Difference b/w secret account and secret present

maple2 · January 2016

I'm just curious why so many people were so critical of the woman who set up a secret account where she would stash $20-50 a month to save up for a present for her H while there is near universal support for @hoffse to secretly take a lump sum to buy a present for her H. If the woman really did save $20-50/month she could end up right in the $400 neighborhood by the end of the year. I'm not try to judge anyone for their responses, I'm just trying to understand how you all view these situations as so profoundly different when they seem very similar to me. In one case the money is saved slowing and stored in a bank while in the other it's saved all at once and stored in a desk, but either way it's a secret use of joint money with good and generous intentions. (For the record, my gut level responses are similar--buy the desk but a secret account is more sketchy. When I think about the question rationally, though, they really do seem like similar situations.)

jessica490 · January 2016

Oh boy...here we go lol

als1982 · January 2016

I think it depends on how you and your spouse handle shared and individual money. For us, gifts are paid for using our "mad money." Any expense that isn't budgeted and which wouldn't fall under our mad money guidelines necessitates a conversion regardless of amount. But I know @hoffse and her H handle their incidental spending differently.

Xstatic3333 · January 2016

Hmmmm, I know my gut reaction on that thread was that there must have been some more nefarious reason for the secret account. I believe the OP that that's not actually the case, however, in which case I guess it isn't actually different. It's just a much larger quantity of money than I would be able to squirrel away from my H given our income levels, but that doesn't make it wrong if it works for them.

As to how we budget for gifts, we each budget a few hundred dollars for Christmas, and I budget an extra hundred or so around each of our birthdays for the non-birthday spouse. H does not check our joint CC on his own, so I can buy him gifts with it without him finding out, and he uses an old CC from his single days if he needs to buy me any gifts online.

julieanne912 · January 2016

I wasn't bothered by the secret account as much since it was being used to pay for a gift. I do get bothered when I hear of people having secret accounts so their significant other doesn't know what they're spending their money on though (ie shoes, gambling, etc).

I also think a lot of people were bothered by it because they like to be in control of the money, and spending thousands on a trip without consulting the other party going on said trip is not OK.

Lastly, there's a huge difference in my mind between stashing $400 to pay for a gift, versus stashing thousands of dollars to maybe pay for a trip.

dragonstarjk · January 2016

For myself, my initial response to that other thread was due to the fact that I didn't feel like we had all of the information, and it sounded really sketch. Once the OP provided additional info, I was okay with it, and in fact I stated that if my H wanted to squirrel money away to surprise me with a trip that would be fantastic!

I'm not opposed to secret presents. I was opposed to the idea that a spouse might purposely keep a bank account secret. Even if I had an account that I was putting money into to save up for a gift for H, if he ever asked me about it I would tell him the truth, I would never lie about money whether for a gift or not.

brij2006 · January 2016

For me, it's the fact that hoffse's husband knows about the money. He knows it's there, he knows it's coming in, they both have expressed that they want to spend it on furniture for the house since they're budgeting that as some expenditures this year. Also, the fact that she has stated many times how they're both on the same page about money and discuss every penny that comes in and out.

The other post was talking about having a completely secret account, never telling her H about it, and just "bam" here's a few thousand dollar trip. Out of money that was not discussed, money he had no clue about, and an account he didn't even know existed. They also had separate accounts in general (if I'm remembering right) and didn't do a budget or anything. So what if he was on the verge of having his car repo'd because he couldn't make the payment? Yet she had no clue about that and then spent $5k on a trip to surprise him. That's big to me.

There's just a huge difference to being on the same page with money and spending $400 on a desk that was discussed previously vs having everything separate and no clue what's going on, then spending $5,000.

jtmh2012 · January 2016

brij2006 said:

For me, it's the fact that hoffse's husband knows about the money. He knows it's there, he knows it's coming in, they both have expressed that they want to spend it on furniture for the house since they're budgeting that as some expenditures this year. Also, the fact that she has stated many times how they're both on the same page about money and discuss every penny that comes in and out.

I was the OP of the secret accounts thread and this is exactly the difference. If hoffse or her husband were to suddenly pass away, they each know the account is there. With my friend, she went out and opened a bank account that her husband knows nothing about and then funnels money into that account without him knowing that anything is being bled off.

hoffse · January 2016

Valid question - that's why I asked in the other post. I'm not sure if they are really that different on paper, and it does give me some heartburn to just unilaterally decide to spend that much money. We can certainly afford it, but neither of us has ever done that before. We eat out and pick up groceries and stuff without talking to the other, but I can't think of a time either of us has spent more than $100 without there being some conversation about it.

We don't have his/her "mad money" or "blow money" funds. All our expenses just come out of the same account, and some months we spend more on one of us or the other, depending on what we need. That arrangement has never given us trouble.

My only explanation (I think) is that I'm talking about a one-off gift, and I know he wants it. If I suggested we buy it, I think he would be all in. And in the case of this particular gift, I would be trading cash we have on hand for a thing that's for him, rather than funneling money away over time for something I might buy him "someday."

A secret account, on the other hand, is always there until you close it. It provides the means and temptation to do some really shady stuff with the family money. Even if you have good intentions at the beginning, that can change. Whereas once I buy a desk, I own a desk. That's not exactly a liquid asset that I can later use to screw over my spouse.

I once had a client who got nailed by the IRS for stuff her husband did without her knowledge, and most of it was tied to secret accounts that he had originally opened "with the best intentions." We actually had to go through innocent spouse relief for her. Obviously not all secret accounts get that crazy, but that's sort of what I envision when I hear about them.

It feels different, but I agree that it's similar on paper. That's one reason why I hesitated to pull the trigger on it. So maybe the answer is that the difference lies in the intention and the liquidity?

kmurphy2131 · January 2016

brij2006 said:

For me, it's the fact that hoffse's husband knows about the money. He knows it's there, he knows it's coming in, they both have expressed that they want to spend it on furniture for the house since they're budgeting that as some expenditures this year. Also, the fact that she has stated many times how they're both on the same page about money and discuss every penny that comes in and out.

The other post was talking about having a completely secret account, never telling her H about it, and just "bam" here's a few thousand dollar trip. Out of money that was not discussed, money he had no clue about, and an account he didn't even know existed. They also had separate accounts in general (if I'm remembering right) and didn't do a budget or anything. So what if he was on the verge of having his car repo'd because he couldn't make the payment? Yet she had no clue about that and then spent $5k on a trip to surprise him. That's big to me.

There's just a huge difference to being on the same page with money and spending $400 on a desk that was discussed previously vs having everything separate and no clue what's going on, then spending $5,000.

All of this. Some of it was probably the fact that for those of us who read/post here we know how hoffse/her husband handle their finances so it was a more objective question. I think 400 vs 5000 is very different as well. Plus, as I had mentioned on her post, she had been talking about trying to be a little bit looser with their budget and I thought that it would be a nice gesture. It's probably different when it's a situation with no facts vs knowing a bit more about the cicumstances.

maple2 · January 2016

Ok. So it seems like at least part of the difference is that even though $20-50/month might only add up to $220-600/year, the total cost of the gift could potentially be much more. And maybe a little bit that we don't know as much about the secret account woman and her overall financial situation so it's harder to know whether that amount would be negligible or significant relative to their income, expenses and saving. Thanks for sharing.

JoanE2012 · January 2016

The "secret account" was so the person could funnel in $50-$75/month to "supposedly" buy her husband gifts. I don't buy it. If that's the case, why not just talk to DH and each have discretionary accounts that each other knows about, with the purpose being for whatever that person wants to do with it? It doesn't make sense - there's definitely something fishy going on.

Erikan73 · January 2016

Initially it wasn't stated that it was going to be used for a surprise gift for hubby.

Difference b/w secret account and secret present

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