How widely do you share your personal financial information (salary, invested assets, net worth)?
Spouse? Parents? Siblings? Kids? Friends? Acquaintances? Strangers on the internet?
Seems to me there are generational differences here. It’s weird to me not to share that sort of detail with your spouse/partner, but beyond that it’s a personal preference thing.
My spouse knows the details, as do a few brokerage employees. That’s it.
im with you on that list. thanks to college financial aid forms, my kid is somewhat aware too.
but for others who are close and if they asked, i’d consider sharing more honest info if i thought they could handle it.
like, i asked a CPA friend a question. he quickly deduced something and asked the question about income above $X (a threshold important for some sort of deferral). i answered honestly about the threshold.
I don’t share with friends but I’m okay sharing with anyone else. We are too competitive
From my end I’m fine sharing with anybody for the most part, but I rarely do. It’s moreso I’m sensitive to their end of the discussion and what they’d feel if I’m honest.
My spouse gets roughly an annual formal checkup of “here’s all the various accounts where we have money, here are their balances and my expectations for how they’ll grow over time”.
With all of you here I’m comfortable - I know that vastly you’re all in at least average or better financial condition and we’re all financial professionals to some degree.
With coworkers I’m typically quite vague, but there are exceptions. Somebody here is a coworker and knows my alias (and I theirs) and whatever they glean from seeing my posts, whatever. If I didn’t trust them I would have changed aliases immediately. I have had a couple of coworkers in the past who I didn’t mind being completely honest with, but they were people who I’d become out-of-work friends with.
I wouldn’t share my finances with anybody above me in the organization. I am a huge advocate of sharing salaries and if asked would do so, just not on a work Slack/Teams chat or other way that work can see it. I’d call/text you if you wanted to talk.
With friends in general, I tend not to say much because I’m fully aware most of them aren’t doing as well as me, or well at all in many cases. Example:
Edit: Siblings will never learn. My brother had a wild ride in his 20s and is just starting to build on a solid foundation in his late 30s. My sister is doing a little better but didn’t rise nearly as far above the socioeconomic status of my parents.
My parents get some detail but not necessarily everything. They’ll text me something like, “Remember it’s important to save for retirement! You don’t want to wait too long!” and I’ll respond, “Thanks Mom, we’re easily on track for retirement, I’ve looked at the calculators online and talked to an advisor (they love their advisor lol) and everything looks good!”
My spouse knows everything since she handles it all. My mother has a vague idea of my income and how our business is doing. My business mentors have a good idea. Otherwise, no.
Two of my neighbours over the years have commented an opinion on my finances. One was wildly low, the other high. The second one I corrected and told them I’m not that rich.
I share quite a bit with my parents, close friends, and a few coworkers. They are all in similar financial positions though, +/- personal choices, and the discussions usually have some purpose to them beyond chit chat.
Most people could probably guess reasonably well on a lot of this using some pretty basic lifestyle stuff that is easily known.
I don’t share with anyone beyond spouse. I probably make more than anyone else in my family and I’m probably the only one with appreciable retirement savings. They don’t need to know.
My parents were super secretive with their finances when I was growing up, so I kind of take after that. I just share with my wife basically. Though my parents have opened up to me about their finances now that they are hitting retirement and want to make sure they are in an okay spot to do so. Looking for a financial opinion I suppose.
Spouse. Don’t really discuss it all that much beyond that.
Doesn’t really come up in the office as we are all well paid. People just assume everybody is well off when you get to the higher levels (pay & bonus structures are public so you do know how much most people make).
We mostly just discuss investments from time to time.
Interesting. Your company makes compensation public internally, or is there some other mechanism where that info is public to a wider audience.
Its only internal. You can see the pay bands for the various roles and levels (actuarial, IT, finance, Investments, HR etc) and the possible bonus % results (depending on performance).
Spouse only
What normal married couple doesn’t share financial information?
Some people keep their finances separate entirely, which is often a fun surprise in the divorce when they realize everything is getting split equally.
My spouse obviously knows. I know his, too!
My closest friends know, they are also actuaries and I think it’s healthy to discuss comp among peers. The friends who are not actuaries don’t know, because it feels braggadocious, but if they really wanted to know, I would share it.
Some of my siblings know. My parents knew at one point.
I think I’ve also told a few people on here via PM.
and my kids knew back when we were applying for college
Our pay bands are published internally, and you can find anyone’s pay band, but they’re quite wide, because they don’t vary by profession. My role, for example, can earn a base salary anywhere between $142k and $212k, and that’s just within my geography, there are other geographies with their own ranges.
Bonus targets vary within pay bands, and those aren’t published. Actuaries in the same pay band all get the same target, but it’s going to be different for IT or marketing or legal…
It was somewhat similar at my last employer: wide pay bands by salary grade. Also you wouldn’t necessarily know someone’s salary grade.
Bonus targets were set by salary grade, but they were just guidance. There was a fair amount of manager discretion allowed when doling out the bonus pool.
Ah, we have a system for looking up all pay bands here, which is nice because I’m super curious.