Earlier this past week, a new study for the University of Cornell reported that couples are more “satisfied” in a romantic relationship when sharing joint bank accounts, social media accounts, etc. Most partners from this specific study were also found to have almost identical spending habits as their significant half.
Assistant professor of marketing at the University of Cornell, Joe Gladstone, released a statement on behalf of his most recent experiment: “We studied thousands of couples and looked both at their transaction data, as well as surveys over many years studying their relationship satisfaction. And what we found is that couples who have joint accounts stay together longer… Things like how interdependent you feel with each other, how much you rely on each other, things like income also predicts relationship satisfaction because you’re not stressed and arguing about money.”
Specific statistics from the study reveal that a total of 62% of couples who share one account spend money in similar ways. Gladstone continued, “I think what the interesting part here is that when couples decide to pool their finances, they’re probably not thinking about what effect that’s going to have on their happiness, right? — They’re thinking, ‘I want to pool money because it’s convenient or because we’re getting married and this makes a lot of sense.”