Money secrets couples keep

By CAROLINE NJUNG’E Posted Friday, October 23 2009 at 15:26

He must have been blindly in love, to trust his wife with his hard-earned millions. A few weeks ago however, Mohammed Bakhresa, a Zanzibari tycoon, went to court to have his ex-wife, Nasra Abdulwahab, return property worth an estimated Sh130 million.

According to an article in the Daily Nation, the tycoon, since divorced from his wife, had entrusted about Sh500 million to his then wife between 2002 and 2006, money that he had instructed her to invest.

At the time, Bakhresa, a frequent traveller since he had business interests in various parts of the continent, specifically Kenya, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi, lived in Kampala while his wife had set up home in Mombasa. He would send her money regularly, confident that she would invest it prudently for the benefit of the family.

All was well between the two until 2005 when Bakhresa realised that his wife was transferring huge amounts of this money into a secret bank account. This was the hammer that brought an abrupt end to their marriage. Now the previously happily couple is battling it out in court.

Which elicits the question – just how much should you trust your spouse with your money? Does your wife or husband know how much you earn or even how much you have in your company sacco? If he knows all this, do you have a bank account that he does not know about?

Ideally, when a couple decides to settle down and raise a family together, they are making a pact to not only stand by each other in good and bad times, but to share everything else they have, including money and any property they may have acquired or will acquire in future. But this is not always the case, as we found out.

Most married individuals that Saturday talked to disclosed that their spouses have no idea how much they earn and they would never dream of sharing a bank account with each other. The few that do have a joint account, especially the women, have a separate one which their other half knows nothing about.

A good number of women said they would flip if their husbands went into their handbags without permission while quite a number of men would have a fit if they walked in on their wives going through their wallets. Only a handful of married couples said that sharing bank accounts and pooling resources worked for them.

“Let’s be honest, there is no guarantee that your marriage will last forever, therefore it is advisable to play safe,” quips Jane, who has no apologies for keeping a bank account that her husband knows nothing about. She calls it her “rainy day nest” and each month, she puts in at least Sh5,000 – an amount she has been religiously putting away for the last three years.

Over the years, she has invested part of her savings in various company shares and will be the proud owner of a one-acre piece of land by the end of this year. You guessed it – she has no intention of letting her husband get wind of what she’s up.

Jane, an insurance agent, feels justified in keeping her husband in the dark concerning her dealings. They got married under customary law five years ago, and just three years into their marriage, she discovered that he had been cheating on her with the same woman for about a year.

“That woke me up to the reality that there was a possibility that my marriage could end one day, even though my husband swore that he had ended the relationship. What if he decided to leave me and marry another woman?” she wonders.

Her husband had already constructed the house they live in by the time they started living together, therefore it is under his name and so is the property it stands on. Jane is not lost to this fact and should her husband decide to walk out on her and their two children in future, she has no intention of starting her life all over again living in a rented, cramped house. Donald Onyango confesses that though he loves his wife, he does not trust her one bit when it comes to money.

“When we first got married, I would leave my wallet lying around the house; just like I was used to doing when I lived alone.” That was until he realised that his wife was pinching money from him. When he confronted her, she defended herself saying that “yako ni yangu (yours is mine)” therefore she wasn’t stealing from him.

“That is the day I bought a second wallet, which I make a point of leaving under the car seat before I get into the house. My old wallet holds no more than Sh500 at any time, which she finds difficult to take,” says Donald, looking shocked when asked whether his wife has access to his bank account.

Apparently, it is not only men who do not trust their wives with their wallets if Faith Kioko’s case is anything to go by. It may sound comical, but her biggest challenge is finding a new hiding place for her handbag every few days. Three years ago, Faith’s husband lost his job and a few months after that, the couple’s financial woes begun.

“After some time, money started disappearing from my handbag. At first, I thought maybe I had used it, but when I couldn’t account for it, I started suspecting my husband.” Her suspicions were confirmed when she walked in on her husband one day rummaging through her handbag.

Benson Kamau, a married father of two, is of the opinion that couples should keep separate bank accounts. “I meet all my responsibilities at home – I pay the rent, electricity and water bills and pay school fees for our two children; I don’t see why I should account for the remainder of the money that I make,” he says.

Kamau, a businessman, keeps a separate bank account from his wife, who teaches at a private school and says that for the last five of their eight-year-old marriage, this method has worked for them. When the couple got married, Kamau entrusted his ATM card to his wife, giving her unlimited access to his bank account, but a few months into their marriage, he realised that he had made “a big mistake”.

“I travel a lot on business and sometimes I am away from home for several days, so I would leave her my ATM card in case of an emergency,” he says. However, when he realised that his wife was “misusing” the money, he took away the card. “Most of the withdrawals went into buying clothes and shoes that she did not even need, yet the agreement was that she would use the card only when it was absolutely necessary,” he explains.

His verdict? The only person you can trust to make good use of your money is yourself. Linda Kithia is of the same opinion. When she and her husband, both high school teachers, got married five years ago, they decided that it would be easier to manage their money if they pooled it into one bank account.

Two years into the marriage, however, Linda knew that if this arrangement did not change, they would be paupers within a few months. “My husband was always coming up with one business deal after another which he would convince me to invest our money in,” she says.

Eventually, Linda had to put her foot down and say ‘No’ to any more business deals that had no signs of taking off. “Eventually, I found myself footing all the household bills while my husband’s salary went down the drain in his many unsuccessful business ventures.”

What saved their young marriage was coming up with a strategy where each would be responsible for paying certain household bills. They also agreed to part with a slice of their salaries each month, which they put into a mutual savings account. “Unless both of you are disciplined when it comes to handling money, which is rare, operating one bank account cannot work,” is Linda’s verdict.

Speaking from experience, Nancy Wamaitha, an advertising manager, is convinced that a couple that handles finances separately has stumbled on a foolproof way of keeping harmony in marriage. “My job demands that I look good, therefore, I use quite a substantial chunk of my salary to shop for clothes, shoes and other accessories.”

She says that if her husband of two years knew how much she spends on clothes alone in just one month, he would probably be shocked. “I know that he spends a lot on electronic gadgets and on entertainment with his friends, but for the sake of avoiding arguments, I wouldn’t want to know how much because I would disapprove of his spending habits. Both of us have made a silent pact not to account how we spend our salaries to each other.”

Her husband pays the rent, electricity and water bills while she takes care of the groceries and toiletries. They save in their individual saccos. Interestingly, neither knows how much the other has saved or invested. “What matters is that each of us fulfils our responsibilities in the home and as long as we honour them, there is no need for us to track how we use our money,” concludes Nancy.

Willis Onyango would not advise married couples to keep a joint account claiming that he tried it once and it nearly wrecked his marriage. “I thought that combining our salaries in one account was the ultimate show of love and trust on my part, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. From day one, we just couldn’t agree on how to spend our money,” says Onyango.

His wife for instance thought that it was a waste of money to allocate Sh5,000 for entertainment while he thought it ill-advised to allocate a similar amount to clothes and shoes every month. “How many pairs of shoes or clothes does one really need in a year?” he wonders, still perplexed. When his wife blew nearly Sh10,000 on clothes and shoes in one weekend, he knew that the sharing bit would have to come to an end.

After four months of constant bickering about money, the couple finally acknowledged that it was best to keep separate accounts and agreed that each would be entitled to a specific amount in the form of pocket money. He advises other couples to avoid sharing money too soon into the marriage.

“Get to know your partner’s spending habits first before pooling your money together or entrusting her with your money.” Doris confesses that she has a secret bank account that her husband knows nothing about. “Women are more careful with money, therefore, it is wise to have some ‘just-in-case’ money stashed away somewhere.”

She learnt this the hard way. Initially when she and her husband got married, they allowed each other free access to each other’s bank accounts. “We did not have a joint account but we had free access to each other’s ATM cards.”

But that was until she realised that her husband was withdrawing money from her account half of which he either used to spruce up his car, or couldn’t account for. “Obviously, my husband did not respect the money I worked so hard to make and when I realised what was happening, I begun to channel most of the money into a new account that he knew nothing about.”

Obviously, love alone is not enough to sustain a marriage, as most couples find out when the honeymoon high fizzles off. Relationship experts cite money wars as the major enemy of marriage, yet most couples rarely talk about finances before or after marriage. Isn’t this a good time as any to start?

cnjunge@nation.co.ke

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