Couples In Korea & Money: How Much Allowance Do You Get?

“How much allowance will you give your husband after you get married?” Allowance? Husband? Why were these two words in one sentence, I wondered. When you get married in Korea, you might get asked some interesting questions about who controls the money in your relationship and if you’re the wife, you may be asked if you give your husband an allowance. This was news to me after I married my Korean husband and just had to learn more.

Who handles the money in the relationship in Korea?

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Bank of Korea Money Museum (한국은행 화폐박물관), Myeongdong, Seoul, Korea

Who gets an allowance in Korea?

I didn’t get allowance when I was growing up, but allowance or pocket money as my Korean students have always called it, was something that went along with children in my mind. Why would my husband need an allowance and why were my husband’s friends asking me how much I would be giving him? I had assumed there was some sort of mistranslation or I just couldn’t understand this particular question and I laughed it off multiple times as if it was a joke.

Do you mean how much money will I put into our joint account? No? Do you mean how much money I make? No? I’m not sure what you’re asking me. It’s not that my husband wouldn’t deserve an allowance, but I just didn’t understand why he would need one, he works after all and he has his own bank account.

Korean husbands and why they carry cash

A couple years ago when I was working at an all-boys high school, there was a party for one of the teachers. I forget exactly what was being celebrated, but during the dinner the teacher was handed an envelope of money and upon receiving it he put it into his pocket, patted it and said something about not telling his wife and all of the male teachers proceeded to laugh.

It seemed all of the other teachers/husbands were sharing some inside joke. (90% of the teachers at the school were men, by the way.) I asked one of my co-teachers what was so funny and he explained that their wives controlled the money and all of these gentlemen received allowances from their wives out of the paychecks they were earning.

Most of the husbands just used their credit or debit cards, but their wives could track that, so when they received these cash gifts, often they would go into pockets to have a great night out with their friends where they could spend much more than their usual allowance would allow.

Why do Korean men get an allowance from their wife?

In Korea, it’s not at all uncommon for the wife to control the finances. She runs the household. She purchases the groceries. She pays for the children’s after school classes and so on. Because of this, Korean men often have their paychecks deposited directly into their wife’s bank account (because joint accounts don’t really exist in Korea).

Out of that paycheck, the wife usually gives 5 – 10% of that back to her husband as an allowance which he can spend as he pleases. And this is why my husband’s friends had asked me how much I would give my new Korean husband.

On a sidenote though, there was actually a court case in Korea in 2015 in which a husband was only given W100,000 a month as an allowance. Because of that, he had to take on a second job to even be able to afford food for himself. The ruling from the court case established that an excessively low allowance from a wife could be counted as a fault for divorce in the country.

Korean Traditional Wedding Ceremony: Multicultural Couple, Family. Hanbok. Paebaek Ceremony

The Paebaek ceremony foretells the financial future

At our Korean wedding ceremony, during the paebaek portion in which the families are united through different acts there was a jujube placed in my mouth and my husband had to come and try to bite the other side. It was explained that whoever could get the bigger half was to control the money in the relationship. I won, but that’s neither here nor there. I found it intriguing that even during the ceremony to unite us there would be an act devoted to control over the money in our future relationship.

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