Joint Accounts

When Your Partner Keeps Their Money a Secret

How to talk about financial infidelity

Kristin Wong
Forge
Published in
4 min readMay 28, 2019

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Illustration: Laurie Rollitt

Dear Joint Accounts,

My husband and I have been married for three years, and he’s against us having any joint accounts. He also doesn’t like talking about his finances with me and gets uncomfortable whenever I ask, but he asks about mine. He’s made comments in the past about living month-to-month, enough that I’ve gotten worried about his financial situation.

A few weeks ago, I took a look at his bank info online when he was still logged in, only to find out that he has plenty of money saved. I know he makes a good salary, but I’m bothered that he continues to lie to me about his finances. I have a good track record of being financially responsible, so I don’t understand why he feels the need to keep his money a secret. Should I confront him, or ask him flat-out how much he has saved to see if he lies? How should I handle this?

Sincerely,

Financially Betrayed

YYikes. This is a classic (and extreme!) case of financial infidelity, which is when one partner hides financial information or behavior from the other. “Infidelity” might seem like a strong word here, but really, that’s what it is: Keeping financial secrets is an abuse of…

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Kristin Wong
Forge
Writer for

Kristin Wong has written for the New York Times, The Cut, Catapult, The Atlantic and ELLE.