(NewsNation) — Money can’t buy you happiness, but sharing a bank account with your spouse may lead to a happier marriage.
A joint bank account may improve the quality of your marriage, according to a new study that looked at the impact of couples sharing funds rather than banking them separately.
“People who have joint bank accounts on average become happier with how they’re managing money, and there’s less financial conflict. I’m more satisfied with how my partner’s approaching it, presumably because they’re talking more. They can get more on the same page,” said Jenny Olson, who teaches at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.
Olson and her team recruited both engaged and newly married couples who were in their first year of marriage for an experiment. All 230 couples they recruited had to have separate bank accounts to be eligible for the experiment.
Some were assigned to keep their separate bank accounts, and others were told to open a joint bank account instead. A third group was allowed to make the decision on their own.
Olson’s team followed the couples for two years, regularly surveying them about relationship satisfaction and conflict.
“We surveyed them at different time points asking about their marital dynamics,” she said.
What they found is that the couples who were told to make joint bank accounts had substantially higher quality relationship satisfaction than those who maintained separate accounts, adding it promotes a more communal understanding of marriage.
“A communal relationship is one where partners respond to each other’s needs because there’s a need. ‘I want to help you because I see that you need help. I’m not pre-paying for later favors. We’re in this together.’ There’s this ‘we’ perspective, which we theorize would be related to a joint bank account,” she said.
For those with separate accounts, Olson said couples may view things as an exchange.
“It’s tit-for-tat, score-keeping. ‘Hey, I’m going to make dinner tonight, praise me, give me a gold star and you’re going to do it tomorrow night because I did it this night.’ And that’s more common in business type relationships,” she said.
Olson argued that couples with joint bank accounts align their goals based on their shared finances.
“You know like: hey if we both agree we’re going to set aside X dollars this month to go on that vacation, you know, they’re more aligned in that sense,” she said.
Separate accounts, however, provide individuals with financial freedom, and for some may free them from having to justify their spending choices. Also if one person has debt, joint accounts mean the other partner is accountable for that debt.
Olson added joint bank accounts require transparency, and some partners may not want that for any number of reasons.
“There’s that tension between being vulnerable and transparent but also opening yourself up to potential abuse and things like that,” she said.