Category: Finance

Polyamory and Finance: Risk or Safety?

Jess Mahler

Building on previous posts, today we’re talk about the first of your financial priorities: risk or safety.

Risk or Safety

At first glance, you might ask why anyone would prioritize risk. The short version is that in money stuff, risk is usually tied to opportunity.

As a general rule, the more you have, the more you can afford to risk. When you realize that risk is tied to opportunity, you begin to understand who it is easier for the rich to get richer than for the poor to get rich.

Starting a new company is a risk–but if that company is successful you can have more money AND set your own hours.

Switching jobs is a risk–but if that risk is successful you can have a better paying job, or a healthier work environment, or be at a company that offers better advancement opportunities.

Investing is risk, taking a loan is a risk, paying for a certificate course so you can try for a different career is a risk.

There’s no one right answer

Whether you choose to risk of play it safe is ultimately a personal choice. There are very valid arguments to focus on safety if you are poor–but there are also arguments for risking if you pick your risks carefully.

And the same applies no matter how much money you have.

It’s not binary

Like most things, this isn’t a binary choice. It’s a spectrum with risk and safety on the two extreme ends. And your situation will change what is a risk and what is safety. For most people, going back to school will be a big risk, especially with what tuition is these days. But some companies have programs where they will pay for you to go back to school. In that case the going back to school may be safer than keeping your current job because you aren’t paying the tuition, your company will be less likely to lay you off (because they’ve invested in your tuition) and you’ll have a near-guaranteed higher paying job once you graduate.

So…. Polyamory?

How polyamory affects this decision is largely a matter of the decisions you’ve made about your polyamory. If you have kept your money completely unentwined and have made no financial commitments to or with your polyam partners, then risk or safety is entirely up to your personal preference.

Commitments

The more commitments you have made, the more you will usually need to lean toward safety to be sure you can keep those commitments. With no commitments, you can risk everything. With commitments, you can risk only what you haven’t committed or else you are risking breaking those commitments.

Again, this is easier for rich folks because their “everything is bigger. Someone with money can risk what would be “everything” for someone poor and have a cushion left over so they aren’t risking the commitments they may have made.

Entwinement

If your finances are entwined with other peoples–joint bank accounts, joint budgets, etc, then this decision isn’t yours to make alone. you need to talk with the partners you share finances with and come to an agreement on what level of risk and/or safety everyone is comfortable with.

 

This really isn’t a polyamory issue

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that nothing I’ve discussed here (or in the last three posts) is REALLY specific to polyamory. It could apply to any situation where you are (or aren’t) dealing with the questions of sharing finances and how to handle finances

Joreth is fond of saying that there are no polyamory problems, only relationship problems. I don’t entirely agree, but in this case it definitely applies. But it’s kind of like learning to do a math problem by rote without understanding it. In monogamy, everything works a certain way and people rarely talk about it and never really break down the individual decisions that are made. We know that 5*3=15, without understanding what that really means.

So when we’re presented with 6*4=?, or “how do we handle finances in a polyamorous relationship” we don’t know how to start figuring it out. Not until we break the situation down into individual pieces, the way I’ve been doing here.

Read excerpts from my upcoming book Safer Sex for the Non-Monogamous

 

Polyamory and Money Stuff: How Prioritizing the Individual or the Group Affects Money

Jess Mahler

A few weeks ago, I spent some time riffing on polyamory and finance and I ended with the idea that both polyamory and money stuff require us to set priorities, and which priorities we set affects the decisions we make. For polyamory, I mentioned three choices we make:

  • to prioritize our need or desire for multiple relationships over society’s push for monogamy
  • to prioritize the individual or the group in our relationships
  • to prioritize entwinement or autonomy

This week we’re talking about the choice to prioritize the individual or the group.

Is your polyamory individual or group focused?

I wrote about prioritizing the individual vs prioritizing the group extensively in The Polyamorous Home. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’m using two quotes from the book to summarize:

The Individual

What does it mean to prioritize the individual?
It means each member of the family is responsible for their own well being. This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t ask for what you need. But it does mean that no one has a responsibility to give you what you ask for. They are not responsible for you, you are.

The Group

Essentially, when you agree to put the community first you are creating a symbiotic relationship. You agree to give up some of your right to self-determination, and the group agrees to be responsible for and take care of you, as long as you abide by the rules and take care of the group. If this symbiosis is forgotten, then prioritizing the community quickly becomes dangerous to the individual.

Most of the current polyam leaders strongly favor and support prioritizing the individual. In general, I agree, but there are people for whom prioritizing the group is the right choice. For more on both (and how not to be an ass to your polyam partners no matter which you choose), pick up the Polyamorous Home.

How Does Group Vs Individual Affect Money?

The decision to prioritize the group vs the individual has a big impact on how you handle your money.

If you prioritize the individual, then decisions about money are based on what is best for YOU. If you prioritize the group, then decisions about money are going to be based on what is best for the GROUP.

This post is part of the Polyamory Finances blog series

See you next week!

Polyamory and Money Stuff: How Being Polyam Affects Money

Jess Mahler

Last week, I spent some time riffing on polyamory and finance and I ended with the idea that both polyamory and money stuff require us to set priorities, and which priorities we set affects the decisions we make. For polyamory, I mentioned three choices we make:

  • to prioritize our need or desire for multiple relationships over society’s push for monogamy
  • to prioritize the individual or the group in our relationships
  • to prioritize entwinement or autonomy

Today we’re going to take a look at the first of those choices.

How choosing to be in polyamorous relationships impacts our money stuff.

Really, this is the simplest of the three. Being polyamorous in and of itself doesn’t impact your finances or the decisions you need to make about finances. Some approaches to polyamory can have big impacts on how you handle money. Some approaches won’t.

The main impact that being in any polyamorous relationship has on finances is you can’t entirely trust conventional money advice. All the “usual” advice on budgeting and handling money, etc, etc is written with monogamous people in mind. It’s actually pretty rare to find money advice written for single people instead of couples.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use conventional money advice–most of the time you can! But you do need to read it with a bit of side-eye, always asking “how well does this advice apply, given my polyamory.” It may apply perfectly well as is. It may need some adjustments but still be useable for you. It may be utterly useless because of inherent assumptions about the ability to get joint bank accounts for everyone involved.

The further away you move from advice on basic household budgeting, the more likely you are to run into assumptions about you being monogamous that can trip you up.

That’s it for this week.

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Riffing on Polyamory and Finance

Jess Mahler

Don’t have anything specific I want to talk about today, or the spoons to put together a nice orderly post about this or that idea.

So I’m just going to take some time to riff on polyamory, finance, and shit and see what we get. Not quite going to be stream of conscious, but something close to that.

“Finance” isn’t a word most people use to talk about personal money matters. My upbringing is showing there, upper-middle class family with a rich grandpa who gave out stock certificates for Christmas. After over 10 years of struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over my family’s heads, that upbringing has combined with life experience to give me a not-unique-but-certainly-not-common view of money, life, and keeping the bills paid.

But “finance” really just means “money matters”. Whether those money matters are keeping a personal budget, managing the bills for a large polycule, or getting into esoteric things like stocks and bonds and hedge funds it’s all finance.

Similarly, polyamory is really just a way of describing our relationships Whether you are single and polyam, part of a closed triad, building a constellation of relationships stretching across a dozen states and three countries, it’s all polyamory.

What they both have in common, I think, is priorities.

In polyamory, we have chosen to prioritize our need or desire for multiple relationships over societies push for monogamy. We choose whether to prioritize the individual or the group in our relationships. We choose whether to prioritize entwinement or autonomy.

With finance, you are choosing to prioritize risk or safety. To prioritize now or the future. To prioritize short term goals or long term goals.

Making polyamory and finance work together is, in the end, about knowing your* priorities and making sure your priorities for polyamory and your priorities for finance are supporting each other, not in conflict with each other.

I think I’m going to be exploring this idea of polyamory and finance priorities and how they work (or don’t work) together over the next few weeks. For now, I need to go make breakfast. Catch you later!

*this ‘your’ is both singular or plural, because both your individual priorities and the priorities of the people you are in relationships with are important here.

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What Do You Owe Yourself?

Jess Mahler

This post is going to be a lot more personal and a lot less practical than most here, but I hope folks will find it meaningful.

There is a strong push towards individualism in the polyam community today. And long time readers may have noticed that this push doesn’t always sit well with me. I am a very communal person, especially for a white-privileged American.  Helping and supporting my community is important to me. Which is one of the reasons my nesting partner and I practice tzedakah.

Tzedakah is the Jewish mitzvah or duty to give back to our community. It’s usually translated as charity, but the implications and connotations of charity are all wrong. Yes tzedakah usually involved giving money. That’s all it has in common with what most people mean when they say charity. We give tzedakah not because other people need it (though they do) but because we owe it to ourselves to take care of our community and the people in our community.

So what does this have to do with polyamory?

Last week I wrote about the power of cash and the impact of money privilege on relationships. And I said that we don’t owe our partners money. And I stand by that.

But I also believe we owe it to ourselves to take care of our communities. Which is why a percentage of our household income each month goes to friends and polyam partners in need, to non-profit organizations that make the world a better place, to random calls for help on the internet.

Obviously, not everyone shares this philosophy. But if you haven’t yet–maybe ask yourself sometime what you owe yourself in terms of taking care of the people you love and the community you belong to. Whether you come up with a similar answer to mine or a very different one, it’s worth thinking about.

 

(I couldn’t manage a Father’s Day post this year, but wishing the best to all the dad’s out there.)

The Power of Cash

Jess Mahler

I mentioned last week that for some people, entwining finances is less a matter of choice than of necessity. That necessity comes at a cost—the cost of autonomy and the risk someone having power over you.

The Power of Cash

A few days ago, I saw someone comment that they were solo poly because they’d rather struggle to raise their kids on their own with barely enough money to get by, then move in with any partner(s) knowing they could be homeless in an instant if they get kicked out. That this happens, often, is not addressed in general polyam discourse or discussions about money and relationships.

I’ve talked before about social hierarchy in relationships. Well, money can be a huge factor in that hierarchy. (Again, I am not talking about primary/secondary type hierarchy. I’m talking about the social status hierarchy that humans have because we are social animals. It’s a thing.)

In relationships with a large financial disparity—particularly situations where one or more people are financially dependent on their relationship partners, money gives power.

Many people would never use their income to take advantage of others. But in the US (with its almost complete lack of social safety net), you don’t need to take advantage of it. You get the advantage. And social safety nets are not perfect—even in places with a good social safety net, you can have an advantage.

Last year, my girlfriend and Michael and I were talking about her moving out here and all of us moving in together. It’s still an option, though I believe C prefers to move out of the country entirely. But one thing that came up was the huge difference in our incomes. Michael and I together make barely $10,000 a year. C makes multiples of that. In order for us to get a place large enough to live all together, the rent and most utilities and other “costs of living” would be firmly on C.

Now, Michael and I have two kids under 10 years old. Think about this: what do you think we would do to keep C happy if the alternative was being homeless again? Do you think we would let her have her way in a disagreement about how the apartment is set up? That we would avoid talking about things that upset her? That we would change our behavior in ways we didn’t like?

power of cash

You bet your ass we would.

C would never hold it over our heads, “do it my way or else.” She’s not that kind of person. But if Michael or I started seeing signs that she was unhappy with the living situation or our relationships, we would bend over backward to keep her happy.

And if we felt C wasn’t willing to listen and understand why her having money gave her this advantage, C would never know it. (Since C is someone we can talk about this kind of thing, we DID discuss it, explicitly, even while the idea of moving in together was only a hypothetical.)

In the long term, of course, this would be a disaster. Either we’d be emotionally wounded by constantly denying ourselves our needs, or Michael and/or I would start getting more money and start standing up for ourselves more—which would leave C feeling turned-on bc she would have had no idea there was a problem in the first place, or Michael and I would start looking for an escape route and get out, with C never knowing how exactly things got so bad between us.

Of course, it is possible (and desirable) that the relationship would evolve to where it would cease being “Michael and I” and C. But if it did, that wouldn’t change the power balance of ’C can survive without either or both Michael and Jess. Neither Michael nor Jess can survive on their own and they could barely stay afloat together.’

Now, if everyone living together is in a situation where they can barely support themselves, you get a different situation which isn’t as bad but is still not exactly healthy. At “best” you have a mutually assured destruction situation which means everyone is working to keep everyone else happy and looking over their shoulders worrying about “what happens if we fall apart.”

However, other aspects of social dynamics also come into play. If everyone is in the same boat financially, but two of them always support each other, they have an advantage over the other people in the home.

It’s Not All Extreme

I’ve been focusing on the extreme situations both because it happens a lot more often than people with enough money to survive comfortably think and because it’s easier to see the power imbalance when we are talking about the possibility of becoming homeless. But it plays out in other ways too.

Let’s say I start dating someone who lives nearby. We’re not interested in moving in together, just enjoy each other’s company. If I can afford transportation and they can’t, then I (because I have money) have more control over the relationship than they do. I can decide to stop visiting, can decide how often I visit, can decide if I pick them up or pay for a taxi so they can come to my place. If they want to go someplace and I don’t feel like driving that far, we aren’t going.

So, if I want to go someplace that’s a distance we can, if they want to go someplace that’s a distance, they need to get me to do the driving before we can go. Power imbalance.

And just like with the living situation, they are likely to agree to things they might not agree to otherwise to keep me happy—because if I decide that instead of coming over every week I’m only coming 2x a month bc it’s not worth the gas money, they can’t say, “Okay, well how about if you come here 2x a month and I go there 2x a month?” They have no room to negotiate or offer a compromise.

It’s About Consideration and Respect

So what do you do if you have more money than your connections? If you have this power over the relationship that they don’t?

First off, it should be obvious that you don’t owe anyone your money, your time, or a relationship. I’m not saying that you owe it to a broke partner to spend money on them. You don’t.

But like Uncle Ben says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In this case, the responsibility to make sure that you aren’t inadvertently hurting other people with your power.

What does that mean?

It means talking with your connections, acknowledging the power imbalance, and making sure that they feel safe talking with you about concerns and problems.

It means not getting resentful when you are the one doing all the driving or paying for the expensive restaurant that you wanted to go to.

It means not pressuring your connection to do expensive activities or making them feel ashamed because they can’t pay for a local Poly Cocktails event.

Perhaps most importantly it means making an effort to be sure that your connections are getting what they want and need in the relationship. They have an incentive to keep you happy that you don’t have—so you need to make an extra effort to be sure that you aren’t coasting.

This Isn’t Universal

Social dynamics are funny things. In my first triad, for several years almost our entire income came from one partner who actually had the least status and power in our relationship. He just got (unintentionally on my part) bowled over by my other partner and myself and didn’t know how to or feel safe asserting himself to us. It never occurred to me that he might take his income and move out (since we had a joint lease he couldn’t kick us out). If he had, my other partner and I would have been screwed. But because I didn’t think of it as a possibility, his power remained potential and not actual.

So there are times when the person with the most money ends up having the least power in a relationship. This isn’t a set-in-stone thing. But by-and-large, more money means more social status and more real-world power over a relationship. Especially when the people in a relationship aren’t married and things like alimony and fair division of assets will never come into play.

Remember: Power and Privilege Stack

If you are in a relationship where you benefit from couple privilege AND you have more money than your single or single-presenting partner, that gives more you more power than either money or couples privilege would give you alone. And people who are already getting shit from society—people who are trans, gay, people of color, disabled, mentally ill, etc (and especially multiple of these)—are more likely to be poor. So please, be aware of your power in a relationship. Don’t run roughshod over your partners without realizing it because you have money and they don’t.
This post is part of the Polyamory Finances blog series.

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Back to the Numbers: Finances and Budgeting for Polyam Folks

Jess Mahler

After a long break, I am finally ready to start writing new posts again. So moving forward, Sundays will be a new post each week while Thursdays will continue with the updates and revisions of old posts. Michon Neal will continue posting hir thoughts and writings on Tuesdays.

For new posts, I’m going back to an unfinished blog series—Finances and Budgeting.

Something I didn’t address when I started this series is that finance and budgeting needs vary depending on how much money you have. The choice to be financially entwined or not looks different for people with lots of disposable income vs people who can barely afford rent.

I’ve been on both sides of this. I grew up in a family with LOTS of disposable income. The McMansions of the 90s and 00s could have been modeled off the home my parents had custom built. And for nearly 10 years I’ve been keeping my family afloat on less than $10,000 a year. We’ve been homeless, lived without heat, and had our electric shut off more times than I can count.

Financial Advice is Not One-Size-Fits-All

The vast majority of that time, the financial advice I’ve seen was written for people who have more money than they need to survive. Budgeting is a wonderful tool when you have enough money and need to figure out how to stretch it. It is not so useful when you have more bills than income, and your only bills are rent and utilities.

So that is where I am coming from writing this series. Some posts and suggestions will be geared towards people who have disposable income. Others are more for folks who are scraping for rent. Sometimes I will talk about financial entwinement as a choice people make. Sometimes I will talk about it as a survival necessity. Because it can be both, depending on your situation and the situation of your partners.

This post is part of the Polyamory Finances blog series.

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Two Things a Poly Group Home Needs to Save For

Jess Mahler2 Comments

Every poly home will handle saving for the future differently. For my money, here are two things every poly group home needs to save for.

(excerpted from the draft of The Polyamorous Home)

Moving Cushion

One critical fact of life is that nothing is static–including relationships. Many poly households eventually face the need for someone to move out. This might be a practical move–someone got their dream job offer in another city. It might be a relationship move–living together just isn’t working, or maybe a relationship is ending entirely. These things happen. They are rarely enjoyable, and the challenges associated with moving out and starting over can make the whole situation even more painful for everyone involved.

The moving cushion is a savings fund for when members of the polycule need to move out. Depending on your polycule’s local support network, financial situation, and alternative living options, you might:

Save up enough to make a security deposit and first month’s rent on a small apartment and cover basic expenses for a couple of months while a former housemate gets their feet under them.

Or you might have $100 set aside to cover the cost of a u-Haul truck rental and pizza for all the friends that will help with the move.

It’s whatever A) you can manage to set aside without hurting your day-to-day finances and B) you feel is necessary to make the move as financially painless as possible.

Having a moving cushion doesn’t just benefit the person moving, but the people staying. Being stuck living together when you really don’t want isn’t good for anyone. And you never know who will need that cushion. Sure, you may think that since your name is on the lease you’ll be staying put, but anything from a job offer to a long distance relationship that’s ready to become local as soon as you can move might lead you to leave your group home.

The larger the moving cushion you can gather, the easier it will be for someone to move out and the less tension and drama a move can create. My suggestion is to initially set a savings goal that your polycule can reach within six months. Whether that’s enough to buy a house or rent a u-Haul, it’s a place to start. Then discuss whether you want to keep saving, or whether what you have is enough for everyone to be comfortable if they need to move out.

Emergency Funds

Shit happens. This is the first rule of life. The second rule is: being prepared reduces the shit. Part of being prepared is having a pile of money somewhere that you can use when shit gets expensive.

Being poly doesn’t reduce the amount of shit life throws at us. It does, in theory, give us more resources for dealing with the shit. Unfortunately, many polycules who choose to handle their finances separately never think ahead to the shit that can impact all of them.

Say you and your quad have an apartment together. You’ve each agreed to pay ¼ of all rent and utilities and otherwise keep personal expenses separate. As long as everything with the apartment is good, you’re good.

But one day your landlord drops by and says he is really sorry, but he is kicking you out. His house burned down and his family will be moving into your apartment[This happene to my famiy once at a time when had no savings. Scary as shit. We ended up in a room at a boarding house.]. See, there is this little-known law in some places that the landlord can kick you out with next-to-no notice and without an eviction if he intends to take up residence in your apartment. So now you need to find a new place to live by the end of the week. How are you going to cover moving expenses, security deposit and first months rent on no notice? Sure, your landlord should be refunding your security deposit and rent for your interrupted month. But in my experience landlords tend to mail you a check two weeks after you move out. That doesn’t help you right now.

If you don’t have an emergency savings fund for your polycule (or possibly a large enough moving fund), you will likely end up frantically getting in touch with friends and family for a place to crash. Anyone with individual savings is going to need to dip into that. Anyone without individual savings is either relying on the rest of the polycule (which may be against financial independence boundaries for some people) or out of luck. If things get really bad, someone may end up in a homeless shelter. The chances of all of you getting a new place together in that short a time period is not going to be good unless you are all very well off financially.

On a less extreme level: it’s the middle of summer. Your window air conditioner breaks and your home is quickly approaching triple digit temperatures. If members of your polycule are financially well off, replacing it won’t be a problem. For a lot of families, coming up with several hundred dollars on short notice isn’t easy–or even possible.

The best way to prevent problems like this is to create a household emergency fund. Like the rent and utilities, everyone in the polycule will contribute to the emergency fund each month. Set a savings goal. You probably don’t need the “three months expenses” that a lot of US economists like to recommend. And you probably wouldn’t be able to save up that much in a reasonable amount of time anyway. As with the moving cushion, set a reasonable savings goal, and a reasonable time limit to meet that goal in. What is reasonable will depend on typical expenses in your area, your polycule’s financial situation, and other factors. Once you reach your goal, you can discuss if you want to keep saving more, or stop saving until you need to spend from the fund.

Budgeting with a House Spouse

Jess Mahler

For many families, having a “house spouse” can make keeping up with the housework (and, if you have them, children!) easier. Everyone in your home can juggle schedules do manage child care and scramble to do laundry and cleaning on your days off. Or one person can take responsibility for laundry, cleaning, cooking, childcare, and other household needs.

Having a house spouse can help a family in many ways. The one way it definitely hurts is finances. In fact, having a house spouse creates several financial challenges:

  • Reduces household income
  • Restricts options for budgeting
  • House spouse is dependent on other family members for their financial needs

The first challenge is the simplest. Either the other adults in the family are bringing in enough money for one person to stay home as a house spouse or they aren’t. There are ways around this, including have a part-time house spouse. More on that later.

Now, as for budgeting, the big issue is the house spouse doesn’t have a salary, so they can’t help pay the bills. Any budgeting plan based on everyone in the family pitching in immediately has a problem. Assuming the house spouse doesn’t have any income, as is traditional, you need a budget that doesn’t require everyone to pay part of it. This means things like “even split” don’t work, but “all-in” and “percentage split” can. Before your polycule decides to have a house spouse, make sure everyone is on board with the necessary budget and shared expense plan.

The house spouse being dependent on everyone else is the most overlooked problem. It’s also the biggest one. A house spouse takes a major hit financially, especially if they aren’t legally married to someone who works. They don’t have money to pay for their own phone, their own car, their own dates, or even their own clothes. They can’t get health insurance or a retirement plan through an employer (though the latter is becoming rare in the US anyway). Perhaps most importantly, they have no funds to move out if the relationship becomes unhealthy. I’ve spoken with more than one secondary who moved in with a primary couple, leaving their job to do so, and found themselves trapped. It’s a bad situation to be in.

Part-Time House Spouse

With modern cleaning appliances, housework no longer needs to be a full-time job. If you have things like a good vacuum cleaner and a dishwasher, you can keep many homes clean in 2-3 hours work a day. Cooking, laundry, and paperwork add to that, but for many people being a house spouse can be a part-time job. Which means it is possible for a house spouse to have another part-time job outside the house.

This allows the house spouse to have their own income for their own needs (if you’re budget isn’t “All-in”). The house spouse can also put money towards the household, increasing the total household budget and making it easier to afford a house spouse.

Being a part-time house spouse can be a good option for something who wants to start a home business. They can split their time between the home and their business, and adjust the balance as needed. If the business takes off, they may need to give up being house spouse.

If your family decides a part-time house spouse is the way to go, keep an eye on the time. A part-time job is just that—part-time. If housework ends up taking more than 25 hours a week or so, the rest of the family should pitch in.

The House Spouse Salary

If you have kids, being a house spouse can become a full-time job. Prepping for school, helping with homework, getting kids to and from afterschool activities all take time. Pre-school aged kids take more time.

For some house spouses, the extra time those modern appliances provide means more time for other household needs. In some families, a house spouse makes soap, clothes, tomato sauce, and other necessities that most of us buy at the store. These tasks may save the family money, better suit a family’s values, add to the personal feel of the home, and much more. This type of house spouse work can easily be a full-time job.

And not everyone has those modern appliances. My family doesn’t have a dishwasher. We don’t have a washer and dryer at home. I can’t pop a load in and work while it runs. Doing the weekly laundry take 3 hours out of my day. If you don’t have a car, food shopping, picking up medication at the pharmacy, or getting to the school for a parent-teacher conference all take a lot longer. Again, making housework a full-time job.

If the housework is a full-time job for your family, you might give your house spouse a salary. This gives the house spouse some financial independence and makes it possible for them to contribute to the budget. I first heard this idea from a woman I did a joint presentation with at Atlanta Poly Weekend, and I thought it was genius. (I’m embarrassed to say I no longer remember their name.) It does make having a house spouse more expensive, but it solves all the other problems.

Simply, the family agrees on what is a reasonable salary for the house spouse. Other adult family members pitch in to pay the house spouse as part of paying the other household bills. The house spouse then has money to put towards their needs and to put toward the rest of the household bills like rent, utilities, etc.

“All-in” budgeting

Finally, you can have full joint finances. Everyone puts all their money in a big pot. The pot covers household needs and individual needs. Everyone, including the house spouse, has their needs covered from the joint funds. Household bills get paid the same regardless of whether or not the house spouse has any money to put in. Having someone stay home as a house spouse is not an extra expense on the budget (as paying a house spouse salary would be). However, the budget still needs to cover all expenses with one less paycheck coming in.

Guest Post: How Separate Bank Accounts Helped Make Our Open Marriage Work

Jess Mahler4 Comments

When my wife Jane and I got married, two years after we met, we chose to combine all of our money together. This worked for us because we were (relatively) young, we had no previous marriages or kids or significant assets, and we knew we wanted to entwine our lives in a way that would emphasize joint-decision making about the big questions in life. And almost all big questions ultimately involve financial decisions at some point.

Over time, we realized that we each wanted more financial freedom. Our one-account-fits-all plan required us to authorize every purchase with the other person. We were never quite sure when it was “OK” to spend money on ourselves – and how much money was OK to spend. Neither of us wanted to police the other’s expenditures. At the same time, we were just starting a family and had recently moved into a new house, and we were operating on a tight budget. We knew that joint decision making around money would be essential to making sure our lives worked.

Our solution was to create separate small bank accounts for each of us, into which a fixed allowance was directly deposited each month. These were our non-accountability accounts. They allowed us to spend money on whatever we wished, no matter how impetuous or frivolous, without having to answer to the other person. I used mine to buy a weekend trip with friends; Jane used hers to join a martial arts gym.

We settled on a monthly transfer that equaled about 5% of our take-home pay for each of us – enough to have a little fun, but not so much as to jeopardize our family’s finances. Our accounts provided a concrete figure about what was reasonable to spend personally. Dipping into the main account was forbidden; that was for family business. We could spend everything we had in our own accounts, but if they ran out of money, there would be no more nights out with friends or Vegas benders until we saved up.

What Happened When We Opened Our Marriage

Seven years into our marriage, we opened our relationship and began seeing other people. Our financial system hadn’t been designed with polyamory in mind, but it fit perfectly into our new adventure. I was the first to draw on my account, using it to splurge on a fancy hotel room with a new lover. Jane used hers to take a boyfriend out to dinner. All the while, our financial life together remained well protected even as we made small splurges on other partners.

Our system had another benefit: it meant that the gifts we gave to each other were more meaningful, because they were coming from us personally rather than from an abstract family bank account. When I took Jane out on a date, I was drawing from a limited supply of money I could have chosen to spend on something else.

We still use our financial system, and it’s an important part of the foundation for our open marriage. Even though we designed it while we were still monogamous, it incorporated the same values that drew us to polyamory. It provided a shared understanding with clear rules, but also gave us each freedom to create our own “space” within our shared life together. And to us, that’s what poly is all about.

About Zev Stone

Zev StoneZev Stone is a writer and researcher and the founder of OpenMarriageProject.com. His writing has been read aloud on NPR’s “This I Believe” and published in the Denver Post and other academic and popular publications. He loves hiking, running, uncomfortable travel experiences, and raising his two adorable daughters with his wife, Jane. He holds a Ph.D. in social science research methods from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

This guest post is part of the Polyamory Finances blog series.