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agonyaunt2022-11-18 04:14 pm
misbegotten) wrote in agonyaunt2022-11-18 04:14 pm
Money Responsibility
Dear Pay Dirt,
I’ve been married to my husband for nearly seven years. We are in our early 40s. Before we got married, I knew he had accumulated a significant amount of credit card debt in his 20s in another country from irresponsible spending, and had worked hard to pay it off. He was fearful about sharing even basic financial information with me, and when we moved in together it became a major source of stress because an unfair burden was put on me for covering our expenses. Early in our marriage, after much negotiation, he agreed to a joint account for our expenses and to allow me to use an online budgeting app to create a household budget for us. I’ve asked him over and over to participate in a shared budgeting and goal-setting process, and wish this was a shared responsibility.
However, it was like once he allowed me to have access to his finances, he gave up all agency whatsoever. He generally refuses to discuss it at all, preferring that I just tell him what he has available to spend each month. Not only does it make me uncomfortable to give a grown man who earns half our income an “allowance,” it also doesn’t work—he rarely sticks to the amount we can afford, and will transfer money between accounts if he runs out. He doesn’t seem to be capable of understanding that if he spends all the money in our accounts today, we will have no money for things we’d like to do in the near future, even when we discuss it. Inevitably the time will come when he wants to buy a plane ticket and I will say “We don’t have the money for that” and he will pressure me until I put it on my credit card (he will not open a credit card because of his previous experience with debt), or sulk when I refuse to pay for something we can’t afford. It’s incredibly unfair on me and has resulted in me carrying modest debt on my credit card that I can’t quite shift. I’ve also had to revert to saving money for big things in accounts he doesn’t have easy access to, which makes me feel terrible, even though I am transparent with him about what’s in those accounts and he is in agreement.
His refusal to have a credit card extends to any kind of credit—he balks at putting a utility bill account in his name, wouldn’t cosign our car loan, or even open up a pre-paid credit card, which was a solution I offered to the overspending issue. We don’t own a home, and if we choose to buy a house it would have to be in my name alone. Because of this, he literally has no credit history in the country we currently live in… When you run a credit report on him he looks like a ghost. We have had many, many discussions about how it is a form of financial abuse to insist one partner assumes all the financial risk and burden, and that it also hurts his future prospects as well as mine, but he is so fearful about the risks of credit that he won’t change. I love him, and he competently and equally shares many of the other burdens of our life together, with housework, family, income earning, etc. but when it comes to our finances I feel like I am alternately parenting a teenager/caregiving someone. People who know him professionally would find this shocking. How can we turn a corner?
—All the Credit, All the Risk
Dear All the Credit, All the Risk,
It sounds like your husband has trauma from past debt and overreacts to minor financial complications as a result. If he finds it overwhelming, it’s going to be difficult to just talk him into being more responsible for his own finances. This is the kind of thing therapists can help address because it’s not just about the money; it’s about the way he perceives risk around money. If he’s terrified to take on any financial risk at all, that’s not just about wanting to avoid the burden of it, that’s about an irrational fear that’s rooted in something deeper.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you should be the person who has to deal with it. He will likely need some therapy and handholding to get to a place where he’ll take responsibility in the way you want him to, but you can outsource the handholding. For bills that he routinely needs to pay for, you can set up automatic payments, and do the same for transfers to savings accounts—perhaps keeping a separate account for costs associated with things like travel. You should also meet with a financial planner, who can walk your husband through the mechanics of budgeting, and potentially, a credit repair organization that can help him understand why and how credit is important and help him build his credit in a constructive way. Don’t try to do all of these things at once, but incrementally, they can help give him a sense of control over subjects that he would otherwise find overwhelming.
Tell him that this affects you and your relationship, too. It’s not just a household administrative issue, and you don’t want to resent him for it, so you need him to make the effort to try these things. He also needs to do it for himself. If something happens to you and he has no credit and no way to manage his finances, it will be disastrous, and potentially affect other family members. He doesn’t have to figure all of this out at once, but he needs to make progress toward getting a handle on it, for your sake, and his.
I’ve been married to my husband for nearly seven years. We are in our early 40s. Before we got married, I knew he had accumulated a significant amount of credit card debt in his 20s in another country from irresponsible spending, and had worked hard to pay it off. He was fearful about sharing even basic financial information with me, and when we moved in together it became a major source of stress because an unfair burden was put on me for covering our expenses. Early in our marriage, after much negotiation, he agreed to a joint account for our expenses and to allow me to use an online budgeting app to create a household budget for us. I’ve asked him over and over to participate in a shared budgeting and goal-setting process, and wish this was a shared responsibility.
However, it was like once he allowed me to have access to his finances, he gave up all agency whatsoever. He generally refuses to discuss it at all, preferring that I just tell him what he has available to spend each month. Not only does it make me uncomfortable to give a grown man who earns half our income an “allowance,” it also doesn’t work—he rarely sticks to the amount we can afford, and will transfer money between accounts if he runs out. He doesn’t seem to be capable of understanding that if he spends all the money in our accounts today, we will have no money for things we’d like to do in the near future, even when we discuss it. Inevitably the time will come when he wants to buy a plane ticket and I will say “We don’t have the money for that” and he will pressure me until I put it on my credit card (he will not open a credit card because of his previous experience with debt), or sulk when I refuse to pay for something we can’t afford. It’s incredibly unfair on me and has resulted in me carrying modest debt on my credit card that I can’t quite shift. I’ve also had to revert to saving money for big things in accounts he doesn’t have easy access to, which makes me feel terrible, even though I am transparent with him about what’s in those accounts and he is in agreement.
His refusal to have a credit card extends to any kind of credit—he balks at putting a utility bill account in his name, wouldn’t cosign our car loan, or even open up a pre-paid credit card, which was a solution I offered to the overspending issue. We don’t own a home, and if we choose to buy a house it would have to be in my name alone. Because of this, he literally has no credit history in the country we currently live in… When you run a credit report on him he looks like a ghost. We have had many, many discussions about how it is a form of financial abuse to insist one partner assumes all the financial risk and burden, and that it also hurts his future prospects as well as mine, but he is so fearful about the risks of credit that he won’t change. I love him, and he competently and equally shares many of the other burdens of our life together, with housework, family, income earning, etc. but when it comes to our finances I feel like I am alternately parenting a teenager/caregiving someone. People who know him professionally would find this shocking. How can we turn a corner?
—All the Credit, All the Risk
Dear All the Credit, All the Risk,
It sounds like your husband has trauma from past debt and overreacts to minor financial complications as a result. If he finds it overwhelming, it’s going to be difficult to just talk him into being more responsible for his own finances. This is the kind of thing therapists can help address because it’s not just about the money; it’s about the way he perceives risk around money. If he’s terrified to take on any financial risk at all, that’s not just about wanting to avoid the burden of it, that’s about an irrational fear that’s rooted in something deeper.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you should be the person who has to deal with it. He will likely need some therapy and handholding to get to a place where he’ll take responsibility in the way you want him to, but you can outsource the handholding. For bills that he routinely needs to pay for, you can set up automatic payments, and do the same for transfers to savings accounts—perhaps keeping a separate account for costs associated with things like travel. You should also meet with a financial planner, who can walk your husband through the mechanics of budgeting, and potentially, a credit repair organization that can help him understand why and how credit is important and help him build his credit in a constructive way. Don’t try to do all of these things at once, but incrementally, they can help give him a sense of control over subjects that he would otherwise find overwhelming.
Tell him that this affects you and your relationship, too. It’s not just a household administrative issue, and you don’t want to resent him for it, so you need him to make the effort to try these things. He also needs to do it for himself. If something happens to you and he has no credit and no way to manage his finances, it will be disastrous, and potentially affect other family members. He doesn’t have to figure all of this out at once, but he needs to make progress toward getting a handle on it, for your sake, and his.
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Yeah, I'm not convinced this is something that a therapist and YNAB (or any other budgeting app) can fix, much as I love YNAB for me.
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Turn a corner by setting out an ultimatum, having him break it, and then break up, because whole man needs gone.
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