Why The Financial Stereotypes About Marriage?

As someone who has been married for 40+ years and as someone who started marriage struggling to make ends meet, you will not find me making assumptions about the financial status of any couple - just married or long standing.

I can see the Canada/USA combination adds an extra twist to your relationship. I wish you all the best. Love each other and hang in there. It is do-able.

Married or not no one has an obligation to anyone to help them finacially yes you might do if you can because I dont know ANYONE who would sit back and watch a loved one struggle but sometimes keeping finaces seperated can be a good thing.

Me and my partner are getting married in 6 months time I dont think I have faced any stereotypical views as yet but people have plenty of time i suppose mostly the only comments we get are "about bloody time" which is generally even our own view seeing as weve been together 8 years have two children a home etc but really its just the natural progression of our relationship and how we have wanted things to work.

hi danishcanadian, the situation here is not traditional either, really, lol. I am the main breadwinner as my husband is disabled. I pay the rent and stash away money for bad days from my income and hubby pays for phone, insurances and gas.

He has started working in a special place for disabled people in June this year where you dont have to deal with stress. He likes it and it brings a little extra into his checking account. I dont want him to contribute to our expenses with that but asked him to please be careful and save up a bit till end of the year so then he has a well stuffed checking account for emergencies. And for next year I asked him to please then pay for the various car expenses himself like the bi yearly car checkup I have paid for up to now. Of course he agreed to that arrangement, knowing if someone else would be in my place he would be asked for a little more contribution here and there. I just want him to have a well equipped checking account I wont have to worry about and if he wants to, later, he can also put some into our joint savings account if he feels he should do so.

I think there are in general a lot of stereotypes about marriage. I know a lot of couples who keep separate finances but there are also a lot of couples who have joint finances.

I understand where you are coming from. I am Canadian as well and the people who decide whether you get disability here or not are very difficult to work with. Most people will agree that to manage here you need to have two incomes. My wife has osteoarthritis in her upper back and she is unable to work. If she were single she could get disability. Because she is married and has children she cannot. We live on a very meager income. I have a friend who had to go to court to get it because his wife is severely disabled for the same reason. Even with the help of a lawyer it took them a year to cut through the red tape and start getting a disability for her. He earns a little bit more than myself but his wife is wheelchair bound and can barely dress or wash herself. How disabled does one have to be?

My situation is not the same as yours but kind of on that idea. I'm a very independent person. I don't need a man to support me and likewise I don't want to support any man. When I was living with my ex we each had certain household expenses that we were responsible for. The rest of our earnings were for our personal bills separate from each other. We did not share the same bank account or anything.

This is the thing that always gets me, is how come the outside world that is still single thinks that because there are 2 people married and both are working they are always doing Good financially and never have anything financial come in their way to make things hard. And if they are struggling people wonder how, and is there something they are doing wrong, and should be doing differently. For me, this is one of my Pet peeves for sure, because just because you are married it does not protect you from Financial setbacks for sure.

But what I have found out in the almost 11 yrs. of marriage now, is that when you continue to learn to work together, even if things have to be more seperate for other Financial reasons is that things do get better and everything is OK. Even when there are financial setbacks of some sort if you just learn to work them out together, and if you believe in Prayer, pray about them, in the end everything seems to always turn out alright. Wishing you the Best.