M aking decisions about assets and debts
I think he did all the shopping around and then we sat down and agreed to what we wanted and went ahead with that one. She said she was happy to ‘pass it on to him and let him deal with it’ because: He does like to go into detail so I leave him to do it and get on with my other things. I don’t want that responsibility. A similar process occurred with decisions about buying and selling stocks and shares within this couple: Yes, he discusses it with me and then I go along with him thinking it can’t do any harm at the time. And in relation to pensions: Yeah, we would decide ... he would tell me about it and then he’ll say, yes, we’ve made a decision. The woman in this couple knew very little about their finances but said she was happy to ‘delegate’ this to him and he seemed happy with this arrangement too. The man in another couple also took the lead with decision-making. In relation to savings: [He] would do all the groundwork and say look, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that? He told us: I got the impression that [she] needed somebody to take charge of her financial side and she was quite willing to sort of leave me to it. These couples were examples of male-led decision-making (of which there were 10 in the sample) but there were a similar number of couples where decision-making was female-led. For example, the female partner in one couple told us that: I just do it and [my partner] just goes along with it. He seems quite happy. I’ll always talk to him beforehand and say, what do you think about this? But he does just let me get on with whether we save this much, we spend this much. And in another couple: [He] probably won’t have much of a clue on where his money is because I tend to deal with most of it.
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