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My wife has access to all my accounts (all are joint accounts) / stocks / MF's. I have asked her to at least sign one check :).

I totally agree with Lakshya. When there is regular inflow of income. Why bother?. There is someone else do the dirty work. You can always ask why are we spending so much (not realizing that 80% comes through their Credit Card transactions :) )

farfromhome;610580My wife has access to all my accounts (all are joint accounts) / stocks / MF's. I have asked her to at least sign one check :).

I totally agree with Lakshya. When there is regular inflow of income. Why bother?. There is someone else do the dirty work. You can always ask why are we spending so much (not realizing that 80% comes through their Credit Card transactions :) )

Same situation here, to boot I am unemployed and probably unemployable, I dare not ask what the money has been spent on. When I do I get a frosty stare an a hurt look.

I don't think that this is the case with everyone.

Old thread rehashed? Interesting topic though and I see a lot of examples in my own circle of friends where they have very little idea about finances. And these are educated women with good jobs in some cases and they have their husbands paying their bills/ filling up their cars .. they are clueless about even the mundane stuff. I think its the upbringing that is to be blamed in part, the attitude that money handling is a man's job! Although I see no reason why they cant learn! The lack of interest is puzzling to me!
In our household I do most of the planning but the decisions are all joint decisions. We now have a financial planner who helps us to set goals and identify different buckets and avenues to invest in but we both know all the details. And yes I take care of all the boring paper work - taxes, visa/passport renewals, mortgage, insurance etc etc... I do not do the investing part though, my hubby does the research to buy the stocks as he has more interest in it. But anyway we don't have a lot of money in stocks anyway!
I am not a huge proponent of division of labor, I feel like both couple should be able to take over and function in the brief or long-term absence of his/her partner. Life skills are important and has to be learned by all. Sure you cannot be efficient or proficient in everything, but you should be able to get by. In this country generally kids live on their own for several years before they are married which forces them to learn life skills.This did not happen in our society atleast in our generation...

At some point, women (who statisically live longer) are likely to lose a spouse or have a spouse that suffers from dementia. That alone is reason to learn the basics of finance.

The only reasoning, I can think of is, husband should treat the wife as equals, give her responsibilities, encourage her to make decisions, stand by her, accept her mistakes gracefully, right from the beginning (from the time they are committed for marriage). When once, the wife realizes that, she has total support from her husband, I am sure, women of our generation who have come with reasonable educational background, and exposure to modern world, will definitely play a good and responsible role in the family matters.


This will set the stage for kids to see their moms with respect and will encourage her more to excel.

return2blore;679438...will encourage her more to excel.

How do I encourage her to work an excel sheet! :) Why are some women bad at Excel (as in Microsoft Excel)? Why do women open 100 tabs in a browser and then complain that their PC is slow? Why do some women not try and learn how to connect to a WiFi printer? :)

Your post is putting the blame on the husband. Might be issue in some instances, but there are probably other reasons as well.

Setting that aside, on a more serious note, sometimes when we have to go out, we decide to take my wife's car. In all instances, she would go to the passenger side, open and happily sit, with an assumption that I would be the driver! Why? If it is the lady's car, they better be the driver! :)

SamSan;679418.. a lot of examples in my own circle of friends where they have very little idea about finances. And these are educated women with good jobs in some cases and they have their husbands paying their bills/ filling up their cars .. they are clueless about even the mundane stuff. I think its the upbringing that is to be blamed in part, the attitude that money handling is a man's job! Although I see no reason why they cant learn! The lack of interest is puzzling to me!......

Within a few years, DW had decided that this is not her work and I should be doing it; whereas I should be sharing shopping for groceries/veges and light kitchen work even while in India before moving to a civilised world. Much more educated (PhD) then me and versatile, she would complain when I try to tell her how to (say) print, demanding that i print for her. And when I would just print for her, she would complain; why am I not telling her how to do it herself. Of course money for her is just 'haath ka mael" (dirt of hands.)

It is not just upbringing. Her mother was a jailed freedom fighter, member of the constituent assembly and later a Lok Sabha MP as well as a published author.

I can go on and on but if you have not got the essence by now then I have failed once again.

In my view, even Indian men are so poor in finance, it is unbelievable. Apart from investing in Real Estate and FDs, they know nothing. I have been for more than 15 years now in 8 companies and I have come across so many colleagues and all of them have absolutely no idea how mutual funds, bonds or stocks work. Even people working as business analysts and their day to day work involves complex products like FX Swaps, IRS etc, if you ask them personally what do you do? Real Estate, lol

If someone wants to take, I think there is lot of opportunity to educate Indians about Financial investments. I recently educated a couple of friends about global equity ETFs and asset allocation.

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This is so true!! I see many women from older generation struggling to learn the basics in their 70's. My MIL wrote her first check in 60's!!!

One reason why women don't take initiative is mistakes are not usually tolerated. I know someone who made a mistake in taxes and paid $5K fine for frivolous tax return and the wife simply said 'be careful next time'. The same guy constantly berates the wife for forgetting $1, $2 coupons at home while grocery shopping. I've seen the same thing in my family too. My father still talks about a deal my mother did where we lost INR 20K in 1985 but she never talks about half a dozen deals he made where we lost much more than that.

For the Telugu people in this thread, there is an old movie 'Laxmi Nivasam' where a rich guy loses all his money and finally left with 30K, gives it to his 3 kids (2 boys and 1 girl) equally and leaves town to start over. The elder boy starts a business and the sister invests in his business. Eventually the boy gets defrauded and they lose this money too. But the interesting thing is they learn different lessons from this loss. The boy learns that he has to work hard and be careful. But the girl learns that women should not be responsible for money and should be under the protection of father, husband or son. The boy somehow starts another business (I think) and the girl promptly marries a good boy the father selects.

The best lesson I learned my life regarding the money is to forgive myself and fight like hell if someone talks too much about my failures (means more shit than my father or my husband get for their mistakes).