When I told my husband I was writing this week's column on secret spending within a relationship, he turned to me with a serious expression on his face.
"There is one very important purchase I've made that I kept secret from you," he deadpanned. "Your engagement ring."
Women are most likely to keep clothing purchases secret; men are more likely to spend secretly on gambling and porn.Credit: Erin Jonasson
We celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary on Monday, so clearly I forgave him. Anyway, it was more accurately a surprise rather than a secret.
Australians are chronic secret spenders, according to a survey of 1000 people done by comparison website Finder.com.au.
Women are more likely to cover up spending than men, with nearly one in four admitting to secret shopping sprees. Clothes topped the list of hidden indulgences for women.
Yet men spent a lot more money in secret than women – $4596 a year on average, compared with $1476 for women. Men admitted to sneaky spending on gambling and porn.
When it comes to paying for secret spending, most people use cash (44 per cent), followed by credit card (26 per cent), and debit card (17 per cent).
Millennials are the worst offenders, with $337 a month in hidden spending compared with $249 for Gen X and $73 for Baby Boomers.
It sounds bad, doesn't it?
Certainly money can be a big deal in a relationship, and deception is a corrosive force. If you have joint financial commitments, it's essential that you are on the same page as your partner about acceptable spending, particularly if money is tight.
In a Relationships Australia survey of more than 2000 people last year, seven out of 10 people reported that money was a cause of tension in their own relationships.
I wonder how people are defining "secret" though.
Maybe those Millennials with the seemingly high amounts of secret spending are simply more likely to have separate finances because of their stage of life?
To my mind, there's a great deal of difference between secret spending and an adult acting with reasonable autonomy.
If you are deliberately deceiving your partner by using cash or a secret credit card, there's a trust issue.
If it's simply that you don't run every single purchase by your partner ahead of time, it might be totally within the bounds of what's acceptable in a modern relationship.
Surely there's room for a degree of freedom within a marriage of equals?
It has to be negotiated. It might mean that a set amount goes into savings and joint expenses, and you have carte blanche to spend the rest. Or conversely that you keep a certain amount of pocket money for yourself and the balance goes into savings and joint expenses.
It might mean separate bank accounts, a joint bank account, or a combination of both.
If you're living within your means, and contributing to shared expenses and goals, does it matter what else you spend money on? If you're not doing those things, then it's not really the secret purchases that are the problem.
Of course, if you have a gambling problem, or you are prone to erratic and expensive shopping splurges, then you should seek help. Whether porn is acceptable is a personal question, though sharing your credit-card details with porn sites is probably unwise from a fraud protection point of view.
I'm sure that my husband doesn't know exactly what I spend money on, but we have a shared bank account and he can look if he wants. If I buy clothes, I usually can't wait to show him.
We had an interesting conversation as we each wracked our brains to think of any secret purchases.
I learned that he has a habit of shouting coffee for his colleagues, while I revealed that I often donate to charity appeals and crowdfunding campaigns.
I'm not as frugal as he is, but I'm not a spendthrift either.
Transparency and trust are important but ultimately it comes down to financial compatibility.
Caitlin Fitzsimmons is editor of Money. Facebook.com/caitlinfitzsimmons