Pin Money

Pin Money is an old fashioned gendered term for a small amount of discretionary funds. Though it can mean an allowance given to her by her husband or father, I associate it with a woman coming up with small sums on her own to do with as she pleases so her husband can't say anything about it.

During this time period, women were often not allowed to work outside of their homes and relied on their husbands for financial support. As a result, they had little control over their own finances and were given only a small amount of money each week for personal expenses.

To supplement this income, many women began selling handmade goods or taking in laundry to earn extra money. 

I've read a lot of books and articles over the years. When women inherit money, it tends to go into the joint checking account and get spent as fun money and frequently does little or nothing to give her more power in her life.

Historically, a married man's earned income was viewed as family money, not his money, and even the US military did things in my father's youth like give his salary to his wife if he was an alcoholic so she could pay rent and buy groceries. Checking accounts were uncommon and people got paid in cash, so if you had a drunkard, you just informed his wife she was to come get his money on payday.

Time has moved on and we are more inclined to view a man's paycheck as his money, not family money. This has its good points and bad points.

If you are a woman who is financially dependent on a husband, whether you stay with him "until death do us part" or not, you need to work on your relationship to MONEY. 

This is being posted here and not on some other blog of mine because America is very bad about shafting women. European countries do a better job about giving all citizens medical benefits or similar directly from the government and the US has ugly policies where women get medical benefits and the like primarily through marriage and it's extremely problematic.

When I was a full-time homemaker, I did mail-in offers on grocery packages to acquire phone cards so I could make long distance phone calls without discussing the high phone bill with hubby and I acquired some US savings bonds the same way.

The summer I flew home for a month with my kids to visit family, I took my small cache of savings bonds with me to use for spending money outside our regular budget so I didn't feel my husband had any right to say anything to me.

Long before we had a zillion delivery apps, my mother worked as "the maid" for some very wealthy people who had the abusive expectation that she could pick up stuff for them from the store without being paid for her labor. They only reimbursed her the cost of the items she picked up.

She would buy stuff with coupons, charge them full price and pocket the difference as her compensation.

If you are a homemaker and you are contributing to the family budget by using coupons and money is a thorny subject, I suggest you consider similar tactics.

If you aren't in a huge crisis, ideally you look for fairly easy ways to get a little pocket money for yourself. What that looks like will vary from person to person.

My aunt crocheted constantly and figured out what small items sold well at her annual yard sales. My mother took in sewing for years while officially abiding by my dad's edict that "No wife of mine will ever work."