My father used money to control my mother, not giving her enough to keep her house nice and five daughters well fed, so consequently holding the pursestrings is important to me.

To his credit, he also taught us early how to manage our money by giving us a clothing allowance which seemed like an astonishing amount of money at the time, but resulted in us not bothering our parents about clothes and shopping.

In my own marriage my husband gave me all his money for many years, and that's the way I liked it. But once, when we were fighting, he decided he wanted his own bank account, so he would be prepared in case we divorced. So now we have two accounts, even though we can each access the other's. We are each responsible for certain bills (roughly 50-50) and each have our own earnings go into our own accounts, spending as we wish.

Once, briefly, I was sick of paying the bills and asked him to take over that responsibility, but he wanted to comment on and harass me about my credit card expenditures, so I quickly changed my mind. I don't micromanage or harass him about his spending. This is what works for us and for me. I have girlfriends who seem willfully ignorant about money, not knowing how much their mortgage is, for example. I could never understand that. Money is power. Money is freedom. Money is independence. Money is dignity. Money counts.