Most people are fairly honest in the workplace, right? We certainly trust our co-workers here at Lucy Bristow! But what about at home? Well, as the HRnews website recently reported, new research suggests many of us Brits are lying to our partners…no, not about that, but about our spending habits.
According to a survey conducted by Paymentsense on 2000 working Brits, people are less than honest when it comes to divulging to their partners their income, spending habits and even the amount of debt they have.
Perhaps the most bizarre finding is that one in three of us don’t actually know how much money our partner earns. Not only that, but more than a third of Brits lie to their partner about where that money goes – the amount we spend in a year and lie about totals an average of 5% of our salary!
Interestingly, it’s lower-wage earners who seem to be more in the dark about the state of each other’s finances. Among those who earn £15-20k per year, almost half (48%) have lied to their partner about their spending; while those who earn £40-£50k per year were the most trusting, with almost a third saying they knew each other’s online banking details.
(Though if you ask us, monitoring each other’s online banking and trusting each other isn’t necessarily the same thing!)
Keen to know more, Paymentsense asked participants to admit how much they had spent on various expenses over the past year – and kept schtum about to their partner.
The biggest outgoing was ‘social occasions’ – ie. going to the pub – with an average of £454.96 being spent between both men and women. Men spent slightly more than women – £474.95 compared with £428.82.
The second biggest secret outgoing was ‘beauty purchases’, which was surprisingly similar between men and women! Between them, they spent an average of £439.82 on lotions and potions.
The third biggest outgoing was ‘fashion purchases.’ Women sneakily spent an average of £339.50 on clothes, and men £397.67 – making a combined average of £365.93.
Men were found to spend more money and hide it from their partners than women – around £160 more over the course of the year. But because the average male salary is higher than the average female’s (which is a whole other story), women are spending and hiding a higher proportion of their wages – 5.42%, compared with 5.04%.
And how do they pull this off? Some sneaky tactics include throwing away receipts, paying in cash, paying on a different card, and getting online orders sent to their work address.
So there you have it: some useful tips for how to hide your spending habits from your partner… (just kidding!).
If you’d like more cash to splash, give us a call or email to find out how we can help with your next career move.
