Lee Suckling: What we can learn from millennial couples' money management

If we retain some of our own finances, we each keep a sense of dignity. Photo / 123rf

Are your finances policed by your partner? Doing so is only a recipe for arguments, writes Lee Suckling.

What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine.

For generations, this is how married couples have thought about their finances. Pooling your money together – salaries, savings, inheritances – and having one mutually-shared bank account was a sign of trust and commitment.

Not so for millennials. I've been married for five years and despite my husband being the breadwinner, I don't have access to his bank account. We're the rule, not the exception, too. Unlike our parents, couples in their 20s and 30s these days don't tend to share everything they have.

If you think about life for young(-ish) people, none of us have ever really had any money. You know when you go to the airport, and everything is just a little bit more expensive than you can afford, but you suck it up and pay it anyway because you're a captive market? That's what millennial life is like every single day, everywhere we go.

Because nothing is affordable we are so sensitive about what we earn and how it is spent. The concept of having another person have access to and control of that entirely is unfathomable.

My husband and I have tried a few different types of money-sharing over the years. It has never felt right to share everything because, earning-wise, I can't bring in what he does. Today, we do what most millennial married couples do: we "sometimes share". He has his own money, I have mine, and then there's an account for shared expenses.

Neither of us are comfortable asking for permission to spend money from the other. Similarly, neither want to feel guilty when we spend $80 on ASOS, or when we buy a round on a solo night out with mates. We also want to be able to buy each other birthday, anniversary, and Christmas gifts and not have the other know what they cost.

This is the new trust for couples our age. Being committed to each other doesn't mean "having no secrets" when it comes to money. It means being okay with keeping some things to yourself while maintaining confidence there will never be anything to worry about. This doesn't mean we trust each other less; in fact, we trust each other more.

I've been wondering if it's simply a matter of time before "sometimes sharing" becomes "always sharing". While I can't find a millennial couple – even those with kids – that completely share all their money, I can't find a couple of the Baby Boomer generation that does not. My own parents haven't had their own individual accounts for almost 40 years now.

None of this is to say that millennial married couples are by-and-large secretive about their money. We're not. I'll give my husband a head's up when I'm making a significant purchase, and he'll do the same. Do we know, or care, about the purchase of every digital
subscription, cocktail, or video game? No way. Your finances shouldn't be policed by your partner. Doing so is only a recipe for arguments.

Unlike older generations, I don't think we millennials think of marriage as a complete merging of two people's lives. We marry much later in life than our predecessors, so all of us have ingrained senses of autonomy and individuality that are impossible to shake once "I" becomes "we". This isn't because we're stubborn, but rather, because we really enjoy having our own unique identities. Having adult control over some parts of your life is part of that.

Thirteen years ago, before anybody in our generation was old enough to share everything with a partner, a study came out saying that couples who merged their money are more likely to stay together than those who don't.

I cannot see how this is relevant anymore. The couples that would've been studied back then are different than us in so many ways. I believe we are of a generation that recognises, well before going into marriage, that fighting about money is what broke many of the couples that came before us apart.

If we retain some of our own finances, we each keep a sense of dignity. We know we can survive on our own, which means marriage continues to feel like a true choice and not an obligation.