'Let's talk money, honey': how to find financial harmony with your partner

Do you and your partner fight about your finances, or dodge the issue at every opportunity? Here's how couples can start to discuss it calmly

This afternoon I have to undertake a secret mission. The object? Two dresses and two glass tumblers that I purchased online in the Anthropologie sale. The destination? Greenwich post office. The challenge? To sneak out of the flat, pick up the goods, then sneak back in and get the dresses into my wardrobe without my husband seeing me and saying: "Woman, what is wrong with you? You could wear a different dress every day and not have to do any laundry until November! After Christmas, you now have more Bella Freud jumpers than I have jumpers full stop! Stop spending money!"

To be fair, he has never complained about how much of my income goes on clothes, but when I showed him a recent bargain from Asos - a full-skirted dress made from the same sort of fabric they use for wetsuits - I saw a light die in his eyes. His most obsessive internet searches are for beautiful, reasonably priced coastal cottages that we might buy and live in; mine are for beautiful bags that cost half as much as a house deposit.