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AbstractAdults differ in the extent to which they find spending money to be distressing; "tightwads" find spending money painful, and "spendthrifts" do not find spending painful enough. This affective dimension has been reliably measured in adults and predicts a variety of important financial behaviors and outcomes (e.g., saving behavior and credit scores). Although children's financial behavior has also received attention, feelings about spending have not been studied in children, as they have in adults. We measured the spendthrift–tightwad (ST–TW) construct in children for the first time, with a sample of 5‐ to 10‐year‐old children (N = 225). Children across the entire age range were able to reliably report on their affective responses to spending and saving, and children's ST–TW scores were related to parent reports of children's temperament and financial behavior. Further, children's ST–TW scores were predictive of whether they chose to save or spend money in the lab, even after controlling for age and how much they liked the offered items. Our novel findings—that children's feelings about spending and saving can be measured from an early age and relate to their behavior with money—are discussed with regard to theoretical and practical implications. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract
When a romantic relationship becomes serious, partners often confront a foundational decision about how to organize their personal finances: pool money together or keep things separate? In a six-wave longitudinal experiment, we investigated whether randomly assigning engaged or newlywed couples to merge their money in a joint bank account increases relationship quality over time. Whereas couples assigned to keep their money in separate accounts or to a no-intervention condition exhibited the normative decline in relationship quality across the first 2 years of marriage, couples assigned to merge money in a joint account sustained strong relationship quality throughout. The effect of bank account structure on relationship quality is multiply determined. We examine—and find support for—three potential mechanisms using both experimental and correlational methods: merging finances (1) improves how partners feel about how they handle money, (2) promotes financial goal alignment, and (3) sustains communal norm adherence (e.g., responding to each other's needs without expectations of reciprocity). While prior research has documented a correlation between financial interdependence and relationship quality, our research offers the first experimental evidence that increasing financial interdependence helps newlyweds preserve stronger relationship quality throughout the newlywed period and potentially beyond.