Salary Disclosure

[cornetto 0]

it's abt egos. men always have bigger egos.

[Mousehunt 0]

True about "men always have bigger egos." I am a man but having bigger ego will not solve anything.

My wife is a housewife and though I am bringing the bacon back, I do not demand her to be submissive. I still let her let her make some financial decision using my or "our" money.

I remembered once she sign up a S$1800 slimming package without even consulting me!! Though I was mad at first, but on second thoughts, she does this because of me.

So it is good to declare each salary even if the women is earning more. As someone has pointed out, the goal is to improve the life of the family and not to any individual.

[chew@PPLe 0]

it's abt egos. men always have bigger egos.

So if someone ask you who's earning more, would you be paiseh to say you?

[TYM 0]

So if someone ask you who's earning more, would you be paiseh to say you?

I think that is quite a rude/insensitive que to ask.

[chew@PPLe 0]

I get asked that all the time. !! And someone also asked if I'm willing to marry someone who earns less than me.

Edited May 29, 2007 by chew@PPLe

[kon 0]

but i tot husband/wife should be honest all the time? if such things are kept away now, what if they find out later? wouldn't it be the same? so honesty is the best policy

[Spikey 0]

there is an article on this in today's Straits Time - go have a read

[korea 0]

So if someone ask you who's earning more, would you be paiseh to say you?

i guess there's nothing to be paiseh about it lor.

imagine another scenario, if a man is to marry to a very rich woman (her family is very wealthy) then how?? is it worst than a woman earns more than a man scenario?? after all, it's all about the word LOVE then you all get marry so what for bother what others comment.

[Homeowner 1]

I think honesty is the best policy between husbands and wives but for all others, unless they are very, very close and asking for a good reason, I'll just tell them very frankly that it is really none of their business!

[cornetto 0]

What's yours is mine, what's mine is all mine?

By Andy Ho, Senior Writer

May 30, 2007

The Straits Times

THE male sole breadwinner model is now a minority in Singapore, with more women, including married ones, in the workforce. But has this translated into more egalitarian ways in which couples handle their household income?

A mid-decade mini census called the General Household Survey in 2005 showed that dual-career couples made up 43.8 per cent of all married couples in Singapore, up from 40.9 per cent in 2000.

In 2005, about 35 per cent of such dual-career couples saw the wife accounting for half or more of the total pot, up from 31 per cent in 2000. This was especially true for better educated couples in their mid-20s to mid-40s.

In 2005, husbands were the sole breadwinners in just 35.7 per cent of couples, down from 40.2 per cent five years earlier. (Only the wife was working in 5.5 per cent in 2005, compared with 4.7 per cent in 2000.)

Generally speaking then, with more dual-earner families and a partial decline in tandem of the traditional male breadwinner model, women are contributing on a more equal basis to couples' joint income. Such figures do not shock but, like policymakers and economists elsewhere, the Department of Statistics census assumes that members of a household share essentially the same lifestyle.

So it did not inquire into what happens to the money as it enters the household, the different ways in which couples organise and manage the fund and how unequal access to money for discretionary spending may have an impact on an individual spouse's well-being.

It would shed more light if it had looked, in addition, into how couples view money subjectively, how autonomous their discretionary spending might be, the types of bank accounts they have, who handles money on a day-to-day basis, who pays the bills, who does the shopping, and so on.

Many of us are afflicted with similar blind spots. My wife and I, for example, were (naively) shocked when we read recent reports in The Sunday Times of couples who kept their finances separate. We felt that since we were a joint item in everything else in life, why should money be any different?

My married sibling was equally amazed when we asked who paid their individual credit card bills. She could never imagine how a couple would view these as joint payments: 'What he earns is his - as long as we're covering the bills between us. It's the same with me. I work hard, it's my money, so if I want to go out and buy a new pair of shoes, I'll do so without asking anyone for permission.'

There was also a desire for financial privacy: 'I don't want him to know everything about how I spend my money - just like he doesn't too.'

They had apparently kept separate bank accounts from way back and thought it was perfectly natural to do so, exactly the way my wife and I felt about our joint accounts, which we have had from the very beginning.

We then found out from church friends that, as The Sunday Times had reported, there are also partial pooling arrangements in which couples have a joint account for household expenses - especially for buying or renting a property - but also keep a significant proportion of their income independently. They contribute roughly equally - or proportionally if there is a great disparity in income - towards the joint expenses.

One husband told us that if he bought anything for joint use from his own money, he paid himself back from the joint account. A wife said she was not averse to reminding her husband to reimburse her if she had lent him some money while the husband said he had no problems with being reminded to pay her back even if it were just a fiver. (Shocking!)

While some couples engaged in detailed accounting, others were content with just roughly balancing their spending over time. Yet others saw boundaries between joint and separate money as blurred, saying that as long as the expenses were paid, it was not very important who did the paying. But this seems to be more the case if the wife is earning more.

Still, some couples treat their money more collectively than their separate bank accounts would imply. For example, some directly access each other's separate accounts through Internet banking and debit cards.

Generally, those who do not pool their money say it is all about equality and independence. Having a sense of autonomy and control as well as avoiding a sense of dependency and rejecting the tradition of husbands controlling the purse strings seem important to helping them maintain their individual identities.

Many say that although the money they earn is theirs, they also see it as being there for their spouses to use. Although most do not ask their spouses for permission, they would discuss sizeable discretionary spending with each other to varying degrees.

But no couple linked separate finances to the quality or happiness of their relationship. Yet the person with overall control of money can decide how much is to be allocated, and for what purpose, and may be able to veto his or her spouse's leisure spending, say. Where both incomes go into one pot, both spouses (in theory) share management and control. With equal contribution to a partial pool, however, the spouse who earns less will be left with less money for discretionary spending.

This means that gender inequalities generated in the labour market are insinuated into households as well. That is, since men generally still earn more than women - and wives are more likely to use their own money on extra food and family items - the partial pool may not be, in practice, more egalitarian than the old male breadwinner model.

It gets worse if women were to leave the workforce to provide child care or elder care. For even those who intend to return to their careers later, there will be a period when they are not contributing financially to the pool, so it would be a period of dependency.

Of course, even when couples pool all their money, the spouse who earns less may feel he or she has less of a right to decide on spending and so reduce his or her personal spending. Thus what meanings individuals ascribe to the money in their various accounts - perceived ownership of money and other assets - may be more important than the types of accounts they have.

Is there any direct correlation between such matters and marital bliss? Conventional wisdom suggests that unions of equals make for the best marriages, but a 2006 study of 5,000 couples by University of Virginia sociologists showed that, even in the United States, the single most important factor that determines whether wives are happy is how emotionally engaged their husbands are.

Not money and its control, not the division of household chores or, indeed, any other measure of how egalitarian a marriage is or is not. So boys, you can breathe easy now.

andyho@sph.com.sg

[Homeowner 1]

Interesting.

[gothique 0]

Cornetto, that is a really good and insightful article!

Personally for me and Hubby there is nothign private. we share our financial information 100% as we trust each other with our very lives. and i think that should be the way...

[chew@PPLe 0]

Personally for me and Hubby there is nothign private. we share our financial information 100% as we trust each other with our very lives. and i think that should be the way...

Hmm.. funny now that I think of it, a lot of issues that we've discussed recently under Marriage Life & Retirement has a lot to do with TRUST

[raincole 0]

TRUST has to be there in marriage... so naturally a lot of things will evolve around TRUST.

[scoria76 0]

good article...

anyway, hubby knew how much I earn. So now he always work hard to overcome mine. Though, I told him it is ok that I earn more.

But somehow, since we gotten married, it is always me shortage of $$.. He can give me, my parents & his parents allowances & yet he has savings somemore..

hehe me..always end of the month, drowing.. hehe..