities, etc., and what our
individual incomes were, and then arranged to split the bills so that each
of us would have about the same amount left over for spending money. We
still consult each other about any large purchases, as a matter of course,
not because of any planned policy, and it turns out that when we're shopping
together, things tend to get paid for by the one of us who happens to have
more cash on hand, or a larger checking account balance. We also find that
having some money that's separate helps for things like buying each other gifts,
and it hasn't seemed to interfere with the rest of the sharingness in our
marriage.
Morris M. Keesan
decvax!bbncca!keesan