RetireJapan

Just found out casually that my wife has a bank account with a substantial (couple of years' worth of spending) amount of cash in

That means our cash reserves are quite a bit larger than I thought (not a bad thing).

How about everyone else? Do you trust your wife? https://youtu.be/l2sCWlBCfuw?si=Q-KritOTnhuDbZ78

Ah, the ol' hesokuri!

I trust my wife and she is not hiding anything from me

Deep Blue wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2024 8:54 am I trust my wife and she is not hiding anything from me

Ha, ha, as far as you know

Don't think my wife was hiding per se. We both work and have our own accounts. I just didn't know she had accumulated quite that much!

Won't be adding it to the net worth spreadsheet just yet though, but it does give us a bit of an extra margin of safety. If there is a big crash/yen strengthens I might try and persuade her to chuck it into the markets.

I completely understand why a woman (especially with children) might keep a large portion of funds aside. Keeping it secret is also generally a good idea. Women can be extremely vulnerable if they don't have funds to rely on when a relationship goes sideways.

I wouldn't take it personally, it's just shows she's shrewd women who believes in contingencies.

RetireJapan wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2024 9:14 am

Deep Blue wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2024 8:54 am I trust my wife and she is not hiding anything from me

Ha, ha, as far as you know

Pretty unlikely I feel. We don’t have secrets and definitely not about money. We were fortunate enough to be able to put lots of assets in her name without gift tax liability so she has no need to fear being left high and dry in the unlikely event we do split up in the future.

For both of us, separate accounts have always been the norm. And while not hidden, there's no need to lay out all the details. Since we've both always worked, we collaborate on and share what we decide to, and the rest we can do what we want with.

I'm not really sure how much money/investments she has, and tho she's seen my foreign asset reports/国外財産調書 (maybe not this last one?), I don't think she's worried about anything. She does get a little more pension than I do, and still teaches online a few times a week (does her own accounting, files the blue form, etc--all of which I have no idea about, let alone what she earns from it). She's seen one or another of my tax returns, when I've had questions, but I guess I've never seen one of hers.

Weird?

Probably, but we've been operating like this for over 36 years.

Many ways to skin a cat… don’t think there are any right or wrong ways to manage finances in a marriage… just have to figure out what works for both…. And be flexible if needed.

What’s the opposite of a stash?

Decades ago, when not smoothing out the numbers on a family credit card, my partner in grime revealed they had also built up a frankly impressive amount of debt on their personal credit card. (Like. If I gave you the money in cash you’d feel uncomfortable walking around at night with it*.)
Still young and in love, I rapidly proffered funds to address the situation on the simple condition we would work together proactively to avoid a reoccurrence..

When it happened again just a few years later we had a longer talk before I again addressed things.
Although less frequently, it still happens from time to time although to improve the process, a la Kaizen, we no longer have the talk….

* A long time ago, before I could read any Kanji, and ATMs weren’t multi-lingual, I inadvertently withdrew 800,000yen before going drinking in Roppongi. Brought most of it home too..

Big difference between not sharing and not being willing to share.