Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!ora!daemon
From: king@piano.reasoning.com
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: wages for housework
Message-ID: <1991Jan5.044805.19306@ora.com>
Date: 2 Jan 91 15:32:00 GMT
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 43
Approved: ambar@ora.com


  My husband and I DO "throw all money into a single account, have one
  shared credit card, etc.".  We are a partnership, a team and it works
  so well for us that I can't imagine doing it any other way.  I don't
  think I would feel that we had a very close relationship if we had to
  divide the money and keep seperate finances.  We trust each other and
  neither of us would feel like having separate finances was intimate or
  trusting.  This is the person I am going to be making wild passionate
  love with when I am 90 for god's sake!  I am sorry that not everyone
  feels that much closeness, or "oneness" and trust with their
  husband/wife.  It helps that we are always looking out for the other's
  best interests and therefor would never be greedy or selfish with the
  money, or do something that was unfair to the other.

I do believe this generally, when the issues are really money, but
relatively small amounts of money can be used to exert control, and i
would therefore advise couples thinking of merging the main account,
as we do, reserve about a percent or two for each player to their
exclusive control.  An anecdote from me and my sister will help
explain what i mean.

One morning my sister woke up, saw an ad for equestrian lessons, said
"that looks like fun", and decided to go for it.  Her husband objected
strenuously, and brought up the dollars as a reason, completely
bogusly -- she was proposing to spend perhaps three tenths of one
percent of their rather healthy income stream.  His real problem was
that he didn't want her home late once a week, but he used the money
as an excuse.  This stopped them from getting to the real issues for a
long time.  So they had several instances of the wrong fight before
they had the right fight.

Just about exactly the same thing happened to me, except in my case it
was fencing lessons.  But there was another difference.  We each have
a private spending account, 1% of the family income, over which the
other has absolutely no say.  So we quickly got down to the real
issue, and got the tiff over with immediately.

In between passionate love, or while you're waiting to reach 90 for
that passionate love to start :-), you ARE individuals.  Money isn't
everything but it does enable some of life's resources, and you should
retain individuality by having small private accounts.

-dk