Married couples who pool their finances may be happier and stay together longer

2023-05-21 15:42:47

Love and money can be two aspects that are better understood separately and, sometimes, it is common to think that it is better to separate your finances from those of your partner, but the reality is that you will not be happier that way. In fact, new research from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (USA) has revealed the opposite: married couples who manage their finances together can love each other longer and they tend to be happier.

Previous research suggests a correlation that couples who merge finances they tend to be happier than those who don’t. But this is the first research to show a causal relationship: married couples who have joint bank accounts not only have better relationships, they they fight less for money and feel better about how the household finances are managed.

“When we surveyed people with different lengths of relationships, those who had merged accounts conveyed higher levels of communality within your marriage compared to people with separate accounts, or even those who partially merged their finances,” explains Jenny Olson, an assistant professor of marketing at Kelley.

The findings appear in the article ‘Common cents: structure of the bank account and dynamics of couple relationships’ of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Olson and her coauthors recruited 230 couples, who were engaged or newlyweds at the time, and they followed them for two years as they began their married life together. They all started the study with separate accounts and agreed to potentially change their financial arrangements.

Then, was randomly assigned some couples were told to keep their bank accounts separate, and others were told to open a joint bank account. A third group was allowed to make the decision on their own.

Couples told to open joint bank accounts reported substantially higher relationship quality two years later than those who kept separate accounts, Olson says, adding that the merger promotes a greater alignment and transparency of financial objectivesand a communal understanding of marriage.

By having a joint account, “there is a ‘we’ perspective” and, in contrast, couples with separate accounts viewed financial decision-making more as an exchange.

With separate accounts those who are married they may think it is easier to leave the relationshipsays Olson. Twenty percent of participating couples did not finish the study, including a significant percentage of those who broke up after failing to merge bank accounts.

The mean age of the participants was 28 years. Three quarters were white and 12% were black. 36% had a bachelor’s degree and a median household income of $50,000. Couples have known each other for, on average, five years and they had been romantically involved for an average of three years. 10% had children.