Carol writes in: My husband is a gambling addict. He also drinks excessively. The problem is that he takes money to feed both of these addictions right out of our checking account. He’ll go for weeks and weeks without gambling or drinking, then he’ll have a rough day at work, call me on the cell

One of the most common themes I see in questions I receive from readers is an uncomfortable sense of what financial roles are in a relationship. A person lives with someone/is engaged to someone/is married to someone and is unsure about how to handle their partner’s debt/spending/shared purchases. That sentence covers the core of a

Last week, I wrote an article discussing reasons why the idea that men shouldn’t get married for financial reasons was false. In the article, I pointed out several purely financial reasons for men to get married, reasons that applied very well to women as well. Many people responded with the great point that many of

I get asked this question all the time, and I think it’s one that’s got enough cultural pressure behind it that it’s worth discussing. From a purely financial standpoint, why should a man get married? Let’s look at the reasons behind this question first. The argument against marriage for men is pretty straightforward. The most

Change in another person has to come from within them, not from within you. One of the most regular themes in emails I get from readers is a desire to somehow change the nature of the person they’re married to. “My husband is uninterested in our finances and just wants to buy more gadgets.” “My

As I’ve said many times on here, my wife and I have a small handful of major goals that we share going forward in our lives. We both want to eventually live in the country with some wooded area and a small barn. We both want to focus on raising our children as well as

Archie writes in: In our marriage, my wife and I have agreed not to open financial statements addressed to each other. We supposedly did this so that we would be able to hide things like gift purchases from each other. Whenever we talked about our finances, we just talked about balances on accounts and didn’t

Charlene writes in: I’m getting married in March. My future husband and I are talking about when and how to merge our finances and we’ve had some difficulty coming up with a plan. What did you and your wife do? What would you suggest for other couples on the cusp of marriage? First of all,

Whenever I mention that I’m self-employed and work from home while my wife works outside of the home, I usually receive a question or two from readers who are thinking about a similar arrangement. They want to know about how we balance things. How do you balance household chores? How do you balance parenting chores?

Quite often on The Simple Dollar, I’ll discuss some aspect of my personal finance life and I’ll say that “I” did this or that “I” did that. Well, for every mention of the word “I,” my wife is there in the background, doing something little to make sure it all happens. She’ll cook a great

This is the final entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships;, engagements;, weddings, and honeymoons. You’re now a married couple, settling into a long life together. Now what? It’s easy to fall into routines in

This is the third entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships;, engagements;, honeymoons, and marriages. Weddings are a traditional sinkhole of a new couple’s money. In fact, I’ve actually written about it before, denoting eighteen

This is the second entry in a five part series this week on the stages of a relationship and how you can make financially sound choices throughout. Other entries include courtships, weddings, honeymoons, and marriages. At some point in a relationship, it becomes clear that the people involved are interested in tying their lives together.

From my perspective, once you enter into the realm of marriage, building and maintaining a successful marriage is actually a big part of personal and financial success. A solid marriage not only results in people sharing resources together, but a marriage also provides a lot of emotional support, cheerleading, and encouragement to succeed. In the

Let’s face it: talking about money can be very, very difficult. I’m speaking from experience here: when my wife and I first started addressing our financial situation, it was extremely challenging to talk about money. We’d look at our financial state, see that we weren’t where we wanted to be, and would seek someone or

On our first wedding anniversary, I didn’t get my wife a gift. Quite frankly, I considered the idea, but shelved it because it didn’t seem like a major situation. I believed that sometimes it’s nice to get a gift for a “major” anniversary (one ending in a 5 or a 0), but for other anniversaries,

“Angela” writes in: What advice do you have for a frugal wedding? We’re getting married in the fall of 2010. Since we are both in our early twenties and don’t have a lot to spend we were hoping to keep our wedding as small as possible. We were thinking no more than six to eight

After six years of dating followed by five years of marriage, my wife and I finally decided to merge our finances together into the same accounts. We’re going to use a local bank for teller purposes and paper checks, and stay with ING Direct for much of our checking and savings purposes. Why did this

Each Friday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book of interest. Financial infidelity – in other words, the situation in which dishonesty creeps into a relationship due to money – is probably the most common source of emails that I receive. I’ve heard some incredibly devastating tales of woe – suddenly discovered five-figure credit