When partners consider finances, when is it my money, and when it is our money? Guardian readers shared their experiences
A survey of about 1,000 Americans found that one in 10 would describe their partner as a financial bully. Our readers, however, insist that that might be a label easily assigned to a partner who is simply being financially responsible.
When we put out a call to out readers last week to see if any of them had similar experiences, we found that many of you wouldnt define the actions described as financial bullying. Instead, quite a number of you insisted that keeping track of your partners expenses was simply budgeting and being financially responsible.
Okay... but in all fairness, if you have a joint back account, and a budget, and one member of the party goes out and spends $250 unannounced on some superfluous item, then that's worthy of a conversation. And monitoring how much both people are spending is good practice.
There's nothing wrong with checking in, making sure that both parties in a relationship know how much they can spend on XY or Z.
My ex-husband routinely spent our rent/bill/food money on restaurants, taxis and other things we really didnt have the budget for. Finally I got sick of being behind on rent and always running out of money for food, and put my foot down. He refused to sit down and do a budget with me, saying Why dont you just do it? So I did.
I made a budget of all his personal spending, and finally I had to make him choose between taxis to work and lunch at restaurants, which felt bizarre and incredibly uncomfortable for me. He chose taxis over lunch, and after that, whenever colleagues would ask him why he wasnt joining them for lunch, hed tell them that his wife wouldnt allow it.
But not the way you mean: when I suggested he cut back on his credit-card use on the card held in my name, he sharply increased his use, increasing our debt to $23,000 in a matter of months. Thats what I call financial bullying.
A few years after we were married, my ex-husband developed a drug abuse problem. I was balancing the checkbook every month. He would take money out of our accounts to buy and sell drugs and not tell me. When the accounts wouldnt match up, he would berate me for not being accurate. He spent all of our money and ran the credit cards up to the max.
When we got divorced we had two credit cards, one for the home and one for his business that never got off the ground. The agreement was that I would pay off the family card and he would pay off the business card. Of course, he never did and the creditors came after me I wound up paying both of them off. My credit was wrecked for seven years.
Reading the comments here I guess none of the commentators has experienced this.
I have and it certainly was bullying. Talking about finances together is very different from keeping a tight eye on your partners spending and questioning every last penny. In my situation, this was coupled with a wholly one-sided approach to discussing joint spending which characterised what I suggested as spending on me while what they wanted as spending on us.
Been there too. Money I earned was our money, money she earned was her money. She was serious. She would get hysterical whenever I bought a magazine yet she felt she could blow hundreds in one shopping spree on whatever she felt like having.
I am in an arranged marriage, to a man who is self-made after a struggled childhood, with disregarded needs, as defined above. However, unless purchases are made to his own liking, he is extremely tight with money. For many years into my marriage around five I had no say in the type of food I ate or clothes I wore. My request for a choice of three types of breakfast cereals was seen as an attempt to cremate his money. My clothes came from Walmart or Value City.
When we went out, I was expected to eat at home, and could not have a $1 coffee or $1 hot dog in case I got a little peckish under the guise of saving money and aggressive savings targets. If an eggplant spoiled in the refrigerator, the spoiled part was taken and smeared across my face and down my arms, to teach me the value of money. The rear of the television set was checked for warmth on arrival home from work to prove I had been watching TV all day and therefore wasting electricity. My grocery shopping was severely monitored, as I made it my mission to waste money.
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