Sir Kokok offered me a nugget of wisdom last night.
During our conversation, he shared that he and his wife have made it a point never to divulge their respective salaries nor even draw out a family budget.
What they do instead is list down the expenditures of the household and decide who among them gets to shoulder each one.
Should there be excess money, it doesn't go to the household but is kept as personal savings by each party (and the spouse need not know).
I asked him if it could be unfair at times, considering that the other might be shouldering a disproportionate amount of the family's expenses. Ever the fatalist sage, Sir Kokok went on explaining that, should this be the case, then if one of them dies, at least the surviving spouse will get more in the form of the deceased' bigger savings.
The beauty of this arrangement, as Sir Kokok would put it, is the flexibility to use one's own money without the other's interference. Say, one has to give or lend money to a relative on one's side of the family; one can do so as long as the household's finances are not compromised.
In short, there are no fights over money because nothing is common.
Pretty neat, isn't it?
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