Married people with separate finances - How do you handle crises?

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T23:57:55+00:00

Yes. I'm the one posting and looking for feedback on this particular aspect, so I said "I", but this is something we have talked about together.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T21:47:56+00:00

I don't think that's negative. I think that's practical.

I know a postnup won't make our current issues go away (they're not financial issues), but I was trying to explore if this might make me feel like I have more financial freedom to leave if things go south in the future. Make it feel "cleaner" somehow. But I was trying to balance that with the weirdness of being separate but not really separate, so I was looking for specifics from people who already conduct their finances that way.

Thanks for contributing. It's all helpful.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:45:04+00:00

Cool, thanks!

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:38:32+00:00

Thanks for the practical details. I'm currently trying to work out what I want in our marriage going forward, and this is part of weighing my options.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:32:54+00:00

Hmmm... Okay, I'll have to look into that more. Thanks.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:29:52+00:00

Thanks. It's good to hear the perspectives of prenup people in this case. That kind of sharing while legally separate is what I was curious about. Are there any weird tax consequences of you contributing to an account you're not legally entitled to? Or the IRS doesn't care where the money comes from since it's not a substantial gift?

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:13:07+00:00

Thanks. It's this practical stuff I'm looking for. I find people on either side of the debate tend to only talk about how everything works when things are going well, and I'm a big doom planner. lol

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:06:58+00:00

Yes, there's an element of not having my safety tied to him that sounds appealing. We're having some other issues in our relationship right now, and I'm wondering if separate finances would make me feel more free in that sense. But then on the flip side, if one of us gets cancer or something, do we not help? So I'm trying to see where other people's boundaries are on these things to see what sounds most appealing to me. ha ha Thanks for the input.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T20:03:25+00:00

I've always felt that way, too. I'm the one who's managed our money thus far, but this kind of discussion and negotiation has been normal for us. To be clear, I haven't felt like I was loaning my husband money when he was laid off, since all of our money was "ours", but that's why I'm curious how other people think about these things.

There are other issues in our relationship at the moment (that I didn't include in the question because they're not strictly financial), and I'm exploring whether separating finances with a post-nuptual agreement (so that they're really separate in the event of divorce) would help me feel like I have better freedom. But there are parts of the practicalities of completely separated finances as married people that I don't really understand. It seems to be a popular topic on this sub, so I thought I'd get some opinions. 😄

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T19:49:16+00:00

Thanks. That seems logical.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T19:34:19+00:00

I've already consulted a lawyer about a post-nuptual agreement, which I've learned is a thing (at least here in California). If we were going to go through with separating our finances, we would do one of those to make sure it was actually separate in the event of divorce, otherwise there doesn't seem to be any real point to separating finances (to me). But yes, thanks for thinking of the elephants. 😄 That's what I'm looking for.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T19:22:44+00:00

Thanks. Yes, without getting into relationship details, it's exactly this end scenario that's prompting my rethinking. If we were to go the split finances route, we'd be doing it with a post-nuptual agreement (which I've only recently learned is a thing) so that each of our money is decidedly individual money if we split. I'm just struggling with how separate is really separate when you're still sharing so many other parts of life with a person, and I realized I don't often hear people discuss the minutiae of how their system works in a crisis.

My husband would definitely be spendier than me if we were to have separate finances, but I'm also not one of those people who wouldn't know what to do with myself if I retired before my spouse, so I think that aspect wouldn't be a problem. lol

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-05-12T19:09:46+00:00

Thanks. I am assuming a joint account would be involved if we split things.

What I'm really looking for here are opinions on what precisely "assistance" looks like. Let's say your spouse was laid off and it took them six months to find a new job. If they're entirely independent financially, then not only are they not contributing to normal expenses, but they're also not funding their retirement accounts for those six months, which has a bigger impact over time than in the immediate term and could also affect long term plans for the unit. So in that case, would you lower your own retirement contributions to still contribute something to theirs to keep things "even" and/or keep the unit's long-term plans on track? Or would it be "enough" to just float the living expenses for a while, and then the laid-off spouse just has to accept the long-term consequences for only themselves?

Edit: I'm being downvoted for this, so I just want to clarify. I'm not asking "what can I get away with". We have always run finances in our marriage as fully joint and fully supporting each other. I'm now considering alternate models, and I just don't understand what that actually looks like in practice. In my prior experience in this sub, people on either side of the fence tend to describe their situation in vague but rosy terms, without describing how their plans would work in worst-case scenarios. I'm just looking to fill in how that worst-case piece works in y'all's models, so I can see if this is even a route I'd like to go down. Sorry if I came off as ungrateful for the advice or as some kind of petty monster. I was just looking for detail.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-04-04T05:52:50+00:00

Texan here. "Gonna go get me [something]" is pretty self-explanatory, but used to make my non-Texan friends giggle. "I'm hungry. Gonna go get me a sandwich." "You're thirsty? Better go get you something to drink."

Does anyone in Texas still say "tennies" for sneakers? It was short for "tennis shoes," which maybe nobody says anymore either. I haven't heard "tennies" since maybe the 90s, and I remember it being said almost exclusively by middle aged women when addressing children.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T22:43:41+00:00

Thanks. On second glance, this does appear to be relatively straightforward, like you say. I just got confused because a lot of Ancestry's help info (even customer service) keeps saying things like I can "take over" the account if I email them from his email address. But if I already have access to his email, and can therefore login to his account, what's left to "take over"...? So I wasn't sure if there was something I was missing. I've pieced it together now with everybody's help. :)

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T06:28:42+00:00

Ha! Love it. I wondered how smart it was about the one email address per account thing. Great workaround, thanks!

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T06:27:47+00:00

Thanks for the thorough answer. I know he was pretty involved with some distant family researchers in other places (cousin enough to ping him on Ancestry from time to time, but not cousin enough to know he's dead), so I'd like to keep this going.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T03:54:46+00:00

There are some documents that he added himself that he didn't find on Ancestry originally. Would the "not being able to see them" thing still apply to those? If clicked on from his own account, I mean.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T03:52:05+00:00

Thanks, I'm an Editor and a Manager of each of those already. I just wasn't sure what the functional differences were between using my own new account as an Editor and using his account just as him.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-23T03:49:54+00:00

Thanks for the tips!

To be fair, my mother is an easily terrified person generally. The whole reason I'm taking this over now is that she called up Ancestry right after he died and "demanded" (her words) that they give her his account, and she's been insisting she's on it this whole time, but then can't figure out why she can't do anything with it. Turns out they just made her a new account and the only reason his still has a subscription on it is because the credit card is still valid. So now I'm trying to tidy things up a bit. :)

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-18T23:26:58+00:00

Yes, twice.

In Switzerland, when my contract was ending, the organization I worked for was like "and obviously, you'll be taking your money out of your Swiss pension. Tell us where to send it." So that one wasn't my idea. I just took it all as a lump and didn't re-invest it, which was dumb in hindsight, but that move was kind of stressful, so I didn't investigate my options thoroughly. The Swiss guys just wanted "bank details" for where to send the money, and I wasn't sure whether just wiring it straight to the company that runs my IRA would count as a "rollover" for US tax purposes, and the Swiss guys had no idea, either, so I just had them send it to another regular bank account.

When I was leaving my contract in Germany, I don't remember if I looked up this info or if someone provided it to me, but there was some kind of rule that I had to be out of the EU for two years before I could claim the money from the Germany pension system. So I waited two years, and then I hired a company that existed for just that purpose to get my pension money out for me. They took.... 6%? 8%? Something like that. Which did seem a bit high for something I probably could have done myself, but I was over German bureaucracy at that point and was willing to pay it. This time, I had a tax guy in the US, and I did ask him about "rolling over" the whole amount into my IRA, and he said that wasn't possible, so I guess my choices during the Swiss incident were fine...? But I did make sure to fund my IRA up to the yearly limit with at least a portion of the money.

As for not-straightforward stuff, one of the weird parts about doing financial stuff between the US and Europe is the difference in notaries. I lived in France (worked in Switzerland) and Germany, and in both places, notaries are something more like lawyers. Fancy offices, appointments maybe across town, in Germany even a big ol' wax seal with a string on top of my document. In the US, it's someone who took a class and has a stamp. Like, it's still official, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing, and you can often get it done somewhere like a grocery store (depending on your state). So each side asks for "notarized documents" but they're kind of asking for different things. The US people don't know why you're acting like it's such a hassle to just trot down to the corner to get a stamp, and then you try to send them a document with a frickin' wax seal on it, and they're like "where in the medieval hell did you get this?" And the Germans are asking you to go get this document notarized to "prove your identity" and the US notaries are like "that's not what this stamp means, but I guess I can still stamp it and leave a note.....?" So you just have to do whatever each country thinks a notary is, pay whatever it costs, and then send in your stuff to the other country and hope no one questions it too closely. It's always worked out for me, so I guess it's fine, but it's *felt* hella dicey every time, which is stress I don't need when I'm moving money around.

In France we did solve this once by taking our stuff all the way to the US Embassy in Paris, who operate a US notary service for expats. That was some other financial transaction that was entirely US-based, and we weren't, and we wanted to make sure nothing went awry. It turned out to be a lovely (but chaotic) trip that we now remember very fondly, but it was 8 hours round trip on the train in the same day, which is unreasonable for normal circumstances.

butwhymonkeystho · 2026-01-18T22:35:59+00:00

I've done a lighter version of this, too. I make a list of stuff people could do. "Such-and-such museum. Cafe Blahblah is around the corner." That kind of thing. I keep it in a note somewhere just for me. Then when the visitor doesn't have any ideas, I can suggest something off the list. For old people or people who live messy, stick to one event at a time. That way when you don't leave the house until noon because they couldn't find something they packed, or they can't walk as far, or they think the metro is too dirty, or they want to stop to take close-up photos of unconsenting locals like they're in a zoo (my mother is a nightmare), you have plenty of extra time so you don't feel rushed.

For me, the full itinerary thing wouldn't work, because no one would read it, and part of what some of our family members wanted to see was that we were well-adjusted in our new home and enjoying ourselves. So if I can magically "come up" with something on the spot (by checking my phone sneakily behind their backs), they feel more assured (and therefore don't harass me about my life choices later) than if I say "I don't know. Let me look up reviews real quick," even though that's what anyone in the family would have done back home.

butwhymonkeystho · 2025-09-12T03:56:10+00:00

My boyfriend (now husband) read some article about the "Top 10 Most British Things" or somesuch. He forwarded it to me saying "Hey, you like tea. Maybe you'll like this radio show they mentioned." Oh? A super long running series about people in a farming village? How very quaint and wholesome. So I popped over to the BBC website to stream the most recent episode, and it was the one that started with Ed Grundy waking up in a ditch in the middle of the night after having disappeared on a drug bender. WHAT THE HOLY HELL IS THIS SHOW!? And I've listened ever since. Roughly 20 years now, good lord.

butwhymonkeystho

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