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A pair of elderly couples view the ocean and waves along the beach in La Jolla, Calif. More couples over 50 are living together (minus the marriage certificate) and for many money is a big factor.

Shacking up. It's not just for the kids anymore.

The number of people over age 50 who are living together romantically has more than doubled in a decade, from 1.2 million in 2000 to 2.75 million in 2010, according to an analysis of government data done by Bowling Green State University.

The 50-plus group represents nearly one-third of the approximately 7.5 million people of all ages who were living together in 2010, the researchers found.

But while young people tend to be testing the waters for marriage, experts say older people aren’t necessarily living together as a step toward tying the knot. They're doing it for the money.

“(They want to) enjoy many of the benefits of marriage without the burdens,” said Susan Brown, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who led the research.

Older couples may want to protect their individual nest eggs so they can pass the inheritance down to their kids. They also may not want to jeopardize a pension, Social Security payment or other benefit they are receiving because they are divorced or widowed. And they may not want to be financially responsible for the other person’s health care bills.

Some also may have a “been there, done that” mentality about marriage, Brown said. Her research found that 71 percent of older couples living together were divorced, and another 18 percent were widowed. On the other hand, she found, older people who end up remarrying are disproportionately widowed. (Brown has done other research looking at the surging divorce rate among older Americans.)

Tom Blake was 53 when his third marriage ended, and after the divorce was finalized he knew he wanted to start dating again. But he didn’t want to get married for a fourth time.

“I wasn’t looking for marriage, but I definitely wanted a relationship that was comfortable, enjoyable and non-confrontational,” he remembers.

Blake, who owns a deli in Dana Point, Calif., found that dating after age 50 was much harder than he had expected. His experiences eventually became fodder for a column and website that he’s been writing for almost 18 years.

Now 72, he’s been living with a woman for 11 years. They split their expenses evenly but keep their finances separate, an arrangement that he says has served them very well.

“What I learned for my own self was that I did not need to be married to be happy,” he said.

Some people prefer to keep their financial lives even more separate. Blake said he also hears from a lot of older people who are in long-term, committed relationships but don’t live together. He said some do that to keep the peace with their kids or grandkids who don’t like the idea of a live-in relationship.

Brown, the sociology professor, said the “living apart together relationship” is one she also knows exists but has had trouble quantifying.

“They’re very committed to each other (but they) don’t want to give up the autonomy that they have,” she said.

Although economics play a major role in these late-in-life relationship decisions, Brown said there are also noneconomic reasons older couples aren’t getting hitched.

Brown said some older women want a live-in relationship, but there’s something about actually getting married that seems stifling.

“They’ve taken care of one husband and raised one family, and they don’t want to do that again,” Brown said. “And they feel that if they get married that’s the underlying expectation.”

Click above to see a larger image that you can read.

TODAY.com and SELF.com Tuesday released results of an extensive survey we conducted earlier this year on relationships and money.

As we reported earlier, 37 percent of men and 56 percent of women acknowledge having lied to their partner about money.

Here are some other details from the survey of 23,000 online participants:

• More than 34 percent of men and women who have kept money secrets say it's because they disagree with their partner about where to spend the money.
• 32 percent of women said they have hidden purchases from their partner, compared with only 17 percent of men.
• More than 25 percent of women said they would pretend something was old when it was actually a new purchase, compared with about 8 percent of men.
• The poll found that about 70 percent of women and 63 percent of men thought that honesty about money was as important as remaining monogamous.

For a visual representation of our findings, click on the image above.

Send us your comments below, or on our Facebook page.

Related:

How much will you spend before consulting your partner?

Sometimes we keep money secrets, survey shows

Your abusive boss’s blow-ups may be doing more than just making you miserable. They may also be ruining your marriage, a new study shows.

We all like to think we can leave the tantrums and rude comments of bad supervisors behind when we close the office door and head home. But researchers now say that the fallout from all that nastiness can insidiously chip away at our marriages and harm our home life.

“It spills over and affects our families,” said the study’s lead author Dawn Carlson, a professor of management and the H.R. Gibson Chair of Organizational Development at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University. “It translates into tensions with your spouse. And that leads to poor family functioning.”

To get a handle on how bad bosses affect families Carlson and her colleagues surveyed 280 full-time employees and their spouses.

Participants were asked how often their supervisors behaved in ways such as “Tells me my thoughts or feelings are stupid,” "Expresses anger at me when he/she is mad for another reason,” “Puts me down in front of others,” and “Tells me I’m incompetent.” 

The researchers then asked participants to rate a series of statements from one to five according to how applicable they were. Included in the questionnaire were statements such as, “When I get home I am often too frazzled to participate in family activities/responsibilities.”

The researchers decided to dig a little deeper by questioning spouses about their marital relationships and the inner workings of the family.

Spouses were asked, for example, how often during the past month they felt “irritated or resentful about things your (husband/wife/partner) did or didn’t do” or felt “tense from fighting arguing or disagreeing with your (husband/wife/partner)."

They were also asked to rate on a scale of one to five how well statements such as the following fit their family: “Our family can express feelings to each other,” “Our family is able to make decisions about how to solve problems” and "Our family confides in each other.”

While the employees with bad bosses didn’t report problems with their families, their spouses often did. Bad bosses led to more blow-ups between husbands and wives and to families that didn’t communicate well and weren’t close.

What’s happening, Carlson said, is that employees think they’re leaving their problems behind in the office, but they’re really just playing them out at home.

“They come home grouchy, tense and irritable and that makes them more likely to start an argument,” she explained. “And when Mom and Dad are fighting that makes for more tension in the family.”

What workers have to understand is that a bad job situation isn’t just hurting them, it’s harming their families, too.

There’s a tendency for people to think they can tough it out for the sake of the family, Carlson said. But this study, she said, “shows the importance of trying to remove yourself from a situation like this because it’s not just hurting you, it’s hurting your wife and your kids.”

With the bad economy that can be a tough message for people to hear, Carlson said. “I’m not saying this from an ivory tower,” she added. “I know it’s not easy. But it’s imperative that you try to get assistance, whether it’s from inside the organization or without.”

Linda Carroll is a regular contributor to msnbc.com and TODAY.com. She is co-author of the new book "The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic.”

A new University of Kansas study indicates that men are more likely to cheat on their spouses during tough financial times.

Members of Generation X, especially those without college degrees, are increasingly spurning marriage in favor of cohabitation, according to a report published Monday.

Marriage is still far more common, with 58 percent of adults aged 30-44 married as of 2009, compared with 7 percent living with an opposite-sex partner, according to the study from the Pew Research Center.

But cohabitation rates have doubled over the past 15 years, and the marriage rate has plummeted among those without college degrees, according to the study. In 1995, 63 percent of adults in the 30-44 age bracket without degrees were married, but by last year that had fallen to 56 percent. Meanwhile the cohabitation rate doubled from 4 to 8 percent.

The cohabitation rate also doubled among those with college degrees, from 2 to 5 percent, but the marriage rate remained almost unchanged at 71 percent.

The report underscores the apparent economic advantages of marriage, especially for those with less formal education. Individuals who lacked a college degree but had a spouse had median household income of $65,800 in 2009, compared with less than $50,000 for those who were cohabiting or listed as living with “no partner.” The advantage held even when adjusted for household size. (The Pew report was based on Census data, which did not account for same-sex couples.)

College graduates, of course, had far higher median household incomes — $110,000 for those who were married and $95,400 for those cohabiting.  But when adjusted for a typical three-person household, the Pew Center figured that cohabiters actually had a higher median income than married couples.

Marriage still seems to confer some economic advantages on the college-educated, however. Only 2 percent of college-educated married adults aged 30-44 lived in poverty as of 2009, compared with 9 percent of those cohabiting and 7 percent of those living without partners.

Poverty rates were far higher for those without college degrees, but married couples enjoyed a significant advantage there, too.