A few weeks ago I was having coffee with a friend – a super normal Americano – without extra cardamom-sirup or tonic water, I swear 😀…
We talked about our lives and that we should go on a nice holiday together again after we were in Corfu last year and laughed so much…
We talked about how much money we spent there… one thing came to another, and she said something so casually I almost let it slide right past me.
“Money stuff? That’s actually just Tom’s department; he’s way better with the German side of it.”
She said it the way you’d mention who takes the Pfand bottles back. Meaning not even a flicker of a second thought, but just… yeah… no discussion. Hmmm.
And sure, it’s not that I don’t get it… I do, really and completely.
I KNOW that exact pull myself, the relief of letting someone who’s actually fluent in Behördendeutsch just handle it, while you nod along, understanding maybe 60% (or nothing at all lol) of whatever letter just arrived ☕.
But something about the way she said it I could not just let go… so I started listening for it more.
And since I run our Espresso Coaching calls at fin:marie, I’ve heard some version of that same sentence from so many women, not only one clean story, but a real pattern.
One conversation in particular has stayed with me ever since, and I want to share it with you today, gently changed so she stays anonymous. I’ll just call her Daria here, you know what I mean 😊.
Act 1: “He Just Gets This Money-Topic-Stuff”
The scene
Daria is in her mid-thirties, from Ukraine, moved to Berlin about eight years ago for work, and is fluent enough to order a Döner and complain about the BVG being late.
But Behördendeutsch, tax letters, pension statements, anything with the word “Bescheid” in it, still makes her brain quietly shut down a little…
It’s easier to handle finances for a partner who grew up in the system
Tom knows what a Riester-Rente is without googling it. So somewhere along the way, without either of them deciding it out loud, he became the one who “does the finances.” He opened the Depot and he also talks to the Steuerberater, Herr Bauernschmitt (biiig loooove for those German last names 😂). He knows where the black-red Leitz-Ordner with all the important papers lives in their shelf with all their books (yes, we still need Ordners and real papers and stuff in Germany, no question needed).
And of course, that made sense to her. It still kind of does, she told me. As sure, he’s not hiding anything, or being controlling; he’s just the one who can read the letters without a translator app open on his phone – that’s kind of a hustle after hustling the whole day in your job before, right?
I want to be really clear here, because I think it matters: this isn’t a story about a bad partner. Tom isn’t one; he loves Daria and wants just her best, makes everyday fried eggs and stuff even before she can move one foot out of her bed –
– and your partner probably isn’t either a villain 🧛😂. No, it’s just one of the most understandable setups I hear about, and there’s a real logic to it.
Whoever finds the system easier to navigate tends to end up handling it. Language is just one more layer on top of everything else that already decides who manages money in a relationship.
What the pattern tells us: Woman can’t take action in emergency cases
Here’s what I keep coming back to, though: in Germany, 32% of women say they could barely get by financially without their partner, and among mothers that number climbs to 39%, according to a 2023 ElitePartner survey of over 4,300 people. For men, it’s just 20%, and that number barely moves whether they’re married or have kids (NOT only talking expats here).
For us, it depends enormously on the setup we’re in. And “my partner just knows the system better than I do” is a very specific, very common way for expat women to end up on the wrong side of that number, through absolutely no fault of anyone’s.
If your gut is telling you “this doesn’t apply to me, we’re genuinely fine” then I’m delighted for you, truly 💛. But what happened to Daria next happens more often than any of us would like, and I think it’s worth knowing about either way.
Act 2: Then Life Happens: Love ends and what about the money?
The scene
About eighteen months after that first conversation I had with her, Daria and her partner decided to go separate ways. Who thinks now, big drama – no, nothing dramatic, just two people who’d drifted, the kind of thing that quietly happens sometimes. Their daughter Emma would stay mostly with Daria; both of them were apartment-hunting; in Berlin… everyone knows how exhausting this is.
And that’s when it hit her: she genuinely didn’t know what she had.
Would you know what’s in your depot or even where to find the numbers?
She didn’t know the current balance on their Depot, or whether half of it was legally hers. Also, she didn’t know if there was debt somewhere she’d never heard about… or never read her own Rentenbescheid, and had no real sense of what she’d actually be entitled to in a German divorce, having spent years understanding maybe 70% of what got mailed to her.
And now she had to figure all of this out, in a language that still wasn’t fully hers – as yeah, Tom and they are still good, but still she didn’t want to ask him for everything anymore even though he offered help…
Now she found her: In the middle of one of the most emotionally exhausting stretches of her adult life. In this call she sounded super tired, and yeah – this is also why I was like: I will do whatever I can to make your situation better 💪.
Better be safe than sorry: have a Regenjacke in Germany, keep an eye on your finances
I don’t say this to alarm you, just because I think it’s genuinely useful to have in your back pocket.
Like imagining you are going on vacation to the Ostsee in August without a rain jacket… can go well – but maybe it pours out of a sudden, and you need your Jack Wolfskin Funktionsjacke – better be safe than sorry 😀!
So… roughly one in three marriages in Germany ends in divorce, according to Destatis.
And divorce is only one door this can walk through. Illness, job loss or yeah – let’s say it – a partner who dies unexpectedly… none of these are pleasant to think about, but any of them can leave you needing to understand your own finances overnight, in a country whose systems you’re still learning, in your second or third language. And yes, this is nothing fictional – those things really happen.
Even when a partner genuinely means well, “he’ll be fair” isn’t a strategy, it’s a hope. And a woman who understands what she has can advocate for herself. One who doesn’t can only wait and hope for the best.
There’s also a quieter number underneath all of this: the gender pension gap in Germany sits at around 27%, according to the BMFSFJ’s 2021 Gleichstellungsbericht. That’s not really about any one partner.
No, we are talking about this in fin:marie very often, that’s one of our main topics we wanna fight with Karolina: THIS is structural, the system was built assuming one earner and one person managing the household, and it still runs on that assumption whether or not you fit it. Super old-fashioned and super unfair.
And then I need to tell you: Add “I also never quite learned to read a Rentenbescheid” on top, and that gap gets even easier to fall into without ever noticing – yes, you simply won’t notice.
But yeah, as said… this is why we are doing this in fin:marie. To make you or Daria aware of those traps. To make your that you have your extra Jack Wolfskin-Regenjacke with you 🙂.
Act 3: A Door Closes. A Better One Opens, and It’s Called Financial Fluency
The scene
The last time Daria and I spoke, about six months after her separation, she had her own small flat in Schöneberg, her daughter was splitting time, classic: every two weeks with Tom, who always cooked the best Spaghetti Carbonara for her after his Italian mom’s recipe.
Yeah… it was okay, the developed a routine, but also it was still genuinely hard some days. I won’t pretend that part had a neat bow on it.
STILL… something else was true too, and it’s the part I keep thinking about: for the first time in years, she actually understood her own money. 💸
Why? Because she sat down – she had to – with a lawyer, with her bank statements, with her Rentenbescheid (translated, painstakingly, with a dictionary in one hand), and worked through it, piece by piece.
She opened her own new Konto (yeah she had an old one, which she opened when she moved… but time for something new). Then her own Depot, with her name and nobody else’s on the paperwork – FOR THE FIRST TIME – Yes!!!
She’s now putting €100 a month into an ETF Sparplan. It won’t make her rich overnight, sure… But it makes her someone who understands her own future, in a system she once found completely opaque.
Also she told me it felt strange at first, and then it felt like relief. I believe her, and I think you would too if you got there 💪.
The move that actually matters: Don’t wait with your money until S***t hits the fan 🤭
Here’s the thing about Steffi’s story, the part that matters isn’t that she figured it out. It’s when and how she had to – under pressure, mid-crisis, in a language she was still learning, with zero bandwidth to spare. This is – a situation – you don’t – want to be in. Believe me.
You don’t have to wait for that moment. Genuinely, you don’t. You can build this understanding now, with a coffee, without checking your ex’s Instagram Stories and seeing if he moves on faster than you… or running around and trying to find a flat in this Berlin-Circus with 40 other people lining up to have a 2-second glance at an apartment.
That, I can tell you, is a real luxury, one plenty of women before us never got to have, and you get to use it.
And I want to say this clearly: this isn’t about not trusting your partner, whichever country he’s from or whatever his relationship to German bureaucracy is.
Of course it’s not a verdict on him at all. “He can read the letters” and “I understand my own finances” are just two completely different things, and only one of them is actually about you.
If wanting your own Depot ever makes you feel like you’re implying distrust, you’re not. You’re just trusting yourself, too. And if that ever gets an odd reaction from a partner, that reaction is the conversation worth having, not your Depot.
So, concretely, what does this look like to become the boss of your finances?
Step 1 – Your own account. If you don’t have one yet, today, your name only.
Step 2 – Open a Depot. Free, about 15 minutes, no finance degree required. You’ve got this.
Step 3 – Set up a Sparplan. €50, €100, whatever genuinely fits right now. The amount matters less than starting.
Step 4 – Actually read your Rentenbescheid. Even, especially, if the bureaucratic German makes your eyes glaze over. What’s on it? What’s missing? What can still be built up? You’re allowed to take this slowly.
If you’re reading this thinking “I genuinely don’t know where to start, and half of this is still in a language I’m learning”, that’s exactly what our free Espresso Coaching at fin:marie is for. 30 minutes, no jargon dump, no pressure, just clarity, and someone in your corner (LINK).
And if you’ve already got the basics sorted but want to keep going somewhere less lonely, that’s what the fin:marie Academy is for: a community of women, plenty of them expats, who started exactly where you are (LINK).
Wherever you’re starting from, there’s a path to a Depot that’s genuinely yours. With your name on it, and nobody else’s.
What I keep taking from Daria’s story
✗ “He handles it” is not a financial plan. Trust is lovely. Trust plus your own overview is even better.
✓ Understanding your own accounts, your Depot, your Rentenbescheid, isn’t about distrust. It’s basic financial fluency, language barrier or not, and it’s completely learnable.
✗ A separation rarely announces itself. Roughly a third of German marriages end in divorce. Not a threat, just a fact worth knowing.
✓ Illness, job loss, the loss of a partner, all of it can change your financial situation overnight. Knowing where you stand means you can act. Not knowing means you can only hope.
✗ 32% of women in Germany say they’d struggle to get by without their partner; for mothers, it’s 39%. That’s a lot of women in a spot none of us would wish for, and none of them got there because they were careless.
✓ Your own Depot isn’t a vote of no confidence in your relationship. It’s self-care with a bank statement, and it’s genuinely something to feel proud of, not anxious about.
✓ Take always your Jack-Wolfskin-Regenjacke, while doing an Ausflug in Germany 🐺
The best time to open your own Depot was yesterday.
The second-best is today, and you're already closer than you think 💛 👉 Book now a fre 15-mins call with us!
