Money Secrets That Can Destroy Your Relationship

Money can destroy a relationship – everyone knows this much.  Unfortunately, there are habits that people foster that tend to make this happen more than it really needs to.  They include some classic examples of how couples wreck their relationships, as well as some that might surprise you.

Hiding Purchases

Younger women and middle age men are the big culprits where this is concerned.  Younger women, from their late twenties to early thirties, will tend to hide small purchases from their partner.  Men who are in their mid-forties and early fifties are more likely to hide large purchases from their spouse, resulting in clichés such as the surprise red sports car showing up in the driveway.

Hiding Cash

Women in their early 30’s are the most likely demographic to actually hide cash.  The reasons may vary but, overall, having a buffer amount is most often the likely reason women squirrel a bit away.

Lying about Debt

Women are more likely to do this than men, but both sexes do it.  This can include lying about how much is owed on revolving accounts, car loans, student loans and so forth.  As is the case with most lying, the reason is likely embarrassment, but it can cause big problems if a couple decides to get married and merge their finances.

Lying about Finances

Women around middle age and younger men are more likely to lie about how much money they actually have.  This can include lying about savings, earnings from work and other factors, as well as their debt to savings ratio.

Bank Accounts

Only 5 percent of people in relationships actually keep a secret bank account.

Hiding Bills

Women from their late thirties to mid-forties are most likely to lie about their bills.  As many as 20 percent of women in this age group fudge the facts where it comes to how much money they owe on any given month.

Exaggerating Income

The gender gap closes up in this category.  About 4 percent of each gender lies about how much money they make.  Younger people seem to want to make the best impression, with people up to age 35 seeming to lie about this part of their financial lives the most.

These numbers, from the National Endowment of Financial Education, revealed, in addition to the above, that one out of every three couples had one member that had lied to their partner about finances.

Effects on Separation and Divorce

Most of the time, this leads to at least an argument, but a good percentage of people also ended up separating their finances as a result of the lies.

While some people are obviously far more egregious in their lies than others, it seems that lying about money is a huge problem for people in relationships.  The only differences seem to revolve around the amount of money that they’re lying about and why. Given that combining finances, according to the same report, is done by over half of all Americans, it makes sense to make sure that everything is on the up and up where sharing information is concerned.