couples finance Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Update: Do I Have a Right To Know About My Partner’s Finances?

October 4, 2023October 3, 2023 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") Leave a comment

Friends, I come to you today breathless with excitement. Remember Anonymous Rex, the bitchling who wrote to us about their secretive significant other? The one whose partner was all like “I can know about your finances, but you can’t know about mine“? The one whose partner was most likely hiding something sketchy from Anonymous Rex, according to moi?

They wrote back.

And oh baby is it juicy:

Hey Bitches,
Anon with the cagey significant other here. Turns out they were alarmingly deep in debt, were not honest about how much they were working, and more. They were very upset about having to mention anything financial, and were pissed that I thought I had a right to know their personal matters.
So, I broke up with them. Not just because of the finance stuff, though it was definitely the straw that broke the camel’s back. And I feel freer and happier than I have in years. Which probably sounds really heartless, because you’re supposed to be all torn up about ending relationships, especially ones that are as serious as that one was, but… it’s true. I don’t know what it says about the relationship if when it ends, all you feel is overwhelming relief, but… that’s how I felt.
Thank you so much for your response to my question. It’s good to know that it isn’t crazy or invasive or unreasonable to want to know a significant other’s financial situation/how they handle their finances. I was beginning to think it was. I’ll keep that “personal finance is personal—not private” mantra in my head, going forward.
-Anonymous Rex again

No but in all seriousness it sucks to be vindicated in this way. The full-body orgasm I receive from being right about something is somewhat dampened by being right about bad shit happening.

Ask the Bitches: Do I Have a Right To Know the Private Details of My Partner’s Finances?

September 14, 2023October 3, 2023 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 5 Comments

When we started Bitches Get Riches, we thought we’d be writing mostly about paying off student loans and building credit scores. And to be fair, we’ve done a lot of that! But more and more we find ourselves coming for Dear Prudence’s job. Because it turns out handling finances within a romantic relationship is hella complicated! And sometimes we get a question about financial transparency among partners that does us a concern.

Like this one:

Hey bitches! I know personal finance is personal, but if your significant other is being cagey about their finances even after you’ve been together for years and want to move in together/get married, is this a red flag? I don’t expect them to disclose all their spending habits or whatever, because yeah, personal finance is personal. But I feel like it’s reasonable to want to know what their income is and how much debt they have, especially if they know those things about you and you’re planning on a life together. Those things affect the rent you can afford and all sorts of stuff. But they act like I’m unreasonable and invasive for wanting to know, which makes me wary.
Anonymous Rex

Lack of financial transparency... scares me.

You’re right to be wary. And you’re definitely not being unreasonable. Let’s unpack this suitcase of red flags.

How To Get Married: Bureaucracy, Finances, and Legal Paperwork To Do Before “I Do”

June 1, 2021September 9, 2021 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 17 Comments

Every once in a while we Bitches are asked marriage or relationship questions. And it amuses me to no end that we are seen as ADULTS with STABLE MARRIAGES and HEALTHY LIFESTYLES. Because we live in keen awareness that we’re floating slowly down a river of Parmesan cheese straight into the yawning mouth of the Ninth Gate of Death, just like everybody else.

Not that’s it’s necessarily wrong! My marriage with Bear just feels like such a humble, natural thing. How could it possibly be instructional to others? He’s currently listening to a podcast in the shower while I do blog stuff from the couch and I love him so stupidly much.

Yet our loving relationship has much more to do with why we got married than how. Being in love and wanting to spend your life with someone is, sadly, not the only requirement for getting married (common law marriages notwithstanding).

So today I want to talk about the logistics of marriage: the paperwork, the bureaucracy, and the legal gauntlet you must run to get hitched.

In this era of modern romance, it’s pretty common for people to move in together before getting married, even to combine finances or buy property together. We did! That gradual combining of lives makes things pretty painless. But let’s say you’re doing it all at once around the time of the wedding! With that in mind, here’s a list of the steps you need to take to get married… punctuated with gifs from the wedding of John Legend’s dogs.

This is the slippery slope: dogs getting married.

When Money is the Weapon: Understanding Intimate Partner Financial Abuse

September 17, 2018July 1, 2024 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 14 Comments

Content warning: abuse.

If you are experienced domestic abuse of any kind, we strongly urge you to reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “START” to 88788 in the United States.

Our culture’s view of domestic abuse lacks imagination.

A quick Google image search for the term shows image after image in the same composition: sad, broken-looking women with bruised faces and smeared mascara. There’s often a menacing figure looming somewhere in the foreground or background. A hand—either her own, or the abuser’s—covers their mouths, preventing them from speaking.

These images are certainly evocative. They’ve been burned into our cultural brain by many years of prevention campaigns.

And they work. Maybe not exactly how they’re meant to, but they certainly influence behavior. I’ve injured my face a few times—a split lip from accidentally head-butting the dog, a black eye from a too-quick turn near my own woodworking project. Every time that’s happened, I’ve felt the concern of acquaintances and strangers in full force. There’s skepticism in their eyes when I explain about the dog or the two-by-four. I can feel them watching me for other signs. It’s both annoying and affirming. The world is full of people with good intentions, and it’s nice to remember that.

But I don’t know how helpful these kinds of images are. There are a lot of people who are in abusive relationships and genuinely don’t know it. When there’s such a codified cultural idea of what an abuse victim looks like and you don’t look like her, it makes it easier to silence your own suspicions that there’s something very wrong in your relationship.

It’s hard to look at a staged photo of a cringing, weeping, blood-splattered woman and say “I think I deserve access to the resources set aside for her.”

There’s a huge spectrum of abusive behaviors and relationships that isn’t captured in this simplistic picture. Abusive relationships aren’t an exclusive plague upon heterosexual relationships. Victims aren’t always women. Abusers aren’t always violent, and the damage often doesn’t leave a mark. And we’re going to talk about one of the most prevalent kinds of abuse today: financial abuse.