Quite a few people have found this informative and an issue that needs to be highlighted. [/quote]
Are you sure he was talking about the thread and not just typing out loud?
You know, I had a conversation with a lawyer friend last night and was surprised to find out that this is essentially true. In the case of divorce, division of assets is quite simple: You keep what’s in your name, she keeps what’s in hers. No small wonder that all the ladies want to control the finances… 
I let my wife control the money, but I’m glad to, I hate money matters and I’d rather have nothing to do with it all, besides she invests with far more success than I could ever dream of. according to her, we are doing all right and why would I question it, I love her and trust her completely. I would have no reason to stay married if I could only wonder if all my hard earned money wasn’t someday going to evaporate into thin air.
Having said that though, I wouldn’t trust most other Taiwanese people with a pet, let alone my money. My wife was hard to find because of that reason, I hope yours was too. I think you’ll have to win her over from the traditional Taiwanese mindset. My wife asked me if I would ever beat her when we first got together and asked me all sorts of testing questions about fidelity, finance and what have you, I can’t blame her from what I have witnessed and what I still continue to witness all the time. Marriage is a convenience for many in Taiwan, just like 7-11s and ATM machines, and if they stop working for people, then it’s easy to just go and find something that does.
trust is one thing, ensuring your financial standing for the future is another. just my opinion.
I let my wife handle money matters. If she cheats me out of it one day, then I’ll know what to do next!
- The OP talked about the females in his wife’s family talking about fears of men whoring, etc.
To this I say:
Don’t let the pasts and habits of someone else affect your relationship, your future, and your finances. WTF does some Taiwanese guy cheating have to do with you?
- 10K/month?
How about I buy you a few dinners a month or bring over gifts WHEN I WANT TO? Unless you’re crippled, and the wife is the only person supporting you, I don’t think so. You should have paid me a dowry according to tradition, but you didn’t.
- joint account/money control:
In the end, all the Chinese women I know, take control of finances. But that should come later in marriage, and when she actually knows what to do with the money (and she may even be better at preserving wealth while the man is better at creating wealth).
NB This is a marriage of 2 cultures: yours and hers. She has her ways; you have yours - Now compromise, but don’t give it all away.
It’s somewhat surprising none of this was talked about before jumping into marriage, but *&% happens. Don’t be a complete tool and be used like one.
[quote=“sandman”]
That gives me an idea. I think it would be helpful to have a serious area of forumosa – something like the parenting section – in which a respository of information like this could be established to provide those approaching marriage to a local with knowledge of the various traditions/expectations/common points of contention they might be likely to encounter.[/quote]
Best shape for the thing would be a wiki. Pretty damn simple to install.
I’ve read cultural gems in the 7 pages of this topic. To answer OP, i believe a mix of finding out what the real traditions are (yes the girl do marry OUT of the family) and communication on the his wife’s insecurities, along with a good deal of smart accounting and shared accounts should settle this down in happiness.
As i finish reading this topic, I’d like to point out how it work with “my in-laws”:
I lived in their house for over 3 months last year. As i did not have income per se (i was a student and was getting money from my own family), they refused even to consider the idea of me paying for anything. Their lifestyle included going to nice restaurants 3 or 4 times a week, a 4 days luxury new year trip with the extended family, frequent travels to Kenting in the best place over there…
They are a rather traditional family living in a small town in the south. I would consider them as traditional but rather educated.
They actually paid for the trip expenses of the uncle and his wife, who also happen to have used their car for the past 4 or 5 years. He lent them extensive amount of money when their business was short of cash and cash seems to go back and forth between the two families (albeit i, my girl, and the younger sister are lobbying for a bit more accountability). Another uncle screwed the rest of the offspring when the grandfather died on the pretext that he was the first son. He has been literally erased from the family tree and the two sisters made it up to the second son with their share of the heritage.
The younger sister has been giving her entire income to the family for the past two years (she lives with them), they are now thinking to buy her a car. She is soon going to be managing one of the uncle’s bushiban. My girlfriend (she has lived with the family until now) has been using her income to buy life insurance and to start invest, in her own name.
My girl’s older sister, who has been managing the family business in Taiwan for the past 10 years, has been paying every single expense of my girlfriend’s education in the US and UK. This includes 2 years language school in the US (where we met) and 2 years to pass her master in the UK. She is frequently having issues with her father over his management of the family’s business in China (he has poor notion of cash flows and getting paid on time). She extensively helps people in her Guanxi (albeit once again, we are trying to influence this to make it more reasonable).
Under these conditions, and since there is no son in the family, i would be more than eager to help them cope with hardships, or subsidize the younger sister’s foreign diploma if we were married. This would come with ties over how they use this money, but i do consider it perfectly normal and fair to help the family in these conditions.
My point is that while money can be an issue, these people are family, and we should not forget it.
It is also quite often easy for one to see what efforts one may be doing in the direction of the other’s culture, but that may as well blind one in thinking he is doing the most. A bit of lucid generosity (mostly intellectual one) is necessary here.
Um, no, that was the uncles and father who cheated.
I’m an American woman who was married to a Taiwanese man. He never had a problem with sending money to my mother. I wanted to do that because I did it before I married, as my mother needed it.
I took care of all the banking and money issues until he got all huffy about the fact that he didn’t think we had enough money. So, that month he took controle. He spent three months salary that month and I spent the next six months trying to get us caught back up! Before we married he saved every receipt and counted every single NT. He didn’t like my more relaxed style of book keeping and making sure all the bills were paid before spending on everything else. So, he thought I was squandering. And I felt resentful towards him for months and months for having to get us back out of the hole he dug.
My girlfriend and I always play fight and take turns beating each other. It’s nice.
This is an interesting thread because when the thought of marriage comes into my head, the 2nd thought is always money.
Right now we live together and have our separate accounts. I’m thinking that opening the 3rd account is a decent strategy. It shouldn’t be too difficult to manage because what are the shared expenses anyway? Rent and bills, or perhaps a mortgage in the future?
I’m also doing what Miltownkid mentioned, writing down every single NT dollar because I need to know exactly how much I’ll be able to save in the future.
Separate accounts are the smart way to go, IMO. My husband and I put our money together soon after we started dating, and had continued to do so up until about two years ago (after 8 years of putting our cash together). The reason we decided to split it was because I had ended up doing all of the finances and my husband took a back seat to it and ended up not knowing what was going on unless I continually updated him. That was fine, but it got old after we started to bicker a little bit over money before we went to study for a year and weren’t going to be working. For the first time, we started disagreeing about how much we needed to save and what was “ok” to spend. In the end, we split our savings and went independently from there to avoid future problems. It has worked a charm. We keep separate accounts but periodically put cash into a joint fund, which we use for bills and nights out and the like. It also takes the guilt away when you want to spend cash on something extra for yourself, for example.
I would also be wary of letting your TW spouse take complete control. I know of a certain mindset of the women in Taiwan to stash cash away in case something goes wrong in the marriage. I also personally know a woman who admitted to me one night after a few drinks that she had put a down payment on a house for her parents with her husband’s money without his knowledge. She said she had been stashing it away for a few years and that he hadn’t noticed. The amount was NT 300,000. In addition to that, she gives money to her family without his knowledge. Her husband trusted (and still does trust) her completely too, not to mention his trust in her whole family, who together seem to systematically pull the wool over his eyes when it comes to money matters (and other matters which his wife has admitted to me, but I won’t get into those here, I will get too angry :fume: ). So, be careful, lads… 
^ best answer. put half (or another agreed amount) into a joint account, use that for joint investment and purchases, and buy your joints from your own half.
Well this is not directly about mixed marriages and money, but I feel that what gets most couples into financial trouble is a lack of communication, and a lack of understanding of how their money is working or not working for them. The issues most individuals have is spending habits and a lack of doing a budget (most people have no idea where their money goes every month). I feel that both people in a couple need to understand their money and where it is going. Leaving all the responsibility to one person is dangerous and irresponsible. What happens if one person (the money controller) dies unexpectedly (yes it can happen) and then other has no idea what to do about finances or even where the money is, or even if they have control over it (here in Taiwan there is a risk of that).
As for giving money to family members, this is risky, especially to people who have demonstrated that they are poor with money, if I was married I would never just give money to my in-laws, giving money to people with money problems almost never solves their money problems. They need to change their habits first, if you just give them money they will waste it. I would want to know that they are going to handle the money “responsibly”. After all as a few other posters have said, it is important that you take care of you and your spouse first, then when you are in a strong position to give that is when you give. I know people will say but what about traditions and obligations. Traditions are great if they are handled in a responsible manner, I am not Taiwanese so if I eventually marry my girlfriend we will not live our lives 100% Taiwanese, if she demands this well I will not get married as it is probably not going to work
A lot of what people have said in this thread I feel, could have been solved with better pre-marriage communication and post-marriage continuation of that communication :bravo: . Be married is not always easy but when you can’t discuss money in reasonable ways well things will get tough. And financial trouble is the number 1 reason for divorce in N. America.
So in short everyone should understand their money and how it works (or doesn’t).