I am married. My paycheck is direct deposited to my bank account. How do I get the cash needed to hobby without her noticing?

For the 1st 4 months of last year, I worked a lot of overtime, and had them send me those extra checks. She knew I was getting the checks, but I skimmed off the top before depositing.

I also had a health spending account. I would just pay for my medical expenses with my regular credit card, and then reimburse myself from the HSA, and use that for hobbying.

What do you all do?

I don't have to worry about skimming money to hide from the SO.  I'm sure there are many guys who have to do just that, and hopefully, some of them will share their secrets of getting their hobby money.

Good question for this board, answers will be very helpful to lots  of guys.

Swim

If you have a regular hobbying budget, you can set up the skim at the time of the direct deposit as a payment to another account as a bill. If you have actively managed stock trading accounts, then you can do it all through this instead. Fund thos or whthdraw quarterly to yearly and it'll be hard to pick up on routine inspection. If you have a business llc, you can pay from that and settle up monthly with a second transfer from a personal account, saying you're balancing. if you dont have an llc, some kind of utility, insurance, or business expense if you can.  

Explain the HSA thing. I don't get that.

However, if she's watching you that closely, she has any financial acumen, or you get divorced, any of this will likely be found anyway.  

and so on and so forth, and justify cash ATM withdrawals for same, only start to slowly build up the withdrawals over time so that you can skim some of the money towards the hobby.

f you have a stock brokerage you can set up a checking account there.  

Sell some stocks fund the hobby.  

I don't know what she spends on shoes, she don't know about my play money.
Don't ask, Don't tell.

Remember, she has to sign off on those 1040s too.

If she is at all astute about money, she could start asking questions.

I don't want to leave a paper trail.  When I first stated the hobby, I gradually increased my cash pocket money from each check.  NO, don't keep it in your sock drawer or where she can borrow from you.  I do not carry it all, I have it stashed in a safe place she does not have access to.  I build up my stash by same amount each check & might not play right away...  then I get a vacation or business trip or ??  opportunity & might binge.  My withdrawals do not correspond with days I go AWOL>
Besides the money, NEVER use a friend for a cover.  You need to create a loser schedule with times where you are out & about.  Keep in mind these activities must be real & make sense for you.  A gym routine is a good cover but not for me.  Some golfers or runners or bicylists, or model airplane builders...  Trips to home stores or hobby shops or locations can work.  One guy I know does RC airplaces...  don't know if he hobbiest but what a great cover.  Now she might choose to join you say jogging, so you'd best be able to pull your own...  but you need a cover where she won't most of the time.

If your wife does your taxes or your monthly household bookkeeping, then you're basically screwed. If not, then it's pretty easy to siphon off a few bucks out of any retirement/investment accounts into a new brokerage account that only you know about. If so, you're just going to have to skim cash where you can. I suggest selling some of your stuff on ebay/craigslist (obviously not your couch, but certainly that baseball card collection she gives two-shits about).

a rental property for play money.

The following is my understanding, and not necessarily correct. HSA is a Health Spending Account. It is looser than a FSA. HSA's I think are only available with certain types of medical insurance, maybe only high deductible plans.  

HSA money was direct-deposited into an account, pretax dollars, from every paycheck. In 2013, for a family, the maximum allowable amount by the IRS to deposit to an HSA was $6500 for the year, so $250 every 2 weeks. I received a debit card and a checkbook for the account. The idea of the HSA is to pay co-pays and medical bills with the debit card or checkbook. I did neither. I payed with my regular credit card, but kept track of the amounts spent. Periodically I wrote a check for the HSA to reimburse myself from the HSA pretax account, from what I had already spent on healthcare with my normal credit card.

It worked because my wife has not studied my online only pay stubs to understand each line of the deductions. She does pay the bills, but all she sees is the bank's statement showing the amount deposited to our checking account every 2 weeks.  

Going forward, now that I have lost the HSA with new insurance, I suppose I could just add another checking account to have a small portion of my check placed into. The fear of having a "secret" account is getting caught having an account only in my name. Banks like to always send paperwork to the house.  

After 9/11, the government made it more difficult to open a bank account. While trying to have an affair, I went to the bank with my passport, and mail addressed to me, but with my work address. That was not good enough. They wanted a driver's licence.

END OF MESSAGE

I moonlight in addition to my FTE and skim from that source (which fluctuates month to month with no predictability).  I "pay" myself first over a few ATM cash withdrawals, squirrel the cash away in an envelope in my briefcase along with my secret viagra supply, burner phone, etc. and when it's time for my monthly pipe cleaning I'm good to go.

All in all I find it's an excellent carrot on the stick to make me work harder. It takes me three hours of freelance to afford one hour with a $500 per hour provider.

I'm serious.  There's lots of well written books and other material out there to support the perfectly honest viewpoint that monogamy is not necessary or even desirable for a wonderful marriage.  Why pretend that you are something other than what you really are?  It took my wife a while to understand what I really wanted from hobbying, but now she supports my need for playdates and no deceit is necessary.  We're both much happier since I am so much happier and more satisfied.

END OF MESSAGE

I may be in your place eventually myself, but right now, I am just not sure how she'd take it. We've been married 23 years and knew each other for years before that, but have both realized lately how little we really know each other. I can easily imagine her reaction ranging from, "Oh, I figured that is what you were doing and do not mind," to "I will kill you now".  
With that degree of uncertainty, I am going with the philosophy of "what she doesn't know won't hurt her (or me)." However, that could change. She has dropped some hints such as," Are you more relaxed since your trip to Las Vegas?" and, "I think prostitution should be legal". I am still not at all willing to roll the dice yet, though.
 I only have 3 reviews and a few months experience - far from where you are.

Hey Jeff, very thoughtful honest post.  You might like to know that I began the conversation about extramarital sex with my wife many years ago, before I started hobbying, back when we'd been married not much longer than you and your wife.  I started out just by saying how much I felt I was missing out on the one thing I really felt lacking in my life, namely having some fun sexual experiences with other women.  It was making me sad, and making me feel resentful towards women in general.  She could understand that, especially since I had no complaints about enjoying sex with her, and had no intention of ever leaving her.  The hobbying actually came years later and she could understand and accept it.