When memoirist Belle Burden, author of Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, told Drew Barrymore in April that no woman should ever give up complete control of her finances, I felt a lump in my throat.
Sure, after reading her book, I was pretty sure that worrying about paying the electric bill or putting food on the table wasn’t something Burden had to deal with. (A recent New Yorker report showed that her inherited assets at the time of her divorce were well into the millions.) Still, her words hit like a warning shot heard across the country—and they reminded me of a key lesson my father drilled into my sister and me from an early age.
When I was a little girl, my dad would always preach about the importance of independence—following your dreams, finding your own path, and never relying on a man, no matter what.
I grew up in the 1980s, when it wasn’t unusual to see households where only the man worked. And even if his advice painted a pretty grim picture of men in general, I eventually understood what he meant.
Over time, I watched the women in my family—all “traditional” wives from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, long before #tradwives became a trendy Instagram thing—face the consequences of depending on their husbands financially. They always ended up much worse off than the men. My dad’s own mother was tricked by her husband into signing a will she didn’t understand. According to that will, if he died first, she’d be left with nothing—not even the home they shared. Every penny was going to his multimillionaire adult children from a previous marriage.
My grandmother only had a middle-school education. There was no way she could have known what she was signing away, and her husband—and, I assume, his lawyer—knew that. So it was a blessing that she happened to die first.
My grandmother’s story—like Burden’s—fits a well-known pattern. According to the University of Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center, elderly divorced women are five times more likely to live below the poverty line than elderly married women, and one-third more likely than widows. Other research shows that a man’s risk of falling into poverty after divorce actually goes down, while a woman’s goes up—especially if she has children.
My mother was no exception. I still remember how, after she and my father separated, she scrambled to find full-time work (until then, her income was just “supplemental,” with part-time jobs after my sister and I started school) and racked up credit card debt just to buy me pants that fit. My parents lived paycheck to paycheck before they split; afterward, our working-class family suddenly had two sets of bills to pay, from rent to utilities. And I know my mother worked hard to hide the worst financial details from her kids.
Because of what I saw happen to the women around me, by the time I married my husband at 39, I had a nest egg and a major decision in place: We would keep most of our finances separate.
Five years before I said “I do,” I graduated with an advanced degree and a net worth of negative sixty thousand dollars. Over the next six years, I paid off my debt and opened my first retirement account. My sister and I are the first women in our family who can build generational wealth. Merging my finances with someone else’s, to me, would erase all the progress I made toward financial independence. That wasn’t just a sickening thought—it was a dealbreaker.
My husband Matt has always been the higher earner, and as a professional writer and children’s author, my own income is all over the place—some months I don’t have any money coming in at all. Because of that, he covers most of our living expenses.I cover our everyday expenses, while I save and invest what I earn into our emergency fund and retirement accounts. (We don’t have kids, so daycare and child-related costs aren’t an issue.) We’re each other’s beneficiaries, but we keep all our accounts separate, except for a shared credit card we use for household needs and entertainment. It’s always been important to both of us that we have our own safety nets in case the worst happens.
But even though my husband and I have always agreed on money and how to support each other, I still got pushback from my family, as if I was doing something wrong. When I told my elderly aunt about our separate finances, she said, “You’re either all in or all out.” On the other hand, I don’t know anyone who bothered my husband about giving me access to his bank accounts.
Matt and I love each other, but we come from very different backgrounds. In his world, women inherit and pass down money with a focus on taking care of the next generation. He hasn’t seen what I’ve seen, and I’m glad for him. But I didn’t build my life into what it is just to give it away.
In the end, Belle Burden’s message is simple: Women should fall in love with their financial independence just as much as they do with the men they’re giving their hearts to—and these are two completely separate things. Until we live in a very different world, no one will care about a woman’s financial stability as much as she does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the topic My husband and I keep our finances separateand I wouldnt have it any other way
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What does it mean to keep finances separate in a marriage
It means each spouse maintains their own personal bank accounts credit cards and investments You dont have a joint checking or savings account and you each manage your own money independently
2 Isnt that the same as being roommates
No Its about financial independence not emotional distance You still share a life home and goalsyou just manage the money part individually Many couples with separate finances still split shared bills fairly
3 How do you pay for shared expenses like rent or groceries
Common methods include using a joint account just for bills taking turns paying different bills or using an app like Splitwise to track who owes what
4 What if one person earns a lot more than the other
Couples often split expenses proportionally to income Others keep everything separate but agree on who covers what based on ability without merging accounts
5 Doesnt this mean you dont trust each other
Not at all For many its about autonomy avoiding arguments over spending and respecting each others financial habits Trust can actually be stronger when you dont have to monitor each others purchases
IntermediateLevel Questions
6 How do you save for longterm goals like retirement or a house
Each person saves individually into their own retirement and investment accounts For a shared goal like a house you might open a joint savings account just for that purpose or agree on a target amount each will contribute
7 What happens if one person loses their job
Most couples with separate finances still support each other during emergencies Its common to have a verbal or written agreement for example the working spouse covers all bills temporarily or the unemployed spouse uses their savings while the other picks up extra costs
8 How do you handle big purchases like a car or vacation
You decide together if its a joint purchase and split the cost or if its a personal purchase eg a