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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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When I was like in fifth grade, I used to carpool with a neighbor. And I remember once her mom pulled into a gas station and then sprinted into the convenience store. And she came back with a bunch of snacks, bag of chips, maybe some juice. And she handed some of it to us in the back seat. And then she looked at her daughter and whispered, we don't need to tell dad about this.
It was a small thing, but I think when you're a kid, you can register when something feels off, even if you don't really know why. Kind of like hearing a note that's out of tune. Your ear catches it, even if you know nothing about music.
Who knows what was behind that comment, but the story I tell myself about it is that my friend's mom probably didn't want to get into an argument about it with her husband. Maybe he's a little stricter when it comes to spending money. Maybe it was just easier to keep it a secret. I'm Rima Grace and welcome to This is Uncomfortable, a show from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.
We are now a weekly podcast, which gives us a chance this February to spend some real time on a topic that comes up over and over in my conversations with people, money and love. It can be hard sometimes figuring out what's yours, what's shared, what we owe each other. So this week we're asking, is it ever okay to keep financial secrets when you're in a relationship?
Because sometimes little privacy starts to look a lot like a secret. And secrets, especially the money kind, have a way of becoming problems. There's this park that I often go to by my house, and one afternoon I walked up there with my recorder and just asked people what they thought. Many of them were hanging out on this large patch of green grass, reading or chatting with friends.
Felt a little bad bombarding strangers with intimate financial questions at 2 p.m. on a Thursday. But surprisingly, everyone I approached was down to talk about this, and they had some pretty strong opinions. Do you think it's ever okay to keep a financial secret from a partner?
No.
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Chapter 2: Is it ever okay to keep financial secrets in a relationship?
They're not going to rely on your word. They're going to say, I want to see what you told the government you earned.
Wait, so then during the discovery process do all these financial secrets come to the surface?
Yes, and it goes both ways. Sometimes people know all the financials about their whole family. Some people have been kept in the dark, and we represent the typical wife whose husband is rich and says, here, just sign this tax return. And once a year, they glimpse at it before he yanks it out of her hand and doesn't know what she signed.
But that's when it comes up, is when the spouses start to exchange information I would trust a woman's intuition more than I trust a private investigator. If my client says, I think he's got more money than he's letting on, that makes me look a little harder, dig a little deeper. And then the ultimate fail safe is in big cases, big dollar cases, we almost always hire forensic accountants.
Not a CPA who files tax returns, but a CPA who looks at all the documents and says, wow, there's a lot of smoke here. I don't know how he or she is spending that much. There must be another source of income or another asset or another bank account. And they help us figure out where there is money hidden.
Whoa. So they're like a kind of detective. Yeah. And then what are some of the most common things that come about during that process?
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Chapter 3: What do people on the streets of Portland think about money secrets?
Like what are the financial lies that just show up over and over again?
All sorts of things. The fun ones are when you see that the husband in his accounting, it shows that he paid for two tennis bracelets, for instance. And the wife says, you only gave me one tennis bracelet. It must be a mistake. He said, oh, well, he got his girlfriend one and he got his wife one because he felt guilty.
So we see things like that, or we see money that's given to relatives that, why did the bank account go from 800,000 to 400,000? Oh, it was a loan to my brother. Really? So we see all sorts of stuff.
Wow. Why do you think people, this is maybe a silly question, but why do you think people lie?
Why do you think people breathe?
You're like, yes, that is a silly question. But do you think there are cases where people are hiding the money and they actually don't think it's a big deal? Like they're surprised by their partner's reaction?
Yeah, I think some people have, you know, especially people who get married after they're successful, after they've lived a while in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or a second or third marriage, and they just say, this is mine, it's my business. And sometimes there's a prenuptial agreement that says that's okay.
You know, we agree, you've already established your life and what you have, and I've established mine, let's be together. But my money is staying mine, and your money is staying yours. But even then, you still have to let them know what they're giving up, what rights they're giving up. So...
You know, people still, some people are very uncomfortable with even their spouse knowing what they earn or how much they make or how little they make.
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Chapter 4: How can financial secrecy impact relationships?
So it's one of the most difficult things to compromise on or accept that your partner spends in a different way. Yeah. Every now and then, usually there's some sort of like aspect to it with financial secrecy, but like the bigger issue around it is like, why do you feel the need to keep this a secret from your partner?
Yeah. Can you give me an example? I don't know how much you can actually share, but what are some of the common things that come up and then what do you discover beneath that?
I can't tell you specific ones, but I can tell you ones that I'm like, give me their names.
Give me. Yeah. You can be general. Yeah.
I mean, there's like typical ones, I guess. Like, I don't want you to know about all of my Amazon purchases. Right.
That feels very popular.
Yeah.
I can imagine that's common.
Yeah, and we make, you know, a lot of little, whatever, online shopping purchases. And it's kind of like, what, you want me to tell you every single purchase I make? But do you also want me to tell you every single thought that I have in my head? That is ridiculous.
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Chapter 5: What role do financial secrets play in divorce cases?
That's oversharing. And I need some sort of form of like privacy and independence. But then if you go all the way over to like, well, we've been married, we just got married, and I didn't tell you about my $250,000 in debt or my gambling addiction. Okay. Those are two very different things. So I spend a lot of time talking to couples about how are you going to split up money?
Are you going to have a shared bank account and separate bank accounts? And that takes a lot of negotiating. But typically, I think most people want some form of privacy. And a lot of it comes from like, I don't want to be judged by my partner. Just like I want to be able to like purchase whatever I want to purchase on Amazon.
What do you think about that? Like when someone says that in a couple session, I guess you don't really take sides, right? But like, is there a part of you that is like, yeah, you should be able to purchase whatever you want to purchase? Or how do you how do you navigate that?
Yeah. I mean, professionally, I'm not allowed to take sides. The side that I'm taking is the side of the relationship is what I say.
That must be so hard, by the way. I feel like anyway, that's a whole other conversation. Okay.
That can be. How do I personally feel? I think it's totally fine. As long as you're like staying within your means and it's not hurting anybody and you're having fun with the little purchases, then go wild. That's great.
I'm curious, are there usually, do you find that there are deeper issues in the relationship if they're talking about money? Like, are there other threads of mistrust that have come up in conversations?
Yeah. That's happened a number of times where they find out about some bank account that has some money stashed away and they're like, well, what does this mean? You don't trust me. You don't feel safe with me. And well, possibly. And now this is like a really good thing for all of us to talk about. And it might not be your fault or it actually could be your fault.
What are you doing to contribute to the feeling of not being safe in this relationship? Why does she feel like she needs to have a separate bank account so that she knows that she can leave whenever she wants?
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