Money talks

There was a wonderful... we are talking full on car crash type thread... going on over at Fet this week. It is all about money and the evils of joint finances... well other things too, including wastrel stay at home doms who are just pimps in disguise, but it was the joint finances thing that one wanted to touch on. See we are rather odd for a long term O/p M/s couple in that we don't have joint finances. This is just as well when one of us is perfecting the art of leaving the slave with the check at the end of the meal J

When we first got together we had separate everything including homes. This worked out well as His taste in clutter offended every monastic fibre of ones being... actually it still can at times, but that is a story for another time. Besides one was still involved financially with the ex, we still owned a joint home which she would not have been able to afford on her own and as only one of us wanted out of the relationship, it hardly seemed fair that she should suffer financially. Life is complicated sometimes... anyway one digresses...

When we sold the house and separated our finances, she was dying by this stage and we wanted her to have some fun with equity, one moved in full time with Him. One of the things we discussed was the issue of finances and we ended up keeping our rather hinky little system that worked for us. That was to say we paid our own way and split bills, and took turns on buying appliances as they were needed. It worked well... so why fix it.

About a year later we changed over to this style of relationship and again discussed finances and decided to leave them as they were. At the time we earned about the same so it wasn't a big deal either way. Of course fast forward a few years and one now earns about half of what He does and still pays half of everything... though He does pay for some entertainment and virtually all of the sex toys. It has meant that one is pretty much financially dependent on Him anyway... the food bill alone in this house is horrific... rather like the bill for sex toys J

This brings us back to the joint finances and the evils of that according to that thread. Now our group members, by and large, have been together a long time. Most of them do have shared finances or they are so intertwined they may as well be (like us), so most of us read that thread and go what is the big deal. It's a relationship... it will have ups and downs and sometimes you will have to financially support your partner... get over it. Which is completely at odds with those not in long term relationships, who were going get the hell away from our bank accounts.

The thing is though that for the younger people it is a big deal. They have grown up with the idea that a smart woman keeps a damned good eye on her bank account. It is probably the one sound bit of advice our generation ever gave them... even if they are too young to remember why it is important. See they seem to have gone from the feminist belief/ ideal that our mothers wanted equality and have adopted the idea that men are not to be trusted... which is the sad truth occasionally one must admit L

That pursuit of equality was why mother wanted a separate account, and it was a good time to want one as it turned out. See as a child of the 60's and 70's one can attest to how sensible that desire was. She was married to the step-father at the time, renovating a beautiful old farm house in a semi rural area, while working her arse off as a teacher. It was her home and he put it on the market without telling her. The first she knew about it was the real estate agent rocking up at the door.

In those days the husband could just go to a bank and do whatever he liked... refinance, mortgage, drain an account... put a house on the market without his spouses' signature. Oddly enough the women were less than impressed with this and they wanted change. And they wanted it now... because they knew they were not only were they now a disposable commodity (thanks to the advent of divorce (which is where mother and the step father headed shortly after that house incident)), but so was their security and the security of their children. In those days you could whistle Dixie for child support and the government agencies had even less ways to enforce it than they do now.

So one read that thread with interest (OK and the odd giggle) and while one can see it from our group members' point of view... there is a large part of one that goes... keep your money where you can get it. Until you know and trust them enough to hand it over. And gee it only took one ten odd cough, cough years to get to the point where one would hand over the finances in this relationship... what are a few years for someone new? But then one was a child of the 60's and had a twice divorced mother... which was a scandalous thing in that country at that time. Meh women in our family were always good at doing it wrong J