My husband is a stay-at-home dad. We have always merged our finances completely in our marriage, so it isn't much different now that he is not working. We set a certain amount of money aside for gifts to each other and that's that. To keep a little surprise alive we take the money out in cash from the bank or an ATM so we do not see where the other one shopped on our bank statement.
My husband is the primary breadwinner (I have my own business but bring in less cash). We are pretty frugal people owing to some debt repayment and a kid on the way, but I do like to still exchange gifts.
This year I bought him something that I know he will love, but that he won't buy himself because it's a little bit frivolous. Even though we share one chequing account, we each have our own savings and retirement accounts that have money automatically deposited into them twice a month. I just used the savings cash to buy his gift. It may be a little too late to do that now, but if you want to buy something without your partner knowing, you can always just figure out what you are going to buy & then just take cash out of the bank to pay for it so he doesn't know what stores you shopped at.
I work, but I don't even make enough to get taxed, lol. We just share the money. As soon as it's in the account, it becomes "ours" and it is no different if I buy him a present using it. But we bought a Wii together this year so we aren't getting individual presents.
My husband is a grad student. His schooling (minus books) is paid for. We merged all of our income/expenses into a checking and savings account. He doesn't have to ask me to spend money (unless a huge purchase of course.) He isn't spending my money, he's spending our money.
My situation is a little different as I'm a student that receives some income from my school ($4000 this year) and some money in a private account from an auto settlement that's paying for my school, but I'm basically without a job.
Most of our money is in one joint account, and we exchange gifts, if that is what we're doing that year, out of that communal pool. We don't separate things into "his money and my money," it's just a communal pool that we both have free license more or less to spend out of. We do watch our spending and talk about large purchases, etc, and we're both rather frugal.
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This year I bought him something that I know he will love, but that he won't buy himself because it's a little bit frivolous. Even though we share one chequing account, we each have our own savings and retirement accounts that have money automatically deposited into them twice a month. I just used the savings cash to buy his gift. It may be a little too late to do that now, but if you want to buy something without your partner knowing, you can always just figure out what you are going to buy & then just take cash out of the bank to pay for it so he doesn't know what stores you shopped at.
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Most of our money is in one joint account, and we exchange gifts, if that is what we're doing that year, out of that communal pool. We don't separate things into "his money and my money," it's just a communal pool that we both have free license more or less to spend out of. We do watch our spending and talk about large purchases, etc, and we're both rather frugal.
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