One thing you should know about your spouse

Talking money is often taboo with friends, but shouldn’t be off limits within your own household. Yet 43% of people don’t know one of the most basic things about their spouses’ finances: how much they make.

与朋友谈论钱是禁忌，这个话题只消在自己家里谈论就好。但竟有43%的人不清楚自己配偶的一些最基本财务状况即他们挣多少钱？

Four in 10 married people surveyed by Fidelity could not correctly identify which salary range their spouse falls into. About 10% of those who got it wrong were off by more than $25,000.

富达投资公司最近的调查显示，10个已婚人中有4个都不能准确的定位自己配偶的工资水平。这其中有10%的人所认为的配偶的薪水与真实的情况相差25000多美元。

It’s not just women, or men, who are in the dark. Both were wrong 43% of the time.

并不只是女方或男方对此问题不清楚。调查显示，双方都有43%的人不了解对方的工资水平。

"We were surprised how many missed the mark," said John Sweeney, a retirement and investing expert at Fidelity.

“我们没有想到这么多人不了解另一半的薪水，”富达公司退休和投资专家John Sweeney说道。

If you don’t know your household income, it makes it difficult to know how much to save and how to plan for the future, he said.

他说，如果不清楚自己的家庭收入，你会不知道该存多少钱，不知道如何规划未来。

The knowledge gap is getting worse. About 16% more people were wrong about their spouse’s salary now than two years ago when /Fidelity last did the survey.

现在越来越多的人不清楚配偶的收入。这个人群较两年前富达做调查时多了16%。

It’s not absolutely clear what is causing the spike. Fidelity points to two possible reasons.

到底是什么引起了此类人群的增长，目前还不是很清楚。富达公司指出了两个可能原因。

One is the rise in the number of people who consider themselves independent workers or self-employed. They’re people who may be paid based on a project, rather than receiving an annual salary. While there hasn’t been an huge surge in the number of people self-employed (about 10 million), some people are doing a lot of contract work on the side in addition to their salaried work. That might make it harder for someone to pinpoint how much their spouse is taking home each year.

一个就是越来越多的人认为自己是独立的工作者或是自由职业者。他们靠做项目挣钱，并非拿固定的年薪。虽然自由职业者人数并没有激增(大约有1000万)，但一些人在工作之余还在承包其他的工作来挣外快。所以很多人很难讲出自己的另一半每年到底拿回家多少钱。

Second: the bull market. The S&P 500 is up more than 33% over the past two years. For C-level execs with pay tied to stock performance, this could have pushed up their annual pay more than a spouse would have guessed

第二：牛市。S&P 500指数较过去两年增加了33%。现在C级执行人员的工资都和公司股票挂钩，所以这些人的年收入要远超过伴侣的预期了。

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来源:华尔街日报中文网爱语吧作者:孙梦光