Myths of Marriage #6: "Separate bank accounts are wise"

The Myth That Separate Bank Accounts Keep Things Fair

Today's myth about marriage is that having separate bank accounts keeps things fair. Now, I don't know what the sentiment in the room is about this, or what you've experienced. How many people know someone, or know a couple, who has separate bank accounts?

Have you ever encountered that before? Okay, a few people have encountered it before. It's something that happens pretty often when couples feel like things aren't really fair in the marriage. They want to make things fair, so they create separate accounts.

That way, no one's overspending and taking too much of the money. But first of all, what is fairness? When we say that this keeps things fair, what is fairness? Are we saying that it should be a 50 -50 split?

Sometimes that's what people mean. Sometimes they mean, well, we both work separate jobs, so after we each pay our half of the rent, then the rest of that money should be for me to spend after we split our regular bills 50 -50.

And then after that, whatever I make extra, that's for me to spend. That's an odd notion of fairness. You know, there's nothing in marriage that is really symmetric. Why would we expect finances? Fairness in general tends to be very misguided, right?

So what you see in marriage is that authority. General Judy said it too. It's not a good foundation for tidbits. So they abolish the notion. This is the way the Bible describes the situation. But so many people, rather than keeping the Bible and what God has said as the determiner of truth, rather take their own notion of fairness as a determiner of truth, and they say, no, it must be the case that either everybody hears, or if they don't hear, then they get a free pass into heaven.

But the Bible says exactly the opposite. And this attitude that people have, they take it to salvation, they take it to notions of how government should work, and they take it even to their marriage, right?

So church, government, family, basically all the different societies you have in life, people take that notion of fairness and they use it. So next I'd like you to consider, whose property is it? You know, if we're talking about having separate bank accounts to keep things fair, then you've got a husband with one set of finances, a wife with another set of finances.

You've got your property split. But whose money is it? 1 Corinthians 7 says, For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

So the Bible, in talking about husband and wife and their own bodies and sexual relations, talks about them having authority over each other's bodies. Now if you have ownership over each other's bodies, how much more must it be the case that you have ownership over things that are not so close to you, right?

Other things like money or possessions. If you have authority over each other's bodies, if that's a shared good, then how much more is it the case that your money is a shared good? So to treat it like, this is yours, this is mine, doesn't even make sense biblically with what the Bible says that marriage entails.

And so there's several different things that are foundational in marriage that are really typically undercut by having separate bank accounts for the reason of saying that this is your property, this is my property.

Unity, Trust, and Self-Sacrifice in Marriage

One of those is just unity. The Bible talks about the unity between a husband and wife. It's a serious, very serious foundation in marriage. The Bible says that they are of one flesh. It says that the two become one flesh.

It says that in Genesis. It says that in the Gospels. It says it again in Ephesians 5. And then, on top of that, you have Malachi 2 .15, which says the following. Did He not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union?

This is speaking about what happens in marriage. Not only do they become one flesh, but there's also, they become one in a way that there's even a spiritual union between them, where God gives His Spirit to unite man and woman, to produce, it says, for the purpose of producing offspring.

God has established even a spiritual union in marriage. Now, what kind of union is there if you're not united on your finances, and you feel like, well, these are my purposes and finances, and these are her purposes and finances?

Do we should have shared goals and values in a marriage? And you might say, well, what about the couple that doesn't have shared goals and values? What should they do? Well, they should work on becoming unified in pursuing shared goals and values.

So the way to pursue unity is not to force the bank account and then hope that something gets fixed later. Rather, it's to establish a real practical unity in a way that can foster better spiritual unity.

So another foundation in marriage is trust. To trust one another. Let me give you another verse related to this. Proverbs 31 speaks of an excellent wife. It says, an excellent wife who can find. She is far more precious than jewels.

The heart of her husband trusts her, and he will have no lack of gain. It talks about an excellent wife in an excellent marriage involves trust. The husband trusts her. So that goes in both directions.

The wife trusts the husband. The husband trusts the wife. Why do people often have these separate accounts? It's because there is a lack of trust. And the way to deal with a lack of trust is not to say, okay, I've got this lack of trust that I've got to live with.

What do I do in order to make you feel better about the situation? Rather than fostering a lack of trust, you should be, once again, creating a situation that fosters a growing in trust, which means taking the ethical step of entrusting your bank account with another.

Now, also, another foundation of marriage is self-sacrifice. We are the self-sacrificial for someone. That is what love is. Love is a giving of self. And so a marriage that's focused on self and not a giving of self, what direction is that kind of marriage headed?

Rather, we should be trying to give of ourselves as much as we can. A couple where they feel like I need to worry about myself, worry about number one, and I need this bank account in order to make sure that I'm secure in my position, that shows a selfishness rather than a selflessness.

And what does the Bible say about our relationship with God, the way he has treated us? The analogy between marriage and Christ and the church, it says the relationship between husband and wife, it says this in Ephesians 5, the relationship between husband and wife is like the relationship between Christ and the church, in that he has given himself up for the church.

It should not be the case that husbands give themselves up for the wives, and the wives similarly have a love for their husbands, so they're willing to give and even at a loss. You know, when you get together and you make vows, and you say for richer or for poorer, so many people make these vows not hating any of these things.

You know, always meaning the richer part or the health part, or the, I forget what the others are, but the good parts, but not the bad parts. You've got to mean the bad parts too. And here's another for you.

If you're going to get married, and maybe I'll make these mother talks, a lot of people think it will be cute and special if they write their own vows. There's a reason why some of these vows have stood the test of time.

Vows are really significant stuff. I would generally recommend not writing your own vows, but rather sticking to the tried and true things that talk about the kind of love that you're supposed to have between a husband and wife.

Practical Caveats and Exceptions

So, in general, those things, unity, trust, self-sacrifice, foundations of the marriage, that all imply there would be a sharing of finances. Now, I'm going to give you a couple of caveats, and I think there are a couple of times where it would be possibly reasonable to have separate bank accounts.

And I don't want you to hear me say something just more absolute and unreasonable than I'm actually saying. Okay, so one might be for accountability. Let's say one person in a relationship has a real serious spending issue, and they agree together that a way to deal with that is to have an account where you can't just spend everything.

And they agree together that, yes, for accountability purposes, this would be wise. You know, I can see something like that being reasonable. But at that point, you've got a shared agreement. Let's say you think this is needed, but you don't have a shared agreement.

Oh, you should pray about it. Do you still not agree? Get counsel. Do you still not agree? The Bible says that man has authority in the relationship. You should decide. If the wife feels that she's been very wrong with the situation, the Bible offers Matthew 18 as a way to deal with this.

The Bible gives us just a whole path of trying to navigate that issue where someone might actually have a serious spending issue. Another situation where it might be reasonable to have separate accounts is basically in addition to accountability for accounting, and I know those words mean the same thing etymologically, but they have different connotations.

Everyone has a connotation. The other is just talking about keeping records straight. Another way to ask this question would be, should a husband have a joint bank account? I read a few articles about this.

I thought it was funny how many of them were saying that it was always necessary for him to have a joint bank account because, in reality, it's not necessary to have a bank account at all. You know, bank accounts are something relatively recent in history.

You know, you're some clever person who has this neat accounting method where you use multiple accounts. That's fine. Go for it. But the idea is, once again, husband and wife, if they have authority over each other's bodies, they should have authority over each other's possessions.

It's just wonderful and beautiful. Proverbs 31, another thing it describes, it says, she considers a field and buys it. With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. Now, what kind of a woman comes to sell a vineyard?

And even in the very way God has designed it, it's such that it requires a trust with your most vulnerable state. Right? So that's just an illustration of how vulnerable we should be toward each other in marriage in general.

And keep in mind, I'm telling you all these things as signals so that when you go into marriage, you have the right ideas, and when you are talking to people that you might consider marriage with, that you're able to talk through these things and figure these things out early rather than later, as many people do when it's too late.

Money Problems Are Really Unity Problems

And we've already run into a lot of these issues. You know, I was looking at the statistics, and they're a bunch of different statistics, and they all kind of say different things, but it's pretty well known that money is the top issue leading people.

Right? One of the statistics I saw is that 22 of divorced couples said that that was the number one thing, and almost all the money was one of the issues, one of the more significant issues. So a lot of people think they can avoid that problem by mitigating the difficulties and creating these separate bank accounts.

But if you think about it, these money problems are not really money problems. That's not the heart of it. The heart of it is a unity problem, and you don't fix a unity problem by enforcing disunity. That's just fostering the problem to grow and to become worse.

Christ’s Self-Giving as the Model for Marriage

Once again, we have a great example for us in Jesus Christ. Romans says that if he has given us a son, how will he not also give us all things? Christ has given us all the life for us. And a lot of people feel like, well, you know, my spouse, he or she, doesn't appreciate the things that I do.

How little do we appreciate what Christ has done for us? He did all this for us knowing that we would not be able to appreciate the full. Knowing not only that we wouldn't appreciate the full, but that we would not be able to, because what he has done for us is so infinitely good, and we are so finite.

And we should approach marriage with that same mindset of giving to God himself as in the shape of us, and that should be a testimony to the world of the love that we have for Christ. Alright, let's see.

We've got discussion questions.