Every year around Valentine's Day, the conversation around financial infidelity heats up. Pundits start talking about secret credit cards, hidden debts, and hiding purchases from partners.
But credit cards and checking accounts aren't the only places that people conceal money from their partners. It can happen with investment brokerage accounts, crypto trading, and other forms of investing, too.
To find out more about this, The Motley Fool surveyed 1,500 American adults about financial infidelity and how it shows up (or doesn't show up) in their lives.
Key findings
- Almost three-quarters of Americans in long-term relationships (including those who are married) share at least some of their financial accounts.
- 37% of those who share financial accounts with their partner have an account their partner doesn't know about.
- Only about 6% of account sharers have a secret investing account and around 8% have a retirement account they don't share with their partner.
- More than one in five men who are hiding an account from their partner are hiding a crypto account. Men are almost four times more likely than women to have a secret crypto account.
- 51% of respondents never hide any purchases from their partner.
- Most people use their own credit cards or accounts to hide purchases from their partner, but 8% of those who hide purchases use crypto to do so.
- Men tend to be the decision-makers when it comes to crypto and investing, while women are more likely to be involved in decisions around retirement savings (where decision-making is split more equally).
- Secret financial accounts don't seem to be correlated with relationship happiness – people who didn't share accounts with their partner were almost equally likely to be happy or unhappy in their relationship.
Most Americans aren't keeping secret financial accounts from their partners
Among our survey respondents, 72% said they share at least some of their financial accounts with their partner (called "account sharers" from here on out). And most of them share honestly – among account sharers, 63% said they don't have any accounts their partner doesn't know about.
Of the ones who are hiding accounts from their partners, the most common types of accounts were credit cards, checking accounts, and savings accounts. You can find more details on these types of accounts and how people share them in "52% of Americans Say Secret Spending or Lying About Money Is Cheating."
Only about 6% of account-sharing respondents had an investing account their partner doesn't know about. Around 8% had a retirement account they kept secret. But 13% of our account-sharing respondents said they have a crypto investing account that their partner doesn't know about.
Men are 50% more likely to have secret accounts than women
37% of our respondents have a financial account their partner doesn't know about, but they weren't split equally along gender lines.
Among account sharers, men were more likely to have accounts that their partners didn't know about. 3 in 10 account-sharing women have a secret account, while nearly 5 in 10 men have one.
Secret crypto investment accounts were an especially interesting case – men were more likely to have a crypto account their partner didn't know about than any other type of account. And men were almost four times more likely than women to have a secret crypto account.
