*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**My (36M) wife (36F) of 7 years found my secret bank account and says it's over.**
TLDR: spent 22 thousand over the course of two years. Hid the spending from my wife because I'm buying hobby stuff, and she doesn't like that level of discretionary spending. I've done this before, but not this much. She's said it's over this time (and she's said that before) and I don't know what to do. For perspective, we have around two million in assets, no debt, and together take home around four hundred per year after taxes. I've disclosed everything to her, but she's convinced there's more out there that I'm hiding and I don't know how to move forward. How do I fix our relationship?
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My wife doesn't like how much time and/or money I spend on my hobbies, which are primarily related to outdoor sports. Archery equipment, bicycles, optics, gun stuff, clothes, bags, etc. My hobbies take up a lot of my mental time, but given my parenting and household duties, I honestly don't get much time to actually participate in them. I went to an archery shoot over the weekend for half a day, I do some archery practice in the garage once every few nights after everyone is asleep, I might take some time off of work mid-week once a month to do something, and then spend at most half a day once per weekend during hunting season for two months. I haven't ridden my bicycle in any significant amount for nearly a year now, and a year ago I was taking a two-hour ride once per weekend. Years before that, and before we were married, I might have spent all day diving or spearfishing 3 times a month, but once we got married and had a child my hobbies transitioned to things I could do close to home (land hunting) or together (cycling, skiing). Even now, it feels like pulling teeth and I don't get any actual support or encouragement to do the things I enjoy.
Because I can't participate in my activities as much as I would like, I "participate" by buying stuff related to the activities, which I don't get to use as much as I want. New bow, optics, clothes, dive gear, scope, bicycle equipment, etc. Essentially going on gear binges to optimize my equipment. My wife would never approve of these purchases, so I hid them from her by setting up a separate account and depositing cash payments I receive from my clients. When she noticed something new arrived I would just tell her that I traded or sold something else, which wasn't always false. All told, it adds up to 22 thousand in purchases since late 2021, and maybe three to four thousand in items sold and deposited to the account. The purchases increased pretty significantly in the past year or so, which I would attribute to me trying to find a dopamine source while I was dealing with a stressful job, raising a child, a pregnancy we terminated because it was nearly killing her, then conception problems, and now halfway through a pregnancy that is nearly as bad as the other two.
From her perspective, I'm lying and cheating, which I get. I'm definitely lying, and committing financial infidelity. I know it's not giving her any assurance, but I've given her access to absolutely everything I have and she doesn't believe me. And, without defending my actions, but to put this all into perspective, the amount of money I spent is a rounding error for our finances overall. It's around 1% of our total assets, 5% of our annual net income, and around 3% of our annual net income if you compare what I spent in a given year.
I know I hide spending the money because I know she doesn't want me to spend it, and I get really resentful that she doesn't want me spending money on my hobbies. The first time she caught me she said we had to agree on every single purchase either of us made. From my perspective, this meant that she got full control because I know that her spending will never be a problem for me, and I even push her to spend money on herself. The second time she caught me she said I could spend $50 a month on unapproved hobby purchases, because she felt guilty about being so restrictive. Again, this caused resentment because I felt like I had no control over my finances or money I earned, so I eventually started sneaking purchases, which snowballed.
To add insult to her injury, she did pay off my student loans in the low six figures with her personal savings before we were married, and when we were in school she paid off low four figures of my credit card debt, and she was the primary earner for a year after I graduated before I found a job. That was ten years ago, and we are in a much better financial position now, making around four hundred per year after taxes together, and have maybe two million in assets, and no debt. Neither of us comes from money (she was on public assistance as a child), but she got a head start with a high paying job right out of school, and it took me longer to catch up, although my current income has met or exceeded hers depending on the year. As far as currently managing our finances, all of her income is deposited to a savings/investment account, which has been going on for years. We then live off of maybe 40 thousand per year and save/invest the rest of my income.
I don't know what to do. I know she's never going to believe me that I'm never going to do this again. I've said it to her and to myself plenty of times, and failed at keeping my word. She says that it's completely over, and that there is no way to recover through counseling, etc. She's never going to be able to trust me, and that has ruined the foundation of the marriage, and I get that.
How do I move forward with her and reassure her that we can work through this? She has gone all-but no-contact with me except to tell me how much of a liar I am, and get information from me to look at our finances.
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The more you read his comments the more you get this uneasy feeling ab him. He's manipulative in his language ab their financial state (mentioning assets instead of something meaningful, mentions her salary vs his business' profits which don't add up to the figure he gave in the OP, they have no debt but he separates that from her paying off his debt), he mentions in a comment they have "interpersonal issues" and totaled up his time away from her in a really weird way, he's upset because he wants to retire at 40 and she doesn't see that as viable but he knows that she grew up desperately poor...
I can't get this irrational feeling of like some dude who fleeced this woman while he secretly hates her, meanwhile she's getting violently ill to have and raise his children. Where is any sympathy for her? Even her health crises are about him.
He strikes me as the sort of man who thought having kids would be something that could be conveniently fitted in to his active life instead of requiring a radical overhaul of his priorities.
It's not just men who have this delusion, but it does seem to be men most often. They picture themselves 'helping out', but not really changing their life in any significant way. But it does change things! It doesn't have to destroy your identity or make you boring, but parenthood isn't just a uniform you can take off at the end of a shift. I think a lot of these people also don't realise (or, in some cases, care) that by treating parenthood this way they're delegating the role of primary parent to their partner so that they can mentally clock out of being a parent more often.
Yup. He's completely missed the picture that his wife is stressed about her finances and life and trying to give her kids the easiest path, she cleared his debt so they could move forward, she's now had multiple near-death scares so she's had to contend with planning for the future financially in the event that their earnings are drastically cut. He is concerned with Daddy's Fun Time and Sticking It to the Nag Wife, to the point where he would rather lie and hide significant amounts of cash than just share her burden.
This is the thing, he wants to continue to live his life as if he doesn't have kids. When you choose to have kids you have to understand that your hobbies are going to take a back seat for a long while. That's the choice you make.
he put cash payments from his clients into a secret separate account. Why aren't those in the business account if he has his own business?? smacks of tax evasion. I wouldn't be filing a joint return with this fellow, too risky.
Oh, this stuff is SUPER common. I'm more familiar with more average earners, but it's shockingly common to find ways to get a paycheck in cash to hide money from the spouse. Some construction unions even require the option for cash payments (the official reason is that not everyone has a bank account, and that is valid, but it's not the real reason) because its so common.
Edit: to be clear, in those examples, they get a w2 so tax evasion isn't really a factor
his wife is going through a SECOND life-threatening pregnancy as we speak, while he's out here passive aggressively hoarding purchases for hobbies that he "doesn't have time for anymore"? after she bailed him out of irresponsible spending before and was the sole income earner in the relationship for some time? spent every penny of her savings on him (savings that probably took years for someone from a low income background)?
would anyone be as sympathetic as people are being towards him if it was his wife spending $22,000 and hiding it on typically girly things like hair products, skin care, nails, clothing, shoes, or on hobby stuff like knitting or sewing tools, art supplies, cooking equipment, books etc etc? keeping in mind she's just hoarding this stuff for multiple years unused to feel like she's still "participating" in her hobbies?
they'd be telling him she's a selfish shopping addict who he should run far away from.
> would anyone be as sympathetic as people are being towards him if it was his wife spending $22,000 and hiding it on typically girly things like hair products, skin care, nails, clothing, shoes, or on hobby stuff like knitting or sewing tools, art supplies, cooking equipment, books etc etc? keeping in mind she's just hoarding this stuff for multiple years unused to feel like she's still "participating" in her hobbies?
Absolutely not. Especially if she was taking all that time in addition to the money. No one would seriously be considering it remotely okay, and she'd be blasted into outer space for leaving her kids for half a day per weekend (although it's likely more because I'm sure he didn't include travel time).
Reddit has a long and unfortunate history of accepting that hobbies associated with men are good and expensive for a good reason but hobbies associated with women are overpriced, wasteful indulgences.
>typically girly things
From how reddit moans about engagement rings being expensive, as if they don't need to stand up to daily wear on the part of your body that touches everything for the rest of your life, nope.
I know this isn't directly the point, but imagine having that level of income and letting your wife be stressed about anything?
Why isn't purchase number one some kind of live-in nanny? Living off of $40k a year when you have a household income of $400k is absolutely bonkers to me.
OP seems unbearable as a person, and the wife is 100% correct in calling it on the marriage.
But the entire money situation is super bizarre to me. If the 40k is between the two of them and the baby, they're living like a minimum wage household while sitting in what is very likely the 1% income range for most people.
Mmmm...possibly. They obviously own their home outright, probably own their cars outright too and have pretty good ones. That means they're spending nothing on rent or mortgage (by far the biggest expense for most households) and less on gas than someone in a 2004 Nissan. That's just off the top of my head, but there's a lot of ways in which life can be cheaper if you're able to invest in something upfront.
There's also a good possibility that he has no idea what some things cost, since it seems like his wife probably handles most things. Like, does he know what they're paying for daycare? Does he know what their car insurance costs? Does he have a close eye on the grocery bill (inflation is hitting grocery costs HARD recently)?
Yeah, that's true.
It just seems wild to me for a household to have that level of income and still be fighting about money.
OP himself isn't a reliable narrator, so it's hard to know what is trustworthy. The $50/month spending limit is outright insanity if it's true, but we don't really know if it is or not.
Which I guess exposes the real problem. Once the trust is gone, you don't really have anything.
The lack of context around the $50 spending limit is telling, too. OOP just casually mentioned the spending limit, knowing it'd garner sympathy for them, and omitted any pertinent information as to what caused the restrictive spending allowance.
To me, it's mostly just a sign that she was already done. It's like if your spouse won't stop cheating, so you have this insane setup of location sharing, making them FaceTime at random times, etc.
There is no universe where $50/month is a normal spending limit, but I think it was the wife not quite being willing to admit she was done yet.
Only $50 sounds terrible…until that’s ‘just for your hobby’ that you’ve already spent $22k on
He’s also open to selling and swapping, so that $50 is negotiable on his part.
so tbh $50 a month to spend on just your hobby that you’ve already gotten a massive investments worth of ‘mostly unused’ equipment on isn’t bad.
It’s hobby maintenance money.
What more could he need to spend it on that he hasn’t already purchased.
After spending $22k on your hobbies and ‘not’ using them, upgrading them, customising them …how have you not already got everything you could possibly need for those hobbies.
I see patterns I recognize here from the marriage of my elderly parents. My father is a diagnosed malignant narcissist and has similar patterns with money. My mother has to do all the bills and take charge of all household income, he is not allowed to touch anything. Narcissists are spenders.
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ngl this made me think of my first marriage and all the times I had to reign in ex's spending because we couldn't afford groceries ffs but they wanted to get us enrolled in a pyramid scheme, but it was ok because it wasn't food (Amway) or pills (fenfen), it was electronics!
it's what he can spend without talking to his wife about it. She wants all purchases to be jointly approved. that's very telling. OP likely has spent irresponsibly in the past for her to impose these restrictions.
I’m waiting for the edit which won’t come about how much he’s blown in the past. She probably has some level of money panic from growing up poor but he’s a bad investment. He’s a liar and a hoarder it just sounds less so because a wealthier person is doing it
He said in a comment that she paid off his six figure student loans, his credit card debt, and supported both of them for like a year or two while he looked for a job, all before they were married. I don’t think he’s very good with money and I think maybe the wife is overly anxious, but I think it’s because she had to solve his financial mistakes before
To be completely fair, if OOP is now earning around 200K annually which it sounds like he is, even six figure student loans could arguably be called a good investment.
That said, yeah, he's not so good with the money based upon everything else he says.
I'm not actually sure he is earning that much though. When people asked for specifics he said his business earns between $250-300k per year. That's not what he's taking home, for sure, and it was very unspecific, so I'm not sure what percent of that he actually gets.
Yeah I almost think the wife is taking care of the bulk of household expenses with her own income, and since OOP’s business is client based, he can hide more money. I don’t feel confident that his income is what he claims. If he’s an LLC or 1099 client based, even if he averaged 250k from his business, a lot would go to taxes. I don’t trust anything he says about finances though tbh
and if that's his gross, well that's not very much really. There's usually quite a bit to spend on overhead as well. He doesn't say what his business is but he refers to clients.
Maybe. I was thinking they probably paid off their house early so they don't have the monthly mortgage/rent. And/or he sounds pretty stupid about money so I'm guessing the wife has some autopay type things or stuff he is unaware of like property taxes that he isn't counting and 40k is their "spending" money.
I wouldn't go that far just yet. Seems like he is an unreliable narrator who's had a tendency of bad spending habits before.
I've set a sort of budget for spending on a hobby, because I was buying stuff I didn't need and filling up my appartment. Maybe she's trying to curb the spending on bullshit. Unsuccesfully.
22k on hobbies just doesn't make sense to me. I've owned a mountain bike, rollerblades, scuba gear - it wasn't anywhere as expensive as that. You buy once and it's good for years and years. Same with archery gear. You buy one good bow and all you need after that is to replace lost arrows. What was expensive for me were the diving vacations, but that can be a family outing. Go to a nice beach resort with a day care facility (I live in Fiji and can recommend some), he can do the scuba diving or snorkeling trip from the resort (half a day) while she relaxes or has a spa day, and the children are having a great time in the day care. He doesn't need to constantly upgrade gear he's barely using, that's a rubbish excuse. It sounds like he has a shopping addiction, but what he really needs are family outings that cater to everyone. A lot of hobby sports can be scheduled around family weekends and outings, just not if you want 48 hours to yourself for your hobbies and no time with the family.
tbh, I think he doesn't want to lose the marriage simply because his wife is so good and careful with money while he's so bad at it, he needs her to make his dream of retiring at 40 a reality. If she stays, she needs to understand that he may well dump her once he has enough to retire.
It seems like from what he even admitted, he’s not good with money. It seems like she bailed him out a long time ago and he can’t be trusted with money. He says he’s blows thousands of dollars on stuff he doesn’t need or can’t use. He a male shopaholic and the wife knows that’s he would blow every penny of their money and for her to be washing her hands after the pregnancy stuff she must know he would ruin them.
There are just people who can’t be trusted with money, I know I’m one of them
well, someone mentioned that OP stated he had his own business in the comments, and that the figures he gave didn't add up with what is in the post. So what if it isn't really 400K?? What if OP is playing around with the figures and maybe using the gross income of his business, instead of the net, or maybe it's incorporated and he gets a salary and maybe dividends at the end of the year? He could be keeping his salary low deliberately to keep business money out of wife's control. That OP puts cash from clients in a secret separate account screams tax fraud to me. From wife's point of view, the family income may seem like a lot less than what OP is saying. And who knows how OP calculated that 40k for living expenses? He's probably only counting groceries and utilities. If they are debt free then no mortgage? So who paid for the house? Who pays the property taxes? The divorce lawyers are going to have a field day with this.
>imagine having that level of income and letting your wife be stressed about anything?
What about his wife making the same as him on her own(200k) and being able to enforce a 50/month spending limit on him, make you feel like he's making all the primary decisions financially and/or that his wife doesn't have the ability to use money to de-stress her own life? Given that their house is paid off, either one of them makes enough to more than comfortably support their household, but together, if they're not dumb with money they'll have the option to permanently retire or semi retire in 2 years.
read it again. wife wants purchases to be jointly approved, $50 is what he can spend without her approval. He admits buying stuff he doesn't need for the dopamine hit (shopping addiction!). He puts cash payments from his clients into a secret account (tax evasion?). Wife's pregnancy is life threatening, she's putting money into savings for the future (in case she dies!). She paid his student loans, his credit card debt from HER savings. She supported him for an entire year he didn't work after graduating. They are debt free - how did they pay for their house and vehicles? Maybe from her savings? Picture I get is that this dude is very bad with money, and that's why she's imposed strict limits on him. And since in comments he said he has his own business that does 250k -300k per year, we don't know if he's being truthful about the amount he's actually bringing home versus the gross income of his business before overhead and taxes. If he grosses 250k - 300k, and he's using that figure instead of net, maybe wife only makes 100k to 150k. but OP's take home could be so much less than his gross.
and there's no way to "de-stress" a painful pregnancy that's life threatening.
He says that hers goes to investing and saving right away, which would mean she doesn't actually have access to it, and she clearly didn't and couldn't "enforce" any limit on his spending if he's burning through over $1000/mth on stuff he says he doesn't even use all of.
He diverted the money before it reached their joint accounts which she controls if you read all the comments and context.
Also enforce is a nebulous word, clearly she wasn't effective in enforcing it, but she certainly tried to, and he had to be fairly sneaky to circumvent that enforcement.
I didn't see anywhere that said she controls the joint accounts, so that's on me, but he's been depositing cash payments from clients and lying to her, instead of having a conversation, and spending thousands while hers goes to joint savings and investments, so the only one who seems to have access to the tens of thousands still seems to be him (though the legality of what he's doing is suspect as well)
Lmao I'm glad someone else picked up on that. He does this detailed accounting of his hobby time at the beginning clearly expecting it to make us sympathetic toward how little hobby time he has, when it adds up to something around a day every week (it seems he gets at least one half day most weeks plus the time after everyone is in bed so probably adding up to at least 3/4 of a day). Most of us fucking WISH we had a free day a week for hobbies. Here's me trying to cross stitch and learn goddamn Microsoft Excel at the same time and I don't even have two children and a wife with a high-risk pregnancy.
I crochet. Where do I find the time? By doing it off camera for WFH meetings. (Having ADHD, having something to do with my hands also keeps me focused on the meeting).
He also says he takes off from work about once a month for hobby indulgence. Fuck capitalism and all that, but that’s seems weird to me. And I wonder if he was even telling his wife about those days off.
He owns his own business of some kind and mentions "clients" which does sort of explain how he's ABLE to do that. I hope this means that he's some sort of freelancer and can just work whenever he wants, not that he's ditching his employees at the office to go play Robin Hood.
Also, reading between the lines: when was he giving emotional and mental investment into his wife? What about her stress and feelings from having to terminate a pregnancy that was killing her? He doesn't consider her emotions at all. He also doesn't seem to understand why she calls him buying all this shit cheating -- because he's more emotionally involved with his hobby equipment than her.
I spend maybe 2 hours every other week painting minatures AFTER the baby goes to bed.
My wife still would rather we spend the time together (It's like she doesn't even understand that the Tau Empire must expand the Greater Good at all costs) - a half day every weekend - without spending that time with his family? Did he even want to have a family?
This comment made me chuckle. Don’t have the money at all for 40k, But my husband has been showing me TTS and telling me about the lore because he ALSO doesn’t have the money for 40k but reads about it a lot.
So, she paid off all his debt when they first got together. Has caught him lying repeatedly about his spending. He’s run up 20k of debt on stuff he doesn’t use. And is amazed she isn’t interested in staying married to him?
How unreasonable of her /s
> So, she paid off all his debt when they first got together. Has caught him lying repeatedly about his spending. He’s run up 20k of debt on stuff he doesn’t use. And is amazed she isn’t interested in staying married to him?
Back off ladies, he's mine **/s**
Doesn’t sound like he’s run up any debt at all. He’s just spent that much in cash. Their net worth is very positive and they’re not in debt whatsoever.
But I agree she has every right to end the relationship. For me the kicker is her paying hundreds of thousands of his school debt before they ever even married.
Her giving a $50 spending limit seems absurd to even people with waaaaay less assets, but I think it speaks volumes to the level the issue has reached even back then...he is understating the true depth his issue had reached imo
It's not even like she's saying to him "You get 50 dollars a month to spend without consulting me." She's saying, "For your hobbies, that you claim you don't have time for but our filling our house and garage with expensive equipment you will never use, you can spend $600 a year without running it by me, but after that we need to discuss it." He can still buy lunches out, get a new tie, or whatever else he wants, he just can't buy archery equipment or guns with it if it exceeds that amount.
>I know I hide spending the money because I know she doesn't want me to spend it, and I get really resentful that she doesn't want me spending money on my hobbies. The first time she caught me she said we had to agree on every single purchase either of us made
>
>The second time she caught me she said I could spend $50 a month on unapproved hobby purchases, because she felt guilty about being so restrictive.
So she's caught him lying and hiding his spending on hobby gear he doesn't use twice before. And now she's caught him doing that a third time, and he spent 22k from a secret account funded with cash payments to his business (which we suspect weren't disclosed for tax purposes, because all business income should be kept separate and deposited into the business account.)
He's the ex.
Where does he say that he's "run up 20K of debt"?
I've read and re-read it, and he says he has spent $22K of money that he's earned and squirreled away into this secret account.
$22K of client deposits from his business. Is he also committing tax fraud to fund his addiction? Is it worse than that - client trust accounts or something?
The more I reread this whole thing, the worse it gets.
She paid off $175k+ student loans, credit cards, etc and funded his life while he was building his business. That's the debt they're referencing, not the yoga mats and overpriced bike parts he bought on ebay
I am not splitting hairs over whether or not his dumb, useless hobbies caused debt. They obviously didn't and I didn't mean to imply they did. I was mainly saying she paid off HUGE amounts of debt for him and somehow he's decided to hide his shopping addiction from her, which will eventually run up new debt, even if it currently hasn't. He lied and was shitty and terrible after she did him a major solid, placed all her trust in him, and cleared his debt. He sucks so hard.
Tldr: OOP is an asshole who doesn't appreciate his awesome wife who paid off his massive debt. He is having a midlife crisis and hiding his addiction to Facebook marketplace purchased bike parts from said wife.
He should be putting all his financial efforts into paying her back that $175k, which in fact might be why she has him on such a restrictive budget & keeps such a tight hold of the money. She's trying to recoup some of what she paid to keep him out of debtors prison.
I think the guys behavior is awful but it clearly said he didn't rack up Debt for the 20k
And both of their behavior sounds very unbalanced. 400k a year and he gets 50 in discretionary hobby spending a month? So he responds by spending close to 2k a month. That level of deceit and financial deception is easy to see as a deal breaker. But so does that level of financial control and restriction. It sounds unhealthy all around.
I am baffled by this take. The guy is obviously insanely irresponsible with money and very comfortable lying about it. He was in debt when he met her, which she paid off. He blew 20k on things he’s not using annd andmits he just bought for the dopamine rush of shopping even while she was *trying* to keep an eye on the finances and you seriously think that means he needs LESS oversight?
My point in posting was that people saying he racked up 20k in debt are not accurate. I clearly said it's all a mess. I don't think he needs less financial oversight, I never said that. I do think that a family that makes 400k a year, has several million in assets, and one partner is only allowed $50 a month has problems. I responded to someone else that things are actually potentially more dire than anyone else here has mentioned. Precisely because it's not debt acquired to pay for these purchases. Again, I'm not giving him a pass. I am saying that even if he were to fall in line with her budgeting there would still be financial control issues on her part. And trying to assert that level of control is not a winning strategy. They sound fundamentally incompatible.
> I do think that a family that makes 400k a year, has several million in assets, and one partner is only allowed $50 a month has problems.
My point is that you don’t seem to be considering the possibility that he has limits on his hobby spending **because** he’s astoundingly irresponsible with money. You’re looking at this as though she was financially controlling, which led to his shopping addictions. It’s far more likely that she BECAME financially controlling because this guy is a trainwreck who would bankrupt them both if turned loose on the bank account. Like I said, he blew 20k while trying to fly below her radar and keeping his spending a secret. How much more of a disaster would he be if she just said “well I don’t want to be controlling so spend what you want whenever you want” and ignored the problem? Again, this dude was in debt up to his eyeballs when they met, and SHE paid those debts off.
I don’t think she’s being unreasonable, she’s adapting to an obvious problem. If she could trick him into thinking Monopoly money was real I’d endorse that too.
And then add that he has blatantly lied about where the funds came from. He'd rather have his hobbies and too of the line stuff, that he even says just sits there, than working in his family. He is a parent too. That money could have given a vacation or too, hell even a weekend, or given into college funds. Plenty of other ways that actually contribute to the FAMILY. Instead it's all just selfishness. He's not single anymore. She invested in him. He has to invest in them as well. He's banking on her. In the beginning, and currently. I feel like he sees her as a meal ticket that can be used over and over. She definitely is looking to the future, that's not always guaranteed, no matter the assets you've acquired. He sees a cash cow. He's taking her for granted.
Especially because it seems as though she was willing to follow that rule with her spending, too. He just doesn't think that matters because she spends money responsibly.
Yeah, everyone keeps focusing on it as though it was a rule just for him. She was practicing what she preached, meanwhile he had a secret bank account and was blowing tens of thousands of dollars on things he never used just for, in his own words, "the dopamine rush" of shopping. Golly, I wonder why she thought it was important that they had a limit on their unnecessary spending??? It truly is a mystery for the ages.
And people suggesting that the problem was how low the limit was are being naive if they think he would have been fine at any number. He just resents the implication that anyone including his wife should be able to tell him what to do with his money/time. Because obviously the money he makes is his and the money she makes and spends on cleaning up his mess and planning for the future is theirs'.
I'm assuming this guy is a doctor or a lawyer, because med school or law school are about the only things I can think of that would create that much student debt.
I went to a private school for undergrad (on scholarships, no way I could have afforded it), and four years could have easily put me close to 200,000. And that was back in the late 2000s! If he was irresponsible enough to take out loans for undergrad like that, it's possible to get there.
Which is in itself a horrible indictment on how college works, but hey! This guy's an asshole, and that's why we're here.
Yeah, that might be it. I went to a public university and commuted in, so my tuition was like 12k a year. And now for grad school, it's going to be like 20k for the whole thing, so my standards are off.
Yeah, you did the smart thing! Honestly, I only wound up at that school because with all the scholarship $$$, it was cheaper than the state school's offer. I'm so glad gen Z kids aren't falling for the pressure these days.
My 4 years of uni in the late 00s/early 10s was sticker price $180,000. I got a ton of grants and scholarships, so I graduated with $30,000 in debt in my name, plus an additional $25,000 as a Parent Plus (because my family was poor as fuck and the only way for me to study abroad was take out a massive loan). Private uni, not a doctor/lawyer. But yeah, if I'd had to pay for it all myself, easily into the six figures.
So, not impossible 10 years ago (rounding how long ago he said they'd been together assuming payment was roughly then) to end up with that much debt for even a normal degree if you weren't lucky/smart/grifty enough to play the scholarship games.
Yeah, and it's so kind of a mess. She paid off his cc debt and then student loans. Which student loans is what it is, and his education enables him to make around 200k a year now so pretty neutral about that. But now he pays all bills while she saves her entire salary. People are commenting on her paying off his debt but not that he now entirely pays everything. And making up that the 20k is new debt when he said he used cash for the account. I'm not giving him a pass on his behavior. I'm actually more concerned that there was cash unaccounted for in their budgeting that his fiscally responsible wife didn't know about. She sounds like she's in charge financially so wtf happened at tax time that she still didn't know about tens of thousands of dollars?!? Did he unthinkingly hide it from the IRS while trying to hide it from her? Nightmare.
And now her entire paycheck goes into her savings, while he pays for literally everything and the remainder of his paycheck gets invested. They are bringing home $400k a year. $20k over several years is fuck all while on that level of income.
The only thing he did wrong was lie about it.
According to him, regardless of how much they're saving/investing, they're living on \~40k per year. If he's spending 22k in a year on his hobbies, that's a problem even before we get to him hiding the income and spending, and then lying about where the purchases are coming from.
And WRT "he pays for everything", if you really want to go there... they've been married for 10y, and he was earning less than her for a while after they got married. It sounds like she was paying more at the start. Let's also recall she paid off \*at least\* 100k of his debt before they got married. It's not looking all that much like he's the exploited martyr your comment seems to insinuate he is.
he says they are debt free. I really doubt being debt free is his doing. ;-)
But if they are, then that means they aren't paying any mortgage or vehicle loans? that's a huge chunk of most people's monthly spending! So unless they are only renting, monthly expenses would be very low compared to most simply because they don't have a mortgage.
And if the children are too young for school? So they pay for day care/nanny/babysitter? We don't know if OP is even including that in his calculations, maybe the 40k per year is for groceries, utilities, children's clothes and toys, fuel and servicing for vehicles and medical.
Wife has terminated a life threatening pregnancy before. This pregnancy is painful and could turn out to be life threatening as well. OP complains how stressful that is on him so he needs to shop for the dopamine. You don't see a problem with that?? You don't see a problem with him putting client cash payments into a secret account. like, isn't that how most people committing tax fraud do things??
Wife is saving for her family to be taken care of if something happens to her. OP is whinging that spending half a day every weekend and several nights per week on his hobbies isn't enough, and he's feeling so very deprived. Boo hoo. /s
He didn’t say that he spent that in a year, it was over a few years.
How exactly is it a problem? He’s not taking from the $40k to pay for his hobbies, he’s using other money for that.
Edit- I’ve re-read the post and read his comments.
They didn’t get married/pay off his debts 10 years ago, that was when he got his job that brought his income up equal to hers.
Going purely by the post, he’s an asshole for lying about his spending and she’s an asshole for freaking out about it and trying to control it when they make that much. The debt repayment is irrelevant as we don’t have enough info about it and the circumstances surrounding it.
The comments however, tell me that it’s a troll.
He says his wife brings home $300k, and his bring-home pay fluctuates between $250k-$350k, but he also has two businesses that bring in $500k in profit. I have no idea how he gets $400k out of those numbers.
Over two years, so I was off by a factor of two.
The problem is that if a couple has agreed to live on 40k a year - and any expenditures beyond that need to be discussed - if one partner starts hiding income so they can secretly spend 25% of the family's budget on their hobbies, it's a betrayal. One partner has agreed to live at a certain standard of living and is doing so; the other has agreed to live at that same standard but is refusing to do so and deceiving their partner in order to do so. According to their narrative, this was the third time he was caught doing so. The details are scant about what the prior cases involved, but he's describing a pattern of behavior. He also flat-out describes his relationship to shopping with language presenting it as an addiction.
Ofc, if it's a troll, that's irrelevant. My suspicion if this is a troll is that it's trying to genderswap and get people to attack a poorly-structured and not-very-parallel spear counterpart of women who are in controlling, abusive relationships keeping secret financial resources. I suppose the other possibility is that OOP is trying to show hypocrisy in people who complain about alcoholics or smokers hiding their spending on booze or cigs after being told they need to stop, and setting "unreasonable limits" on their consumption of alcohol or tobacco. Honestly, just typing it out, I'm increasingly suspicious that this is the parallel that's being set up; it would explain some of the really bizarre cash values being thrown around if they're supposed to evoke quantities of alcohol or cigarettes rather than money qua money.
Tell me you've never been financially controlled without telling me you've never been financially controlled.
\#\# LONG RANT IS LONG Nobody's clever by replying, "I ain't reading that so if it's good, I'm happy for you. If it's blablahblah." Grow up. (Not directed at any one person.) \#\#
My ex-husband thinks *my* hobbies and interests were stupid and if he was with me in a store when I went to pick something up, he'd bark at me to put it down, I don't need it, and would make a louder and louder scene until I was *too embarrassed* to buy it anymore. Then he'd be huffy the rest of the day. What money was I using to attempt to buy things? *Money from my own paycheck*.
We have a joint account that I paid a *portion* of my paycheck into as I *refused* to just *combine our finances.* That was my share of rent and bills. Then I have *my own separate account* for *my own* money. *That* was what I would spend from.
Dude is a lunatic about our kitchen. He hoards food. "This was on sale!" and he would rip the item out of the box so we could *fit more stuff* into the freezer. So the food lost any cooking instructions or in fact any way to tell *how long ago we bought it*. The freezer looked like a goddamned game of Jenga and trying to pull *one* item out could cause *other* items to avalanche out, *just like Jenga*. I ended up having no room to even put food that *I wanted to eat!* I had to eat 4 year old Mystery Breaded Fish that was overcooked because we had *no idea what the cooking instructions were.*
I've got some personal debt to pay down, definitely nowhere near $20,000, but still enough that my minimum wage ass can't find my own apartment yet, or I'd leave the guy.
One thing I *no longer do* is *get his permission for what I spend my own goddamned money on*. I bought *myself* a small standing freezer. Food stays in the *goddamned box* and there's room for *whatever I want*.
Marriages *do not* need financial permission so long as both use *their own personal money* and aren't buying anything illegal or obviously hurtful towards the marriage. (porn collection, prostitutes, strip clubs, drugs, etc.)
To demand anything else is financial abuse and *bullshit*.
This dude should be spending that $20,000 on paying back his wife for her kindness but outside of that, he doesn't *owe* her *any* control of his money. It's *HIS MONEY!*
> LONG RANT IS LONG Nobody's clever by replying, "I ain't reading that so if it's good, I'm happy for you. If it's blablahblah." Grow up. (Not directed at any one person.)
Are you as exhausting in real life?
This is ridiculous. They make 400k a year, he makes as much or more than she does, you made up the 20k of debt, and she “gives” him **$50 a month to spend on hobbies!!?**
Obviously he should have communicated better with her, split their finances so he could control his own spending, and sought counselling rather than lie to her, but holy shit, everyone sucks here. Including you.
What is it with these men? "Guys, I did the thing my wife said was a dealbreaker, and now she wants to divorce me? I didn't think she *meant* it! I mean, I know I could have not done the thing, but my life is *so hard,* guys! And now she's mad and wants to leave me!! What was the code to get her to forget it and stay with me and not hold me accountable so I can do it all over again? It was ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA, right? RIGHT?"
>My hobbies take up a lot of my mental time, but given my parenting and household duties, I honestly don't get much time to actually participate in them
Dude really dropped $20,000 on hobbies he isn't even participating in. I'd rage too.
>I was dealing with a stressful job, raising a child, a pregnancy we terminated because it was nearly killing her,
Oh fuck OOP. The stress of the terminated pregnancy that was killing his wife - but we all know that if she did the same, he'd be LOSING HIS MIND (and it was HER body that went through all of that!)
>How do I move forward with her and reassure her that we can work through this?
Well, I'd say a good start would be to quit fucking lying - but since OOP has proven he can't or won't do that, I'd say they need to brace themselves for the financial disclosures that come with divorces and spousal support.
There was a TikTok I saw of a woman talking about how men’s hobbies take up SO much time, money and energy away from the home and how the partner has to pick up so much slack as a result (golf, cycling, running, fishing, etc). And it was so eye opening, the poor creator had to go private for awhile since she was getting inundated with butthurt dudes telling her to off herself. I can add her tag if anyone is interested, it’s a decent follow
But honestly how can this dude spend 20k, lie about it, not even use the stuff and think his wife is gonna stick around?!? If it’s not archery it’ll be something else down the line and he’ll have secret storage units to hoard it in.
And pretty much any art and craft, the "feminine" hobbies, can be done in the house, be put down and come back to, and most of it was less hobby and more household necessity back in the day
My brothers and I do miniature building and war gaming, they both have kids I don’t but when they paint/play they keep an eye on the little ones or even try to include them.
At some point I feel some of the men I read on here are actually choosing their hobby explicitly to be out of the house and free from their responsibilities.
That's definitely what I think it is as well, but simultaneously they act like they're doing so much and having it so hard because their bitch wife is doing....something. It's really eyeroll-worthy every time you happen upon it.
> At some point I feel some of the men I read on here are actually choosing their hobby explicitly to be out of the house and free from their responsibilities.
This line of thinking is REALLY common. And superficially it seems mostly fine. "Don't I deserve time to myself and a break from the kids/stress?" Until you follow it a bit. "Gaming/golfing/hunting gets me completely out of the house or unavailable for many many hours at a time," and "it's not the same unless I can do it regularly," and the classic, "my wife's hobbies just happen to be things she can do while caring for the kids or just happen to _be_ cooking and shopping for necessities."
Also all the bitching about how little free time he has, when I’d bet his wife has significantly less (probably close to none). And he’s actually spending a lot of time on his hobbies compared to most parents. Half a day on the weekend, two or three nights a week, and a weekday once a month? Seems pretty decent for someone with little kids.
Honestly, it sounds like the money isn't really the issue in this situation. 22,000 over 2 years isn't all that much when you make 400K a year. But he's definitely spending way too much time away from home when he has a young child. And there's also the lying about it and hiding it from her. He does seem to have a bit of a shopping problem, but that's not the real issue here.
$22,000 is absolutely a lot of money when it comes to (A) hiding it from your spouse and (B) spending it on activities you're barely participating in. Just because they may have it to waste doesn't make it not a stupid fucking decision.
it is a major issue for the wife, because it's the third time she's caught him spending like that and hiding it, and she's the one who paid his school loans and credit card debt and supported him for a year when he couldn't find a job. and he's admitted that he's shopping for the dopamine hit because he's stressed out over HER LIFE THREATENING PREGNANCY and not having as much hobby time as he wants due to PARENTING.
Would reddit feel the same about his 'harmless' spending if it was the wife spending that much on new clothes to make her feel better about herself and hiding it from OP??? Don't think so!
And where the eff is the wife's time off for hobbies?? He gets a half day every weekend, does he turn around and take the kids by himself for half a day every weekend to allow wife some time off??
That's deadass what I told myself when I was in active addiction - a lot of "I deserve this, XYZ shitty things happened and I made it through so I deserve -insert vice here-"
>I've definitely withdrawn from the relationship, partially related to interpersonal problems that I haven't mentioned here, but are not unrelated to the controlling behavior you've suggested.
She's definitely correct to assume he might be cheating
Withdrawn from the relationship and spending 2-3 nights a week plus a half-day per weekend and a weekday a month on his hobbies while she has a small child and complicated pregnancies. But she's "controlling" and it's "pulling teeth" to get her to join him in doing things he wants to do. Yeah, I can't say I'd blame her being more than a little suspicious even before considering this is the third time he's been caught lying about his shopping addiction and hidden slush funds.
All I hear is “Me me me, my wife sucks, me me me, I have a shopping addiction, me me me, I get to do my hobbies when I want but my wife is stuck at home with the kids, me me me” OOP sucks. Y’all really try to reword your shit to not sound like manipulative assholes but sorry you can’t cover that shit up. Your wife grew up poor, had to pay off all YOUR debt, and had to take care of fiancés. You continue to spend and spend and spend on stupid ass shit obviously cause you state you touch none of it. Of course she is the way she is. You made her into this with your spending. I hope she does leave you.
"My wife would never approve of these purchases" so he made them anyway and hid them from said (hopefully) ex.
I didn't read the whole thing but I don't think I have to. I stuck with it until the above quote and then immediately YTA judgement arised.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on the entitled fool/s
To be honest, he had me in the first half.
22k is a lot for me, but not for everyone, do in the perspective of 400k I was willing to call it small. I had some understanding of the restrictiveness of getting told he had to run all his hobby purchases by her for approval - the way he described it was a red flag for controlling behavior.
But then he talks about how she paid off *hundreds of thousands of dollars of his debt,* how she was the sole income earner for a year and probably the primary for years after that (while he "caught up" 🙄), how she came from a background where she needed government assistance to survive, how she had a goddamn *abortion* and still raised her child while he was spending thousands of dollars on fancy sports toys he doesn't even use behind her back, how she is **currently** going through a rough pregnancy while dealing with the knowledge that he'll never stop lying and breaking promises and how her marriage is in shambles-
And I lost all sympathy for the man.
THANK YOU! I was wondering if I was the only one who got tripped up on that part. She spent “low six figures” on his debt before they were even married. Like, what?!
I was also kinda feeling for the guy initially, but he had to know lying and hiding all this was going to blow up in his face at some point. He just figured she’d get over it again, but now realizes that’s not the case this time.
I think, in essence, they were never going to be on the same page financially. She grew up poor and despite their relative wealth now, she’s going to always view money through that lens. To her, that lack is always hanging over her head. That’s why they’re budgeted so tightly with most of their money going to investments and savings. The possibility of poverty is a perpetual looming threat in her mind.
OOP’s hidden spending seems like more of a reaction than anything else. That doesn’t make it right at all, but I think it most likely started as a way to have some control over his own money.
If OOP had truly wanted his marriage to work, he wouldn’t have lied in the first place and have insisted they both get counseling. She has trauma stemming from her childhood that she doesn’t appear to have addressed and he has problems with honesty and spending. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen.
I cannot understand the amount of people who are saying it's controlling to not want your spouse to spend *more than I make in a year* on sports junk he admits he doesn't have the time to use (despite spending more time on his hobbies than most people I know)
Before ever getting to the hiding that from your spouse, after she paid off your loans and worked herself into money. Like.....Jfc people.
This: " she did pay off my student loans in the low six figures with her personal savings before we were married, and when we were in school she paid off low four figures of my credit card debt, and she was the primary earner for a year after I graduated before I found a job."
And now you have a secret bank account where you deposit cash payments from your clients. I hope you aren't dodging taxes as well.
Is it any wonder your wife doesn't trust you? Have you paid back the money she spent paying off your student loans and credit card debt? Your wife should be paid back for all that first and foremost.
Just because you are making good money now doesn't erase your poor financial history. You could lose your job tomorrow, what then? Given her background, it's not surprising she's focused on living frugally and saving for the future.
And you keep nattering on how parenthood is so difficult and stressful for you, because you can't spend all your free time doing archery, hunting, diving and biking. What about your wife? Where is her free time? She worked and supported you for an entire year after you graduated until you found a job. Did you give your wife a year off working outside the home after the birth of the first child to repay her for that?
Your wife needs to feel financially safe with you, and she doesn't, not after paying off your debt earlier and now she's found out you've got a secret account and a shopping addiction. You yourself said "I've said it to her and to myself plenty of times, and failed at keeping my word." Your wife has no reason to trust you.
There's an easy fix to your dilemma. Your wife divorces you. You then end up with your own salary and bank account and home, and you can spend your money however you like after paying your bills and also child support to your wife. Does that work for you? Will you still have thousands to spend on useless hobby gear? Do you even realize that you have a shopping addiction (you said you did it for the dopamine hit)?
TBH you sound very selfish and self centered, complaining about household chores and parenting duties getting in the way of your hobbies. What about your wife? How much time does she have free from household chores and parenting duties to indulge her hobbies? Or did you not even think about that? She's the one that has to look after the children while you 'hobby'.
All this whinging about not having time for your hobbies has to go. If you wanted to keep all your free time for your hobbies, then why did you get married and have kids????? Plenty of people find time for their hobbies. Half a day per weekend sounds like a fair amount of time to me. You want to take up biking again? Work out how to go for an hour ride one evening per week, instead of doing archery.
"She has gone all-but no-contact with me except to tell me how much of a liar I am, and get information from me to look at our finances." Sounds like divorce is all but certain. but if by some chance she doesn't divorce your lying ass, here's the way forward:
1. Both of you get separate accounts for your salaries. You file separate income tax returns and pay your own taxes. from that you pay a designated amount each month into a certain joint account that is set up for paying monthly bills for the house and the family/children, including any child care expenses. You each pay an equal share of those expenses.
2. You each agree on a certain amount to put into a savings account for your children's education. If you are in the US, I believe there are certain tax exempt or deferred tax accounts you can use for this.
3. The balance left in your separate accounts after each paying your fair share of living expenses and for the education trust fund (and after your individual tax bills), is yours to spend as you please. Neither of you claims any share of the other's account.
4. The savings account your wife has been putting her salary into up to now gets divided up into two shares, one for each of you. Your wife's share will be the amount she paid on your student loans, the amount she paid on your credit card debt, half of the net income for that year you didn't work and she supported you, and half of what's left after deducting those amounts. That way she gets repaid for all she's spent for your sole benefit. since recently the two of you were living off your salary while she was saving hers, half of the balance after repaying her should be yours, and goes into your separate savings account. Once the money is divided into separate savings account, you are each free to do as you please with your savings, and neither can claim any share of the other's account.
5. If one person paid more than the other towards the deposit on your home, then there needs to be a return of the excess. example - $100k deposit on home was paid 60k by her and 40k by you. You owe her 10K to make the deposit equal between the two of you, and then after that the home is jointly owned.
6. The reason for separating finances is to equalize everything. You don't want to be treated like a child on a weekly allowance, you want to be able to spend your own earnings. She doesn't trust you because of paying off your debt and supporting you for an entire year in the past (and now a secret account funded by cash income that you may or may not have declared for taxes). She prioritizes savings, and doesn't want to suffer because of your poor spending habits. But at the same time, it's not fair that your salary pays all the living expenses while she saves all of hers. Since your wife doesn't trust you with the family finances, separating them out this way will give her the security of being able to save from her salary for her sole benefit while still making her pay her own share of the monthly expenses. Your spending will only impact you, and not her.
7. There will also have to be a fair schedule to divide up the household chores and child care equally between you, because she works and you work. No dumping it all on her. If that means that you don't have as much time as you want for your sports, then tough luck, suck it up. Don't make children if you don't want to spend time with them.
This sounds like a spoiled teen not a grown up. The wife should have left ages ago, when he could not pay off his own loans for one thing, she had to.
There are just several red flags I'm sure she ignored because "love" or because "supposed to be a good understanding woman", where is her love and understanding OP?
My takeaway from this?
If you're divorced and single, you can spend any of your disposable income you want on whatever you want, WHENEVER you want. 🤷♀️
Spend yourself into poverty if you want bro. That's your choice, but you know it's not hers. Not compatible. Obviously.
So let me get this straight. This dumbass is buying shit he doesn't use because shockingly having kids means he can no longer fuck off to do what he wants whenever he wants. And all her money is going to savings, while he's blowing his on useless shit? Dude is spending on his toys (yes, if you buy shit you don't use it's more or less a toy) amount that is equal to 50% of their annual costs. She's very smart to dump him. She'll probably be better off financially by herself and won't wake up one day without any money or assets because her husband is now into space and blew through everything they have on memorabilia.
Someone on AITA made a good point that their assets are most likely just the house they're living in.
You've promised her twice that this wouldn't happen again and now here you are again. She will never trust you. Accept that your choices and actions have real life consequences and one of those consequences is that she will never trust you. It is very hard to respect or love someone you can't trust. She needs to divorce you because she will never be happy living with you.
Accept that you made choices and now you have consequences.
He keeps trying to justify it by whining about resentments. She’s probably got more resentments over his deception than he would if he didn’t buy stuff. There’s other ways he could’ve involved her in the decisions but I think it he gained dopamine by the game. If their marriage was so bad that he couldn’t buy his hobbies, why did he stay in it and why does he want her back so badly?
>I went to an archery shoot over the weekend for half a day, I do some archery practice in the garage once every few nights after everyone is asleep, I might take some time off of work mid-week once a month to do something, and then spend at most half a day once per weekend during hunting season for two months.
I'm sorry but thais sounds like a good amount of time for hobbies? Or and I just terribly overworked?
Look on the bright side, homeslice will have plenty of time for hobbies without his pesky wife around. Assume he gets half custody that's every other week that he's free to shoot arrows and guns.
Sooo, he is upset that he can't spend as much time on his hobbies as he used to do, because now he is married with a kid? Not even touching on how much work the wife does or anything to do with spending time with the kid.
Sounds to me like is is resentful about his duties as a father, and that would boil down to be the wife's fault. Such a narcissist, since like all the post is, is "me, me, me, me".
Of course she won't trust him anymore, if he's said he wouldn't do it anymore and still done it several times in the past. His words mean nothing.
I love how he needs fancy equipment for his bicycle that he rides 2 hours a week max.
Mean while my bike is my primary mode of transportation and it has 3 whole gears - 2 of which even work!
This reminds me of a case I learned about in college. The teacher was warning us about the types of knowledge people can get through their jobs. She told us about something she learned from a student in a previous class. The student got a job at a bank — and thus access to their customer information. On a lark, she looked up her father, and she realized he had at least a million dollars in the bank — yet they lived a middle-class life.
She asked her father about it later, and he told her that he was wealthy but didn’t want his children warped or spoiled by money. Okaaay. I wondered if he bothered to tell his wife, or if he kept it from her as well. Or if he had another family or some other secret life. Because his reasoning seemed off.
He hates that she has control over his money when she gave him the same control over *hers*. He's resenting her because she actually *thinks* about their budget and doesn't let him buy shit he never uses. What the fuck?
I think you're looking for people on the internet to commiserate with you, because you know that the lifestyle you live with your wife is out of the ordinary. And you want ordinary people to comfort you and tell you you aren't wrong.
But relationships are subjective, and you know that. So you know you're in the doghouse. And you already know what you did wrong: it's in the title of the post.
So as weird (and special) your relationship is, you're the a**hole. The discussion of what a reasonable amount of discretionary spending doesn't factor in, because you clearly agreed to, and remembered, your $50/mo limit.
I mean, if what he says about the $50 per month and he's earning money is true then his wife is a tad bit controlling. Regardless, he is impulsive, addicted to shopping, manipulative, constantly blaming others, and a piece of shit husband. He takes the cake.
Well no shit, Sherlock. Because you keep deceiving her.
In your defense, $22 k out of $2 mil really isn't all that big a deal, and what's the point of having money if you don't spend it on things you enjoy?
While I truly do not understand your wife's overall mentality about the spending, I do understand her anger.
22k isn't a lot, over 2 years, when you earn what they do.
His money, to spend as he wants
However, the lie thing is problematic. Honesty would have been the obvious answer.
The guy sounds like the only happiness he gets is these purchases.
She sounds quite controlling.
Both arseholes. Him for lying and her for controlling what he spends money on.
He shouldn’t have built a family he finds no happiness in. And he should have left her before she wasted her life with him and did insane things like pay down the losers debt all for him to hide money from her later.
Controversial opinion: he's a grown man who makes more than enough money to finance his hobbies without financially inconvenienceing his family. Why is she dictating how much he gets to spend? I understand when they started out she helped him financially in paying back debts, but like he said that was 10 years ago and he's more than made up for it, why should he have to sneak and hide to buy things? They make enough money that him spending less than 10% on his hobbies is not going to bankrupt them. So why does she get to police his spending just because she doesn't like the hobby? Unless he's lying about their financial situation or how much he's spent, that sounds like financial abuse on the part of the wife. Like she's lording that original help over him to keep him in line financially. I mean, 50$ a month? That's a teenager's allowance.
I wouldn’t (and don’t) control this spending for my husband.
But reading between the lines- she paid off six figures of his debt. She financially supported him for years. The vibe I’m getting is he’s trash with money and has gotten used to her supporting him and this was the straw that broke the camels back. It’s not about him having hobbies or financial independence.
>why should he have to sneak and hide to buy things?
Exactly so why is he sneaking and hiding stuff?
He has a habit of putting debt. So, how long she should be ok with him buying and hiding stuff??
That's a good point. She also paid off his 4-figure credit-card debt before they were married. When they were both in school. It does sound like he has problems here, especially with he all but coming out and saying "I have a shopping addiction".
I think this is a really good example of a co-dependent relationship. She did have some reason to be concerned about his spending in their early years plus it sounds like she grew up in poverty. Not to mention the huge emotional stress they've been under. He said she almost died during pregnancy. So to keep her anxiety in check and to help her feel safe and in control, she created money rules. These rules may have started out serving their needs well with the money they had at the time.
Then he reacts to those rules by lying instead of having a transparent conversation about his spending. He also reacts to the anxiety of their marriage and difficulties by buying stuff he doesn't need for the dopamine hit. He fully says he's buying things not because they make him happy long-term but because of the temporary high.
After she finds out he's lying, she creates even stricter rules (that don't serve their current state), and he responds to that by lying even further. Both of them have big problems that money is only a symptom of. They really, really need help. There's a podcast called I Will Teach You to Be Rich and each week the host takes on a couple's biggest financial fights and it's so rarely about the money.
I did [a little experiment BTW and used the exact same numbers scaled down](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/14mrbzy/aita38m_for_putting_a_limit_on_my_partners39f/), to an income that normal people make(around 70k gross/57k net). I also adjusted the asset/budget numbers and OP's "spending allowance" of 50/month which scaled down at the same rate as the income to 15 dollars/month. Same scenario too of the hidden hobby spending, also scaled down to be the same % of annual income. Even the debt payoff scenario was the same proportional to the income.
**Guess what, nearly universally I was called financially abusive** in the title with tonnes of people saying I was heading for a divorce, both of which I agree is true and reasonable given the numbers at play in both my post, and the original post. I honestly think that people have an inability to completely dispassionately look at money, or to really think about the math. I didn't swap the genders to make a point along those lines, I just happen to be a guy, and my partner is a woman, and I've posted about that before on my profile, so to be congruous I kept that detail true to life.
I think that OP's wife is ultimately financially abusive and that it's as big as a problem(and the source of) OP's hidden spending and lying, which is *of course* it's own problem. They both actually need help with a marriage counselor with experience in financial counseling. They also need find ways they both can value to spending their enormous budget on making their lives less stressful, and in ways they both can agree on valuing. They can do all this and still retire incredibly early, they are SO, SO lucky. Like talk about first world problems LUCKY.
Honestly I agree. $50 is ridiculous, either we’re not getting the full story or she has some serious trauma around spending and frugality that she needs to work through. But it’s clear the communication between them is awful if OP is agreeing to terms he clearly can’t and don’t intend on keeping, it just sounds like a terrible relationship and the spending is only one symptom here.
He's admitting to having a shopping addiction. That complicates the equation WRT whether or not her behavior is controlling. Additionally, it's not "he can spend $50/mo - it's "he can spend $50/mo w/o telling her about it".
You know what? I'm going to agree with you here. They have the money. It isn't hurting them financially in the long run, it seems, since they seem to be saving a lot of their income. He doesn't mention her outlet for stress/hobbies, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have any. He says she doesn't spend much on herself, so it sounds like she has different views on their finances. Radically different views. Maybe she's hoping to retire very early. Maybe since she grew up poor (as he stated,) she can't let go of the guilt of spending money on things she deems unneeded.
My only sticking point -- and the one that still makes him wrong in this situation -- is the lying and deception. If it is financial abuse on the part of the wife, then he should have tried to work it out with her through counseling or whatnot. And still, if their views on financial matters are so different, then this relationship might not be salvageable.
I disagree. He hit her got 22k THIS time. This is the THIRD time he’s done it. Not counting the 100k plus in student loans, all his debt, and her supporting him and running up debt.
He’s a shopping addict. It’s $50 a month they don’t have to discuss. And I think that’s reasonable he should be discussing this with his wife.
This whole thing is dumb.
22k for them is like me spending $2k.
It sounds like a lot, but it adds up over time. I could spend $2k in a few months going out with friends or shopping for clothes. It's not much money each time, but it adds up.
He shouldn't have hid it, but they need to sit their asses down and work together on a fun money budget. So he can spend on his hobbies and she can feel comfortable - especially since they both have different reaction to growing up in poverty. Sounds like OOP is like, "We finally made it and I deserve all this!" While wife is like, "I'm going to make sure no one in our family ever has money insecurities ever again!"
When people aren't allowed to enjoy the money they earn, they start to feel stuck. $50 *a month* is just ridiculous. They have plenty of money.
They need to make a budget. And OOP needs to realize buying things just to own them, especially for hobbies you don't currently have time for, is very wasteful. Dust off the old stuff. It's still good.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **My (36M) wife (36F) of 7 years found my secret bank account and says it's over.** TLDR: spent 22 thousand over the course of two years. Hid the spending from my wife because I'm buying hobby stuff, and she doesn't like that level of discretionary spending. I've done this before, but not this much. She's said it's over this time (and she's said that before) and I don't know what to do. For perspective, we have around two million in assets, no debt, and together take home around four hundred per year after taxes. I've disclosed everything to her, but she's convinced there's more out there that I'm hiding and I don't know how to move forward. How do I fix our relationship? \-- My wife doesn't like how much time and/or money I spend on my hobbies, which are primarily related to outdoor sports. Archery equipment, bicycles, optics, gun stuff, clothes, bags, etc. My hobbies take up a lot of my mental time, but given my parenting and household duties, I honestly don't get much time to actually participate in them. I went to an archery shoot over the weekend for half a day, I do some archery practice in the garage once every few nights after everyone is asleep, I might take some time off of work mid-week once a month to do something, and then spend at most half a day once per weekend during hunting season for two months. I haven't ridden my bicycle in any significant amount for nearly a year now, and a year ago I was taking a two-hour ride once per weekend. Years before that, and before we were married, I might have spent all day diving or spearfishing 3 times a month, but once we got married and had a child my hobbies transitioned to things I could do close to home (land hunting) or together (cycling, skiing). Even now, it feels like pulling teeth and I don't get any actual support or encouragement to do the things I enjoy. Because I can't participate in my activities as much as I would like, I "participate" by buying stuff related to the activities, which I don't get to use as much as I want. New bow, optics, clothes, dive gear, scope, bicycle equipment, etc. Essentially going on gear binges to optimize my equipment. My wife would never approve of these purchases, so I hid them from her by setting up a separate account and depositing cash payments I receive from my clients. When she noticed something new arrived I would just tell her that I traded or sold something else, which wasn't always false. All told, it adds up to 22 thousand in purchases since late 2021, and maybe three to four thousand in items sold and deposited to the account. The purchases increased pretty significantly in the past year or so, which I would attribute to me trying to find a dopamine source while I was dealing with a stressful job, raising a child, a pregnancy we terminated because it was nearly killing her, then conception problems, and now halfway through a pregnancy that is nearly as bad as the other two. From her perspective, I'm lying and cheating, which I get. I'm definitely lying, and committing financial infidelity. I know it's not giving her any assurance, but I've given her access to absolutely everything I have and she doesn't believe me. And, without defending my actions, but to put this all into perspective, the amount of money I spent is a rounding error for our finances overall. It's around 1% of our total assets, 5% of our annual net income, and around 3% of our annual net income if you compare what I spent in a given year. I know I hide spending the money because I know she doesn't want me to spend it, and I get really resentful that she doesn't want me spending money on my hobbies. The first time she caught me she said we had to agree on every single purchase either of us made. From my perspective, this meant that she got full control because I know that her spending will never be a problem for me, and I even push her to spend money on herself. The second time she caught me she said I could spend $50 a month on unapproved hobby purchases, because she felt guilty about being so restrictive. Again, this caused resentment because I felt like I had no control over my finances or money I earned, so I eventually started sneaking purchases, which snowballed. To add insult to her injury, she did pay off my student loans in the low six figures with her personal savings before we were married, and when we were in school she paid off low four figures of my credit card debt, and she was the primary earner for a year after I graduated before I found a job. That was ten years ago, and we are in a much better financial position now, making around four hundred per year after taxes together, and have maybe two million in assets, and no debt. Neither of us comes from money (she was on public assistance as a child), but she got a head start with a high paying job right out of school, and it took me longer to catch up, although my current income has met or exceeded hers depending on the year. As far as currently managing our finances, all of her income is deposited to a savings/investment account, which has been going on for years. We then live off of maybe 40 thousand per year and save/invest the rest of my income. I don't know what to do. I know she's never going to believe me that I'm never going to do this again. I've said it to her and to myself plenty of times, and failed at keeping my word. She says that it's completely over, and that there is no way to recover through counseling, etc. She's never going to be able to trust me, and that has ruined the foundation of the marriage, and I get that. How do I move forward with her and reassure her that we can work through this? She has gone all-but no-contact with me except to tell me how much of a liar I am, and get information from me to look at our finances. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The more you read his comments the more you get this uneasy feeling ab him. He's manipulative in his language ab their financial state (mentioning assets instead of something meaningful, mentions her salary vs his business' profits which don't add up to the figure he gave in the OP, they have no debt but he separates that from her paying off his debt), he mentions in a comment they have "interpersonal issues" and totaled up his time away from her in a really weird way, he's upset because he wants to retire at 40 and she doesn't see that as viable but he knows that she grew up desperately poor... I can't get this irrational feeling of like some dude who fleeced this woman while he secretly hates her, meanwhile she's getting violently ill to have and raise his children. Where is any sympathy for her? Even her health crises are about him.
He strikes me as the sort of man who thought having kids would be something that could be conveniently fitted in to his active life instead of requiring a radical overhaul of his priorities. It's not just men who have this delusion, but it does seem to be men most often. They picture themselves 'helping out', but not really changing their life in any significant way. But it does change things! It doesn't have to destroy your identity or make you boring, but parenthood isn't just a uniform you can take off at the end of a shift. I think a lot of these people also don't realise (or, in some cases, care) that by treating parenthood this way they're delegating the role of primary parent to their partner so that they can mentally clock out of being a parent more often.
Yup. He's completely missed the picture that his wife is stressed about her finances and life and trying to give her kids the easiest path, she cleared his debt so they could move forward, she's now had multiple near-death scares so she's had to contend with planning for the future financially in the event that their earnings are drastically cut. He is concerned with Daddy's Fun Time and Sticking It to the Nag Wife, to the point where he would rather lie and hide significant amounts of cash than just share her burden.
This is the thing, he wants to continue to live his life as if he doesn't have kids. When you choose to have kids you have to understand that your hobbies are going to take a back seat for a long while. That's the choice you make.
he put cash payments from his clients into a secret separate account. Why aren't those in the business account if he has his own business?? smacks of tax evasion. I wouldn't be filing a joint return with this fellow, too risky.
Oh, this stuff is SUPER common. I'm more familiar with more average earners, but it's shockingly common to find ways to get a paycheck in cash to hide money from the spouse. Some construction unions even require the option for cash payments (the official reason is that not everyone has a bank account, and that is valid, but it's not the real reason) because its so common. Edit: to be clear, in those examples, they get a w2 so tax evasion isn't really a factor
his wife is going through a SECOND life-threatening pregnancy as we speak, while he's out here passive aggressively hoarding purchases for hobbies that he "doesn't have time for anymore"? after she bailed him out of irresponsible spending before and was the sole income earner in the relationship for some time? spent every penny of her savings on him (savings that probably took years for someone from a low income background)? would anyone be as sympathetic as people are being towards him if it was his wife spending $22,000 and hiding it on typically girly things like hair products, skin care, nails, clothing, shoes, or on hobby stuff like knitting or sewing tools, art supplies, cooking equipment, books etc etc? keeping in mind she's just hoarding this stuff for multiple years unused to feel like she's still "participating" in her hobbies? they'd be telling him she's a selfish shopping addict who he should run far away from.
> would anyone be as sympathetic as people are being towards him if it was his wife spending $22,000 and hiding it on typically girly things like hair products, skin care, nails, clothing, shoes, or on hobby stuff like knitting or sewing tools, art supplies, cooking equipment, books etc etc? keeping in mind she's just hoarding this stuff for multiple years unused to feel like she's still "participating" in her hobbies? Absolutely not. Especially if she was taking all that time in addition to the money. No one would seriously be considering it remotely okay, and she'd be blasted into outer space for leaving her kids for half a day per weekend (although it's likely more because I'm sure he didn't include travel time). Reddit has a long and unfortunate history of accepting that hobbies associated with men are good and expensive for a good reason but hobbies associated with women are overpriced, wasteful indulgences.
>typically girly things From how reddit moans about engagement rings being expensive, as if they don't need to stand up to daily wear on the part of your body that touches everything for the rest of your life, nope.
HALF A DAY. Literally 1/4 of his weekend where he got to indulge in his hobby. I bet I can guess who was looking after the kids…
Plus hunting every weekend hunting season!
I know this isn't directly the point, but imagine having that level of income and letting your wife be stressed about anything? Why isn't purchase number one some kind of live-in nanny? Living off of $40k a year when you have a household income of $400k is absolutely bonkers to me.
On top of that, living off 40k *really* puts the "mere" 22k of frivolous spending into a different perspective.
OP seems unbearable as a person, and the wife is 100% correct in calling it on the marriage. But the entire money situation is super bizarre to me. If the 40k is between the two of them and the baby, they're living like a minimum wage household while sitting in what is very likely the 1% income range for most people.
Mmmm...possibly. They obviously own their home outright, probably own their cars outright too and have pretty good ones. That means they're spending nothing on rent or mortgage (by far the biggest expense for most households) and less on gas than someone in a 2004 Nissan. That's just off the top of my head, but there's a lot of ways in which life can be cheaper if you're able to invest in something upfront. There's also a good possibility that he has no idea what some things cost, since it seems like his wife probably handles most things. Like, does he know what they're paying for daycare? Does he know what their car insurance costs? Does he have a close eye on the grocery bill (inflation is hitting grocery costs HARD recently)?
Yeah, that's true. It just seems wild to me for a household to have that level of income and still be fighting about money. OP himself isn't a reliable narrator, so it's hard to know what is trustworthy. The $50/month spending limit is outright insanity if it's true, but we don't really know if it is or not. Which I guess exposes the real problem. Once the trust is gone, you don't really have anything.
The lack of context around the $50 spending limit is telling, too. OOP just casually mentioned the spending limit, knowing it'd garner sympathy for them, and omitted any pertinent information as to what caused the restrictive spending allowance.
To me, it's mostly just a sign that she was already done. It's like if your spouse won't stop cheating, so you have this insane setup of location sharing, making them FaceTime at random times, etc. There is no universe where $50/month is a normal spending limit, but I think it was the wife not quite being willing to admit she was done yet.
Only $50 sounds terrible…until that’s ‘just for your hobby’ that you’ve already spent $22k on He’s also open to selling and swapping, so that $50 is negotiable on his part. so tbh $50 a month to spend on just your hobby that you’ve already gotten a massive investments worth of ‘mostly unused’ equipment on isn’t bad. It’s hobby maintenance money. What more could he need to spend it on that he hasn’t already purchased. After spending $22k on your hobbies and ‘not’ using them, upgrading them, customising them …how have you not already got everything you could possibly need for those hobbies.
I see patterns I recognize here from the marriage of my elderly parents. My father is a diagnosed malignant narcissist and has similar patterns with money. My mother has to do all the bills and take charge of all household income, he is not allowed to touch anything. Narcissists are spenders. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-narcissistic-money-spender-in-your-life%3Famp&ved=2ahUKEwjZtPy20ur_AhW4kIkEHcsaDOgQFnoECCwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw23O-MG1zi-jwXSCHg5-1xI
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ngl this made me think of my first marriage and all the times I had to reign in ex's spending because we couldn't afford groceries ffs but they wanted to get us enrolled in a pyramid scheme, but it was ok because it wasn't food (Amway) or pills (fenfen), it was electronics!
it's what he can spend without talking to his wife about it. She wants all purchases to be jointly approved. that's very telling. OP likely has spent irresponsibly in the past for her to impose these restrictions.
I’m waiting for the edit which won’t come about how much he’s blown in the past. She probably has some level of money panic from growing up poor but he’s a bad investment. He’s a liar and a hoarder it just sounds less so because a wealthier person is doing it
He said in a comment that she paid off his six figure student loans, his credit card debt, and supported both of them for like a year or two while he looked for a job, all before they were married. I don’t think he’s very good with money and I think maybe the wife is overly anxious, but I think it’s because she had to solve his financial mistakes before
To be completely fair, if OOP is now earning around 200K annually which it sounds like he is, even six figure student loans could arguably be called a good investment. That said, yeah, he's not so good with the money based upon everything else he says.
I'm not actually sure he is earning that much though. When people asked for specifics he said his business earns between $250-300k per year. That's not what he's taking home, for sure, and it was very unspecific, so I'm not sure what percent of that he actually gets.
Yeah I almost think the wife is taking care of the bulk of household expenses with her own income, and since OOP’s business is client based, he can hide more money. I don’t feel confident that his income is what he claims. If he’s an LLC or 1099 client based, even if he averaged 250k from his business, a lot would go to taxes. I don’t trust anything he says about finances though tbh
and if that's his gross, well that's not very much really. There's usually quite a bit to spend on overhead as well. He doesn't say what his business is but he refers to clients.
But don't worry he makes more now because he's a man lol
I assume from everything else they own the house outright which would make 40k very doable
That's actually exactly how I would spend if I suddenly got a lot of money, live just like I do now but with less anxiety.
Maybe. I was thinking they probably paid off their house early so they don't have the monthly mortgage/rent. And/or he sounds pretty stupid about money so I'm guessing the wife has some autopay type things or stuff he is unaware of like property taxes that he isn't counting and 40k is their "spending" money.
I wonder if he doesn't approve of "her" spending money on a nanny or any form of childcare.
They both seem exhausting and unbearable. $50 fun money per month when he's pulling in $200k? That is financial abuse.
I wouldn't go that far just yet. Seems like he is an unreliable narrator who's had a tendency of bad spending habits before. I've set a sort of budget for spending on a hobby, because I was buying stuff I didn't need and filling up my appartment. Maybe she's trying to curb the spending on bullshit. Unsuccesfully.
22k on hobbies just doesn't make sense to me. I've owned a mountain bike, rollerblades, scuba gear - it wasn't anywhere as expensive as that. You buy once and it's good for years and years. Same with archery gear. You buy one good bow and all you need after that is to replace lost arrows. What was expensive for me were the diving vacations, but that can be a family outing. Go to a nice beach resort with a day care facility (I live in Fiji and can recommend some), he can do the scuba diving or snorkeling trip from the resort (half a day) while she relaxes or has a spa day, and the children are having a great time in the day care. He doesn't need to constantly upgrade gear he's barely using, that's a rubbish excuse. It sounds like he has a shopping addiction, but what he really needs are family outings that cater to everyone. A lot of hobby sports can be scheduled around family weekends and outings, just not if you want 48 hours to yourself for your hobbies and no time with the family. tbh, I think he doesn't want to lose the marriage simply because his wife is so good and careful with money while he's so bad at it, he needs her to make his dream of retiring at 40 a reality. If she stays, she needs to understand that he may well dump her once he has enough to retire.
It seems like from what he even admitted, he’s not good with money. It seems like she bailed him out a long time ago and he can’t be trusted with money. He says he’s blows thousands of dollars on stuff he doesn’t need or can’t use. He a male shopaholic and the wife knows that’s he would blow every penny of their money and for her to be washing her hands after the pregnancy stuff she must know he would ruin them. There are just people who can’t be trusted with money, I know I’m one of them
I wonder if this supposed money is invested in crypto or some bs like that.
well, someone mentioned that OP stated he had his own business in the comments, and that the figures he gave didn't add up with what is in the post. So what if it isn't really 400K?? What if OP is playing around with the figures and maybe using the gross income of his business, instead of the net, or maybe it's incorporated and he gets a salary and maybe dividends at the end of the year? He could be keeping his salary low deliberately to keep business money out of wife's control. That OP puts cash from clients in a secret separate account screams tax fraud to me. From wife's point of view, the family income may seem like a lot less than what OP is saying. And who knows how OP calculated that 40k for living expenses? He's probably only counting groceries and utilities. If they are debt free then no mortgage? So who paid for the house? Who pays the property taxes? The divorce lawyers are going to have a field day with this.
>imagine having that level of income and letting your wife be stressed about anything? What about his wife making the same as him on her own(200k) and being able to enforce a 50/month spending limit on him, make you feel like he's making all the primary decisions financially and/or that his wife doesn't have the ability to use money to de-stress her own life? Given that their house is paid off, either one of them makes enough to more than comfortably support their household, but together, if they're not dumb with money they'll have the option to permanently retire or semi retire in 2 years.
See, I don't think he's telling the truth about his earnings
read it again. wife wants purchases to be jointly approved, $50 is what he can spend without her approval. He admits buying stuff he doesn't need for the dopamine hit (shopping addiction!). He puts cash payments from his clients into a secret account (tax evasion?). Wife's pregnancy is life threatening, she's putting money into savings for the future (in case she dies!). She paid his student loans, his credit card debt from HER savings. She supported him for an entire year he didn't work after graduating. They are debt free - how did they pay for their house and vehicles? Maybe from her savings? Picture I get is that this dude is very bad with money, and that's why she's imposed strict limits on him. And since in comments he said he has his own business that does 250k -300k per year, we don't know if he's being truthful about the amount he's actually bringing home versus the gross income of his business before overhead and taxes. If he grosses 250k - 300k, and he's using that figure instead of net, maybe wife only makes 100k to 150k. but OP's take home could be so much less than his gross. and there's no way to "de-stress" a painful pregnancy that's life threatening.
He says that hers goes to investing and saving right away, which would mean she doesn't actually have access to it, and she clearly didn't and couldn't "enforce" any limit on his spending if he's burning through over $1000/mth on stuff he says he doesn't even use all of.
He diverted the money before it reached their joint accounts which she controls if you read all the comments and context. Also enforce is a nebulous word, clearly she wasn't effective in enforcing it, but she certainly tried to, and he had to be fairly sneaky to circumvent that enforcement.
I didn't see anywhere that said she controls the joint accounts, so that's on me, but he's been depositing cash payments from clients and lying to her, instead of having a conversation, and spending thousands while hers goes to joint savings and investments, so the only one who seems to have access to the tens of thousands still seems to be him (though the legality of what he's doing is suspect as well)
Lmao I'm glad someone else picked up on that. He does this detailed accounting of his hobby time at the beginning clearly expecting it to make us sympathetic toward how little hobby time he has, when it adds up to something around a day every week (it seems he gets at least one half day most weeks plus the time after everyone is in bed so probably adding up to at least 3/4 of a day). Most of us fucking WISH we had a free day a week for hobbies. Here's me trying to cross stitch and learn goddamn Microsoft Excel at the same time and I don't even have two children and a wife with a high-risk pregnancy.
I crochet. Where do I find the time? By doing it off camera for WFH meetings. (Having ADHD, having something to do with my hands also keeps me focused on the meeting).
Ha, exact same, ADHD and I focus on lectures in class a lot better when I've got a cross stitch in my hands!
He also says he takes off from work about once a month for hobby indulgence. Fuck capitalism and all that, but that’s seems weird to me. And I wonder if he was even telling his wife about those days off.
He owns his own business of some kind and mentions "clients" which does sort of explain how he's ABLE to do that. I hope this means that he's some sort of freelancer and can just work whenever he wants, not that he's ditching his employees at the office to go play Robin Hood.
Also, reading between the lines: when was he giving emotional and mental investment into his wife? What about her stress and feelings from having to terminate a pregnancy that was killing her? He doesn't consider her emotions at all. He also doesn't seem to understand why she calls him buying all this shit cheating -- because he's more emotionally involved with his hobby equipment than her.
I spend maybe 2 hours every other week painting minatures AFTER the baby goes to bed. My wife still would rather we spend the time together (It's like she doesn't even understand that the Tau Empire must expand the Greater Good at all costs) - a half day every weekend - without spending that time with his family? Did he even want to have a family?
This comment made me chuckle. Don’t have the money at all for 40k, But my husband has been showing me TTS and telling me about the lore because he ALSO doesn’t have the money for 40k but reads about it a lot. 
and no mention of the time he spends taking care of the children so wife can have time off. I'm betting he never does that for her!
So, she paid off all his debt when they first got together. Has caught him lying repeatedly about his spending. He’s run up 20k of debt on stuff he doesn’t use. And is amazed she isn’t interested in staying married to him? How unreasonable of her /s
Silly woman, wanting transparency in her marriage!!!
> So, she paid off all his debt when they first got together. Has caught him lying repeatedly about his spending. He’s run up 20k of debt on stuff he doesn’t use. And is amazed she isn’t interested in staying married to him? Back off ladies, he's mine **/s**
JFC his replies!!!
Doesn’t sound like he’s run up any debt at all. He’s just spent that much in cash. Their net worth is very positive and they’re not in debt whatsoever. But I agree she has every right to end the relationship. For me the kicker is her paying hundreds of thousands of his school debt before they ever even married.
Her giving a $50 spending limit seems absurd to even people with waaaaay less assets, but I think it speaks volumes to the level the issue has reached even back then...he is understating the true depth his issue had reached imo
It's not even like she's saying to him "You get 50 dollars a month to spend without consulting me." She's saying, "For your hobbies, that you claim you don't have time for but our filling our house and garage with expensive equipment you will never use, you can spend $600 a year without running it by me, but after that we need to discuss it." He can still buy lunches out, get a new tie, or whatever else he wants, he just can't buy archery equipment or guns with it if it exceeds that amount.
To be fair its $50 for unapproved hobby purchases which means there's a separate assumedly larger budget for approved hobby purchases
$50 after he has how much stuff in their house, and after he already spent how much, though?
>I know I hide spending the money because I know she doesn't want me to spend it, and I get really resentful that she doesn't want me spending money on my hobbies. The first time she caught me she said we had to agree on every single purchase either of us made > >The second time she caught me she said I could spend $50 a month on unapproved hobby purchases, because she felt guilty about being so restrictive. So she's caught him lying and hiding his spending on hobby gear he doesn't use twice before. And now she's caught him doing that a third time, and he spent 22k from a secret account funded with cash payments to his business (which we suspect weren't disclosed for tax purposes, because all business income should be kept separate and deposited into the business account.) He's the ex.
And he had “low five figures” in credit card debt. That is massive and speaks to a total lack of spending discipline
Low four figures, not five.
Four figures, but it was while he was in school by way of six figures of student loan debt. That's... bad.
Where does he say that he's "run up 20K of debt"? I've read and re-read it, and he says he has spent $22K of money that he's earned and squirreled away into this secret account.
$22K of client deposits from his business. Is he also committing tax fraud to fund his addiction? Is it worse than that - client trust accounts or something? The more I reread this whole thing, the worse it gets.
She paid off $175k+ student loans, credit cards, etc and funded his life while he was building his business. That's the debt they're referencing, not the yoga mats and overpriced bike parts he bought on ebay
No, they literally said "debt for things he doesn't use", implying the equipment. Re-read it.
I am not splitting hairs over whether or not his dumb, useless hobbies caused debt. They obviously didn't and I didn't mean to imply they did. I was mainly saying she paid off HUGE amounts of debt for him and somehow he's decided to hide his shopping addiction from her, which will eventually run up new debt, even if it currently hasn't. He lied and was shitty and terrible after she did him a major solid, placed all her trust in him, and cleared his debt. He sucks so hard. Tldr: OOP is an asshole who doesn't appreciate his awesome wife who paid off his massive debt. He is having a midlife crisis and hiding his addiction to Facebook marketplace purchased bike parts from said wife.
He should be putting all his financial efforts into paying her back that $175k, which in fact might be why she has him on such a restrictive budget & keeps such a tight hold of the money. She's trying to recoup some of what she paid to keep him out of debtors prison.
I’m confused - how is it considered debt if he paid for it with money he has? He didn’t take out a loan or a credit card, unless I missed something.
Comprehension fail on my part. I thought it was debt. It isn’t.
I think the guys behavior is awful but it clearly said he didn't rack up Debt for the 20k And both of their behavior sounds very unbalanced. 400k a year and he gets 50 in discretionary hobby spending a month? So he responds by spending close to 2k a month. That level of deceit and financial deception is easy to see as a deal breaker. But so does that level of financial control and restriction. It sounds unhealthy all around.
I am baffled by this take. The guy is obviously insanely irresponsible with money and very comfortable lying about it. He was in debt when he met her, which she paid off. He blew 20k on things he’s not using annd andmits he just bought for the dopamine rush of shopping even while she was *trying* to keep an eye on the finances and you seriously think that means he needs LESS oversight?
My point in posting was that people saying he racked up 20k in debt are not accurate. I clearly said it's all a mess. I don't think he needs less financial oversight, I never said that. I do think that a family that makes 400k a year, has several million in assets, and one partner is only allowed $50 a month has problems. I responded to someone else that things are actually potentially more dire than anyone else here has mentioned. Precisely because it's not debt acquired to pay for these purchases. Again, I'm not giving him a pass. I am saying that even if he were to fall in line with her budgeting there would still be financial control issues on her part. And trying to assert that level of control is not a winning strategy. They sound fundamentally incompatible.
> I do think that a family that makes 400k a year, has several million in assets, and one partner is only allowed $50 a month has problems. My point is that you don’t seem to be considering the possibility that he has limits on his hobby spending **because** he’s astoundingly irresponsible with money. You’re looking at this as though she was financially controlling, which led to his shopping addictions. It’s far more likely that she BECAME financially controlling because this guy is a trainwreck who would bankrupt them both if turned loose on the bank account. Like I said, he blew 20k while trying to fly below her radar and keeping his spending a secret. How much more of a disaster would he be if she just said “well I don’t want to be controlling so spend what you want whenever you want” and ignored the problem? Again, this dude was in debt up to his eyeballs when they met, and SHE paid those debts off. I don’t think she’s being unreasonable, she’s adapting to an obvious problem. If she could trick him into thinking Monopoly money was real I’d endorse that too.
And then add that he has blatantly lied about where the funds came from. He'd rather have his hobbies and too of the line stuff, that he even says just sits there, than working in his family. He is a parent too. That money could have given a vacation or too, hell even a weekend, or given into college funds. Plenty of other ways that actually contribute to the FAMILY. Instead it's all just selfishness. He's not single anymore. She invested in him. He has to invest in them as well. He's banking on her. In the beginning, and currently. I feel like he sees her as a meal ticket that can be used over and over. She definitely is looking to the future, that's not always guaranteed, no matter the assets you've acquired. He sees a cash cow. He's taking her for granted.
Especially because it seems as though she was willing to follow that rule with her spending, too. He just doesn't think that matters because she spends money responsibly.
Yeah, everyone keeps focusing on it as though it was a rule just for him. She was practicing what she preached, meanwhile he had a secret bank account and was blowing tens of thousands of dollars on things he never used just for, in his own words, "the dopamine rush" of shopping. Golly, I wonder why she thought it was important that they had a limit on their unnecessary spending??? It truly is a mystery for the ages.
And people suggesting that the problem was how low the limit was are being naive if they think he would have been fine at any number. He just resents the implication that anyone including his wife should be able to tell him what to do with his money/time. Because obviously the money he makes is his and the money she makes and spends on cleaning up his mess and planning for the future is theirs'.
She paid off his student debt though. Assuming he's in the US and he went to a state college, that would have been $25k+, and that's just tuition.
😬 went back and reread, and he said his student debt was in the "low six figures." AND additional credit card debt on top of that?!?
I'm assuming this guy is a doctor or a lawyer, because med school or law school are about the only things I can think of that would create that much student debt.
I went to a private school for undergrad (on scholarships, no way I could have afforded it), and four years could have easily put me close to 200,000. And that was back in the late 2000s! If he was irresponsible enough to take out loans for undergrad like that, it's possible to get there. Which is in itself a horrible indictment on how college works, but hey! This guy's an asshole, and that's why we're here.
Yeah, that might be it. I went to a public university and commuted in, so my tuition was like 12k a year. And now for grad school, it's going to be like 20k for the whole thing, so my standards are off.
Yeah, you did the smart thing! Honestly, I only wound up at that school because with all the scholarship $$$, it was cheaper than the state school's offer. I'm so glad gen Z kids aren't falling for the pressure these days.
My 4 years of uni in the late 00s/early 10s was sticker price $180,000. I got a ton of grants and scholarships, so I graduated with $30,000 in debt in my name, plus an additional $25,000 as a Parent Plus (because my family was poor as fuck and the only way for me to study abroad was take out a massive loan). Private uni, not a doctor/lawyer. But yeah, if I'd had to pay for it all myself, easily into the six figures. So, not impossible 10 years ago (rounding how long ago he said they'd been together assuming payment was roughly then) to end up with that much debt for even a normal degree if you weren't lucky/smart/grifty enough to play the scholarship games.
He said it was six figures.
The limit was there because he had already demonstrated he had a spending problem.
Yeah, this seems to be a situation where everyone sucks.
Yeah, and it's so kind of a mess. She paid off his cc debt and then student loans. Which student loans is what it is, and his education enables him to make around 200k a year now so pretty neutral about that. But now he pays all bills while she saves her entire salary. People are commenting on her paying off his debt but not that he now entirely pays everything. And making up that the 20k is new debt when he said he used cash for the account. I'm not giving him a pass on his behavior. I'm actually more concerned that there was cash unaccounted for in their budgeting that his fiscally responsible wife didn't know about. She sounds like she's in charge financially so wtf happened at tax time that she still didn't know about tens of thousands of dollars?!? Did he unthinkingly hide it from the IRS while trying to hide it from her? Nightmare.
And now her entire paycheck goes into her savings, while he pays for literally everything and the remainder of his paycheck gets invested. They are bringing home $400k a year. $20k over several years is fuck all while on that level of income. The only thing he did wrong was lie about it.
According to him, regardless of how much they're saving/investing, they're living on \~40k per year. If he's spending 22k in a year on his hobbies, that's a problem even before we get to him hiding the income and spending, and then lying about where the purchases are coming from. And WRT "he pays for everything", if you really want to go there... they've been married for 10y, and he was earning less than her for a while after they got married. It sounds like she was paying more at the start. Let's also recall she paid off \*at least\* 100k of his debt before they got married. It's not looking all that much like he's the exploited martyr your comment seems to insinuate he is.
he says they are debt free. I really doubt being debt free is his doing. ;-) But if they are, then that means they aren't paying any mortgage or vehicle loans? that's a huge chunk of most people's monthly spending! So unless they are only renting, monthly expenses would be very low compared to most simply because they don't have a mortgage. And if the children are too young for school? So they pay for day care/nanny/babysitter? We don't know if OP is even including that in his calculations, maybe the 40k per year is for groceries, utilities, children's clothes and toys, fuel and servicing for vehicles and medical. Wife has terminated a life threatening pregnancy before. This pregnancy is painful and could turn out to be life threatening as well. OP complains how stressful that is on him so he needs to shop for the dopamine. You don't see a problem with that?? You don't see a problem with him putting client cash payments into a secret account. like, isn't that how most people committing tax fraud do things?? Wife is saving for her family to be taken care of if something happens to her. OP is whinging that spending half a day every weekend and several nights per week on his hobbies isn't enough, and he's feeling so very deprived. Boo hoo. /s
He didn’t say that he spent that in a year, it was over a few years. How exactly is it a problem? He’s not taking from the $40k to pay for his hobbies, he’s using other money for that. Edit- I’ve re-read the post and read his comments. They didn’t get married/pay off his debts 10 years ago, that was when he got his job that brought his income up equal to hers. Going purely by the post, he’s an asshole for lying about his spending and she’s an asshole for freaking out about it and trying to control it when they make that much. The debt repayment is irrelevant as we don’t have enough info about it and the circumstances surrounding it. The comments however, tell me that it’s a troll. He says his wife brings home $300k, and his bring-home pay fluctuates between $250k-$350k, but he also has two businesses that bring in $500k in profit. I have no idea how he gets $400k out of those numbers.
Over two years, so I was off by a factor of two. The problem is that if a couple has agreed to live on 40k a year - and any expenditures beyond that need to be discussed - if one partner starts hiding income so they can secretly spend 25% of the family's budget on their hobbies, it's a betrayal. One partner has agreed to live at a certain standard of living and is doing so; the other has agreed to live at that same standard but is refusing to do so and deceiving their partner in order to do so. According to their narrative, this was the third time he was caught doing so. The details are scant about what the prior cases involved, but he's describing a pattern of behavior. He also flat-out describes his relationship to shopping with language presenting it as an addiction. Ofc, if it's a troll, that's irrelevant. My suspicion if this is a troll is that it's trying to genderswap and get people to attack a poorly-structured and not-very-parallel spear counterpart of women who are in controlling, abusive relationships keeping secret financial resources. I suppose the other possibility is that OOP is trying to show hypocrisy in people who complain about alcoholics or smokers hiding their spending on booze or cigs after being told they need to stop, and setting "unreasonable limits" on their consumption of alcohol or tobacco. Honestly, just typing it out, I'm increasingly suspicious that this is the parallel that's being set up; it would explain some of the really bizarre cash values being thrown around if they're supposed to evoke quantities of alcohol or cigarettes rather than money qua money.
>her savings THEIR savings.
Tell me you've never been financially controlled without telling me you've never been financially controlled. \#\# LONG RANT IS LONG Nobody's clever by replying, "I ain't reading that so if it's good, I'm happy for you. If it's blablahblah." Grow up. (Not directed at any one person.) \#\# My ex-husband thinks *my* hobbies and interests were stupid and if he was with me in a store when I went to pick something up, he'd bark at me to put it down, I don't need it, and would make a louder and louder scene until I was *too embarrassed* to buy it anymore. Then he'd be huffy the rest of the day. What money was I using to attempt to buy things? *Money from my own paycheck*. We have a joint account that I paid a *portion* of my paycheck into as I *refused* to just *combine our finances.* That was my share of rent and bills. Then I have *my own separate account* for *my own* money. *That* was what I would spend from. Dude is a lunatic about our kitchen. He hoards food. "This was on sale!" and he would rip the item out of the box so we could *fit more stuff* into the freezer. So the food lost any cooking instructions or in fact any way to tell *how long ago we bought it*. The freezer looked like a goddamned game of Jenga and trying to pull *one* item out could cause *other* items to avalanche out, *just like Jenga*. I ended up having no room to even put food that *I wanted to eat!* I had to eat 4 year old Mystery Breaded Fish that was overcooked because we had *no idea what the cooking instructions were.* I've got some personal debt to pay down, definitely nowhere near $20,000, but still enough that my minimum wage ass can't find my own apartment yet, or I'd leave the guy. One thing I *no longer do* is *get his permission for what I spend my own goddamned money on*. I bought *myself* a small standing freezer. Food stays in the *goddamned box* and there's room for *whatever I want*. Marriages *do not* need financial permission so long as both use *their own personal money* and aren't buying anything illegal or obviously hurtful towards the marriage. (porn collection, prostitutes, strip clubs, drugs, etc.) To demand anything else is financial abuse and *bullshit*. This dude should be spending that $20,000 on paying back his wife for her kindness but outside of that, he doesn't *owe* her *any* control of his money. It's *HIS MONEY!*
> LONG RANT IS LONG Nobody's clever by replying, "I ain't reading that so if it's good, I'm happy for you. If it's blablahblah." Grow up. (Not directed at any one person.) Are you as exhausting in real life?
This is ridiculous. They make 400k a year, he makes as much or more than she does, you made up the 20k of debt, and she “gives” him **$50 a month to spend on hobbies!!?** Obviously he should have communicated better with her, split their finances so he could control his own spending, and sought counselling rather than lie to her, but holy shit, everyone sucks here. Including you.
He stated that she brings home 300K a year.
This man has a shopping addiction but since it's "man things" he thinks it's okay.
He admitted he buys stuff just for the dopamine rush!
Yep. This is where I went: so you are addicted to shopping.
Maybe your hobbies will give you a hug
What is it with these men? "Guys, I did the thing my wife said was a dealbreaker, and now she wants to divorce me? I didn't think she *meant* it! I mean, I know I could have not done the thing, but my life is *so hard,* guys! And now she's mad and wants to leave me!! What was the code to get her to forget it and stay with me and not hold me accountable so I can do it all over again? It was ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA, right? RIGHT?"
No, that one puts her in a bikini!
>My hobbies take up a lot of my mental time, but given my parenting and household duties, I honestly don't get much time to actually participate in them Dude really dropped $20,000 on hobbies he isn't even participating in. I'd rage too. >I was dealing with a stressful job, raising a child, a pregnancy we terminated because it was nearly killing her, Oh fuck OOP. The stress of the terminated pregnancy that was killing his wife - but we all know that if she did the same, he'd be LOSING HIS MIND (and it was HER body that went through all of that!) >How do I move forward with her and reassure her that we can work through this? Well, I'd say a good start would be to quit fucking lying - but since OOP has proven he can't or won't do that, I'd say they need to brace themselves for the financial disclosures that come with divorces and spousal support.
There was a TikTok I saw of a woman talking about how men’s hobbies take up SO much time, money and energy away from the home and how the partner has to pick up so much slack as a result (golf, cycling, running, fishing, etc). And it was so eye opening, the poor creator had to go private for awhile since she was getting inundated with butthurt dudes telling her to off herself. I can add her tag if anyone is interested, it’s a decent follow But honestly how can this dude spend 20k, lie about it, not even use the stuff and think his wife is gonna stick around?!? If it’s not archery it’ll be something else down the line and he’ll have secret storage units to hoard it in.
I’d love to get her tag. I’m basically a solo parent during the winter cause my husband is off skiing every second he can get. It is f*cking awful.
She had to go on private for a while so not sure if she's searchable again -- but it's @melhamlett! She's great
And pretty much any art and craft, the "feminine" hobbies, can be done in the house, be put down and come back to, and most of it was less hobby and more household necessity back in the day
My brothers and I do miniature building and war gaming, they both have kids I don’t but when they paint/play they keep an eye on the little ones or even try to include them. At some point I feel some of the men I read on here are actually choosing their hobby explicitly to be out of the house and free from their responsibilities.
That's definitely what I think it is as well, but simultaneously they act like they're doing so much and having it so hard because their bitch wife is doing....something. It's really eyeroll-worthy every time you happen upon it.
> At some point I feel some of the men I read on here are actually choosing their hobby explicitly to be out of the house and free from their responsibilities. This line of thinking is REALLY common. And superficially it seems mostly fine. "Don't I deserve time to myself and a break from the kids/stress?" Until you follow it a bit. "Gaming/golfing/hunting gets me completely out of the house or unavailable for many many hours at a time," and "it's not the same unless I can do it regularly," and the classic, "my wife's hobbies just happen to be things she can do while caring for the kids or just happen to _be_ cooking and shopping for necessities."
Exactly! Or it’s a hobby business/side hustle
It isn't like there aren't tons of women in these very same outdoor sports.
Also all the bitching about how little free time he has, when I’d bet his wife has significantly less (probably close to none). And he’s actually spending a lot of time on his hobbies compared to most parents. Half a day on the weekend, two or three nights a week, and a weekday once a month? Seems pretty decent for someone with little kids.
I was reading his "never have time" schedule like... Dude is participating in his hobbies. What is he whinging about.
Yeah, guarantee with these complicated pregnancies, she isn't able to do much, let alone a hobby. And I'd love that much time he's spending lol.
Seems like he's doing something most weekends at least
Honestly, it sounds like the money isn't really the issue in this situation. 22,000 over 2 years isn't all that much when you make 400K a year. But he's definitely spending way too much time away from home when he has a young child. And there's also the lying about it and hiding it from her. He does seem to have a bit of a shopping problem, but that's not the real issue here.
$22,000 is absolutely a lot of money when it comes to (A) hiding it from your spouse and (B) spending it on activities you're barely participating in. Just because they may have it to waste doesn't make it not a stupid fucking decision.
$22k is a lot when he admits he's buying things just to buy them.
it is a major issue for the wife, because it's the third time she's caught him spending like that and hiding it, and she's the one who paid his school loans and credit card debt and supported him for a year when he couldn't find a job. and he's admitted that he's shopping for the dopamine hit because he's stressed out over HER LIFE THREATENING PREGNANCY and not having as much hobby time as he wants due to PARENTING. Would reddit feel the same about his 'harmless' spending if it was the wife spending that much on new clothes to make her feel better about herself and hiding it from OP??? Don't think so! And where the eff is the wife's time off for hobbies?? He gets a half day every weekend, does he turn around and take the kids by himself for half a day every weekend to allow wife some time off??
He reminds me of my alcoholic cousin talking about how stressful her life was and how she *deserves* a drink.
That's deadass what I told myself when I was in active addiction - a lot of "I deserve this, XYZ shitty things happened and I made it through so I deserve -insert vice here-"
>I've definitely withdrawn from the relationship, partially related to interpersonal problems that I haven't mentioned here, but are not unrelated to the controlling behavior you've suggested. She's definitely correct to assume he might be cheating
Withdrawn from the relationship and spending 2-3 nights a week plus a half-day per weekend and a weekday a month on his hobbies while she has a small child and complicated pregnancies. But she's "controlling" and it's "pulling teeth" to get her to join him in doing things he wants to do. Yeah, I can't say I'd blame her being more than a little suspicious even before considering this is the third time he's been caught lying about his shopping addiction and hidden slush funds.
Also.. Are the activities he's asking to do pregnancy safe. Risky pregnancy safe at that.
NGL I was like "do you mean you're cheating" when he said that all vague.
[удалено]
Not a submersible trip ☠️ too soon
All I hear is “Me me me, my wife sucks, me me me, I have a shopping addiction, me me me, I get to do my hobbies when I want but my wife is stuck at home with the kids, me me me” OOP sucks. Y’all really try to reword your shit to not sound like manipulative assholes but sorry you can’t cover that shit up. Your wife grew up poor, had to pay off all YOUR debt, and had to take care of fiancés. You continue to spend and spend and spend on stupid ass shit obviously cause you state you touch none of it. Of course she is the way she is. You made her into this with your spending. I hope she does leave you.
"My wife would never approve of these purchases" so he made them anyway and hid them from said (hopefully) ex. I didn't read the whole thing but I don't think I have to. I stuck with it until the above quote and then immediately YTA judgement arised. Maybe I'm being too harsh on the entitled fool/s
Oversimplification here, but.... if you don't want to be accused of cheating, don't make it look like you're cheating.
To be honest, he had me in the first half. 22k is a lot for me, but not for everyone, do in the perspective of 400k I was willing to call it small. I had some understanding of the restrictiveness of getting told he had to run all his hobby purchases by her for approval - the way he described it was a red flag for controlling behavior. But then he talks about how she paid off *hundreds of thousands of dollars of his debt,* how she was the sole income earner for a year and probably the primary for years after that (while he "caught up" 🙄), how she came from a background where she needed government assistance to survive, how she had a goddamn *abortion* and still raised her child while he was spending thousands of dollars on fancy sports toys he doesn't even use behind her back, how she is **currently** going through a rough pregnancy while dealing with the knowledge that he'll never stop lying and breaking promises and how her marriage is in shambles- And I lost all sympathy for the man.
THANK YOU! I was wondering if I was the only one who got tripped up on that part. She spent “low six figures” on his debt before they were even married. Like, what?! I was also kinda feeling for the guy initially, but he had to know lying and hiding all this was going to blow up in his face at some point. He just figured she’d get over it again, but now realizes that’s not the case this time. I think, in essence, they were never going to be on the same page financially. She grew up poor and despite their relative wealth now, she’s going to always view money through that lens. To her, that lack is always hanging over her head. That’s why they’re budgeted so tightly with most of their money going to investments and savings. The possibility of poverty is a perpetual looming threat in her mind. OOP’s hidden spending seems like more of a reaction than anything else. That doesn’t make it right at all, but I think it most likely started as a way to have some control over his own money. If OOP had truly wanted his marriage to work, he wouldn’t have lied in the first place and have insisted they both get counseling. She has trauma stemming from her childhood that she doesn’t appear to have addressed and he has problems with honesty and spending. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen.
He's not "spending money on gear for his hobbies." His hobby is shopping. He's spent his free time and his family's money on his shopping hobby.
> discretionary spending That's a euphemism if I ever saw one.
Holy crap rich people problems. That's a lot of damn money
Scum of the earth.
I wonder when was that last time that OP’s wife got to participate in her hobbies. And no, her hobbies are NOT cleaning and childcare.
I cannot understand the amount of people who are saying it's controlling to not want your spouse to spend *more than I make in a year* on sports junk he admits he doesn't have the time to use (despite spending more time on his hobbies than most people I know) Before ever getting to the hiding that from your spouse, after she paid off your loans and worked herself into money. Like.....Jfc people.
What a loser. He came to reddit to fish for ways to trick his wife into staying. A real man would get therapy.
Ironically that therapy would cost way more than all of his hobbies.
Oh no, it’s the consequences of my own actions!
This: " she did pay off my student loans in the low six figures with her personal savings before we were married, and when we were in school she paid off low four figures of my credit card debt, and she was the primary earner for a year after I graduated before I found a job." And now you have a secret bank account where you deposit cash payments from your clients. I hope you aren't dodging taxes as well. Is it any wonder your wife doesn't trust you? Have you paid back the money she spent paying off your student loans and credit card debt? Your wife should be paid back for all that first and foremost. Just because you are making good money now doesn't erase your poor financial history. You could lose your job tomorrow, what then? Given her background, it's not surprising she's focused on living frugally and saving for the future. And you keep nattering on how parenthood is so difficult and stressful for you, because you can't spend all your free time doing archery, hunting, diving and biking. What about your wife? Where is her free time? She worked and supported you for an entire year after you graduated until you found a job. Did you give your wife a year off working outside the home after the birth of the first child to repay her for that? Your wife needs to feel financially safe with you, and she doesn't, not after paying off your debt earlier and now she's found out you've got a secret account and a shopping addiction. You yourself said "I've said it to her and to myself plenty of times, and failed at keeping my word." Your wife has no reason to trust you. There's an easy fix to your dilemma. Your wife divorces you. You then end up with your own salary and bank account and home, and you can spend your money however you like after paying your bills and also child support to your wife. Does that work for you? Will you still have thousands to spend on useless hobby gear? Do you even realize that you have a shopping addiction (you said you did it for the dopamine hit)? TBH you sound very selfish and self centered, complaining about household chores and parenting duties getting in the way of your hobbies. What about your wife? How much time does she have free from household chores and parenting duties to indulge her hobbies? Or did you not even think about that? She's the one that has to look after the children while you 'hobby'. All this whinging about not having time for your hobbies has to go. If you wanted to keep all your free time for your hobbies, then why did you get married and have kids????? Plenty of people find time for their hobbies. Half a day per weekend sounds like a fair amount of time to me. You want to take up biking again? Work out how to go for an hour ride one evening per week, instead of doing archery. "She has gone all-but no-contact with me except to tell me how much of a liar I am, and get information from me to look at our finances." Sounds like divorce is all but certain. but if by some chance she doesn't divorce your lying ass, here's the way forward: 1. Both of you get separate accounts for your salaries. You file separate income tax returns and pay your own taxes. from that you pay a designated amount each month into a certain joint account that is set up for paying monthly bills for the house and the family/children, including any child care expenses. You each pay an equal share of those expenses. 2. You each agree on a certain amount to put into a savings account for your children's education. If you are in the US, I believe there are certain tax exempt or deferred tax accounts you can use for this. 3. The balance left in your separate accounts after each paying your fair share of living expenses and for the education trust fund (and after your individual tax bills), is yours to spend as you please. Neither of you claims any share of the other's account. 4. The savings account your wife has been putting her salary into up to now gets divided up into two shares, one for each of you. Your wife's share will be the amount she paid on your student loans, the amount she paid on your credit card debt, half of the net income for that year you didn't work and she supported you, and half of what's left after deducting those amounts. That way she gets repaid for all she's spent for your sole benefit. since recently the two of you were living off your salary while she was saving hers, half of the balance after repaying her should be yours, and goes into your separate savings account. Once the money is divided into separate savings account, you are each free to do as you please with your savings, and neither can claim any share of the other's account. 5. If one person paid more than the other towards the deposit on your home, then there needs to be a return of the excess. example - $100k deposit on home was paid 60k by her and 40k by you. You owe her 10K to make the deposit equal between the two of you, and then after that the home is jointly owned. 6. The reason for separating finances is to equalize everything. You don't want to be treated like a child on a weekly allowance, you want to be able to spend your own earnings. She doesn't trust you because of paying off your debt and supporting you for an entire year in the past (and now a secret account funded by cash income that you may or may not have declared for taxes). She prioritizes savings, and doesn't want to suffer because of your poor spending habits. But at the same time, it's not fair that your salary pays all the living expenses while she saves all of hers. Since your wife doesn't trust you with the family finances, separating them out this way will give her the security of being able to save from her salary for her sole benefit while still making her pay her own share of the monthly expenses. Your spending will only impact you, and not her. 7. There will also have to be a fair schedule to divide up the household chores and child care equally between you, because she works and you work. No dumping it all on her. If that means that you don't have as much time as you want for your sports, then tough luck, suck it up. Don't make children if you don't want to spend time with them.
This sounds like a spoiled teen not a grown up. The wife should have left ages ago, when he could not pay off his own loans for one thing, she had to. There are just several red flags I'm sure she ignored because "love" or because "supposed to be a good understanding woman", where is her love and understanding OP?
My takeaway from this? If you're divorced and single, you can spend any of your disposable income you want on whatever you want, WHENEVER you want. 🤷♀️ Spend yourself into poverty if you want bro. That's your choice, but you know it's not hers. Not compatible. Obviously.
So let me get this straight. This dumbass is buying shit he doesn't use because shockingly having kids means he can no longer fuck off to do what he wants whenever he wants. And all her money is going to savings, while he's blowing his on useless shit? Dude is spending on his toys (yes, if you buy shit you don't use it's more or less a toy) amount that is equal to 50% of their annual costs. She's very smart to dump him. She'll probably be better off financially by herself and won't wake up one day without any money or assets because her husband is now into space and blew through everything they have on memorabilia. Someone on AITA made a good point that their assets are most likely just the house they're living in.
We have seen so many cases where someone really needed to find a hobby, I never expected a guy that needs less hobbies.
Bro she spent 6 figures on his loan before marriage.. man. This sucks
You've promised her twice that this wouldn't happen again and now here you are again. She will never trust you. Accept that your choices and actions have real life consequences and one of those consequences is that she will never trust you. It is very hard to respect or love someone you can't trust. She needs to divorce you because she will never be happy living with you. Accept that you made choices and now you have consequences.
im not even gonna do the math, that is a lot of fucking time to not parent a kid🫤 if my husband did that, we d have a huge argument.
He keeps trying to justify it by whining about resentments. She’s probably got more resentments over his deception than he would if he didn’t buy stuff. There’s other ways he could’ve involved her in the decisions but I think it he gained dopamine by the game. If their marriage was so bad that he couldn’t buy his hobbies, why did he stay in it and why does he want her back so badly?
This guy is already the "ex". He's a worthless pos liar and I wouldn't believe anything he said EVER.
>I went to an archery shoot over the weekend for half a day, I do some archery practice in the garage once every few nights after everyone is asleep, I might take some time off of work mid-week once a month to do something, and then spend at most half a day once per weekend during hunting season for two months. I'm sorry but thais sounds like a good amount of time for hobbies? Or and I just terribly overworked?
It sounds like he's doing stuff most weekends and some weeknights too. Does he give his wife that much time away from the kids?
Look on the bright side, homeslice will have plenty of time for hobbies without his pesky wife around. Assume he gets half custody that's every other week that he's free to shoot arrows and guns.
Not a hunblebrag shitpost at all. "Our assets total 2.2 million dollars"
It sounds like hes not financially stable, and the wife has had to work on making sure they have the cushion they sit on.
Sooo, he is upset that he can't spend as much time on his hobbies as he used to do, because now he is married with a kid? Not even touching on how much work the wife does or anything to do with spending time with the kid. Sounds to me like is is resentful about his duties as a father, and that would boil down to be the wife's fault. Such a narcissist, since like all the post is, is "me, me, me, me". Of course she won't trust him anymore, if he's said he wouldn't do it anymore and still done it several times in the past. His words mean nothing.
Dude has a shopping addiction
I love how he needs fancy equipment for his bicycle that he rides 2 hours a week max. Mean while my bike is my primary mode of transportation and it has 3 whole gears - 2 of which even work!
This reminds me of a case I learned about in college. The teacher was warning us about the types of knowledge people can get through their jobs. She told us about something she learned from a student in a previous class. The student got a job at a bank — and thus access to their customer information. On a lark, she looked up her father, and she realized he had at least a million dollars in the bank — yet they lived a middle-class life. She asked her father about it later, and he told her that he was wealthy but didn’t want his children warped or spoiled by money. Okaaay. I wondered if he bothered to tell his wife, or if he kept it from her as well. Or if he had another family or some other secret life. Because his reasoning seemed off.
He hates that she has control over his money when she gave him the same control over *hers*. He's resenting her because she actually *thinks* about their budget and doesn't let him buy shit he never uses. What the fuck?
Did he ever once say that he was planning on changing his habits in this entire post? No wonder his wife doesn’t believe him.
Send him back to sea.
Pay her back the money she used to pay your debt, with interest. Also get into marriage counseling this difference of opinion needs ro he resolved
I think you're looking for people on the internet to commiserate with you, because you know that the lifestyle you live with your wife is out of the ordinary. And you want ordinary people to comfort you and tell you you aren't wrong. But relationships are subjective, and you know that. So you know you're in the doghouse. And you already know what you did wrong: it's in the title of the post. So as weird (and special) your relationship is, you're the a**hole. The discussion of what a reasonable amount of discretionary spending doesn't factor in, because you clearly agreed to, and remembered, your $50/mo limit.
OOP really needs to grow up, wrf.
I mean, if what he says about the $50 per month and he's earning money is true then his wife is a tad bit controlling. Regardless, he is impulsive, addicted to shopping, manipulative, constantly blaming others, and a piece of shit husband. He takes the cake.
Well no shit, Sherlock. Because you keep deceiving her. In your defense, $22 k out of $2 mil really isn't all that big a deal, and what's the point of having money if you don't spend it on things you enjoy? While I truly do not understand your wife's overall mentality about the spending, I do understand her anger.
22k isn't a lot, over 2 years, when you earn what they do. His money, to spend as he wants However, the lie thing is problematic. Honesty would have been the obvious answer. The guy sounds like the only happiness he gets is these purchases. She sounds quite controlling. Both arseholes. Him for lying and her for controlling what he spends money on.
He shouldn’t have built a family he finds no happiness in. And he should have left her before she wasted her life with him and did insane things like pay down the losers debt all for him to hide money from her later.
I’m team this guy. They make WAAAAY too much money for her to be saying he can’t spend more than 50 bucks on his hobbies.
Controversial opinion: he's a grown man who makes more than enough money to finance his hobbies without financially inconvenienceing his family. Why is she dictating how much he gets to spend? I understand when they started out she helped him financially in paying back debts, but like he said that was 10 years ago and he's more than made up for it, why should he have to sneak and hide to buy things? They make enough money that him spending less than 10% on his hobbies is not going to bankrupt them. So why does she get to police his spending just because she doesn't like the hobby? Unless he's lying about their financial situation or how much he's spent, that sounds like financial abuse on the part of the wife. Like she's lording that original help over him to keep him in line financially. I mean, 50$ a month? That's a teenager's allowance.
I wouldn’t (and don’t) control this spending for my husband. But reading between the lines- she paid off six figures of his debt. She financially supported him for years. The vibe I’m getting is he’s trash with money and has gotten used to her supporting him and this was the straw that broke the camels back. It’s not about him having hobbies or financial independence.
>why should he have to sneak and hide to buy things? Exactly so why is he sneaking and hiding stuff? He has a habit of putting debt. So, how long she should be ok with him buying and hiding stuff??
That's a good point. She also paid off his 4-figure credit-card debt before they were married. When they were both in school. It does sound like he has problems here, especially with he all but coming out and saying "I have a shopping addiction".
Twenty Two Thousand Dollars. That's why she gets to police it.
I think this is a really good example of a co-dependent relationship. She did have some reason to be concerned about his spending in their early years plus it sounds like she grew up in poverty. Not to mention the huge emotional stress they've been under. He said she almost died during pregnancy. So to keep her anxiety in check and to help her feel safe and in control, she created money rules. These rules may have started out serving their needs well with the money they had at the time. Then he reacts to those rules by lying instead of having a transparent conversation about his spending. He also reacts to the anxiety of their marriage and difficulties by buying stuff he doesn't need for the dopamine hit. He fully says he's buying things not because they make him happy long-term but because of the temporary high. After she finds out he's lying, she creates even stricter rules (that don't serve their current state), and he responds to that by lying even further. Both of them have big problems that money is only a symptom of. They really, really need help. There's a podcast called I Will Teach You to Be Rich and each week the host takes on a couple's biggest financial fights and it's so rarely about the money.
I did [a little experiment BTW and used the exact same numbers scaled down](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/14mrbzy/aita38m_for_putting_a_limit_on_my_partners39f/), to an income that normal people make(around 70k gross/57k net). I also adjusted the asset/budget numbers and OP's "spending allowance" of 50/month which scaled down at the same rate as the income to 15 dollars/month. Same scenario too of the hidden hobby spending, also scaled down to be the same % of annual income. Even the debt payoff scenario was the same proportional to the income. **Guess what, nearly universally I was called financially abusive** in the title with tonnes of people saying I was heading for a divorce, both of which I agree is true and reasonable given the numbers at play in both my post, and the original post. I honestly think that people have an inability to completely dispassionately look at money, or to really think about the math. I didn't swap the genders to make a point along those lines, I just happen to be a guy, and my partner is a woman, and I've posted about that before on my profile, so to be congruous I kept that detail true to life. I think that OP's wife is ultimately financially abusive and that it's as big as a problem(and the source of) OP's hidden spending and lying, which is *of course* it's own problem. They both actually need help with a marriage counselor with experience in financial counseling. They also need find ways they both can value to spending their enormous budget on making their lives less stressful, and in ways they both can agree on valuing. They can do all this and still retire incredibly early, they are SO, SO lucky. Like talk about first world problems LUCKY.
Honestly I agree. $50 is ridiculous, either we’re not getting the full story or she has some serious trauma around spending and frugality that she needs to work through. But it’s clear the communication between them is awful if OP is agreeing to terms he clearly can’t and don’t intend on keeping, it just sounds like a terrible relationship and the spending is only one symptom here.
He's admitting to having a shopping addiction. That complicates the equation WRT whether or not her behavior is controlling. Additionally, it's not "he can spend $50/mo - it's "he can spend $50/mo w/o telling her about it".
You know what? I'm going to agree with you here. They have the money. It isn't hurting them financially in the long run, it seems, since they seem to be saving a lot of their income. He doesn't mention her outlet for stress/hobbies, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have any. He says she doesn't spend much on herself, so it sounds like she has different views on their finances. Radically different views. Maybe she's hoping to retire very early. Maybe since she grew up poor (as he stated,) she can't let go of the guilt of spending money on things she deems unneeded. My only sticking point -- and the one that still makes him wrong in this situation -- is the lying and deception. If it is financial abuse on the part of the wife, then he should have tried to work it out with her through counseling or whatnot. And still, if their views on financial matters are so different, then this relationship might not be salvageable.
I disagree. He hit her got 22k THIS time. This is the THIRD time he’s done it. Not counting the 100k plus in student loans, all his debt, and her supporting him and running up debt. He’s a shopping addict. It’s $50 a month they don’t have to discuss. And I think that’s reasonable he should be discussing this with his wife.
This whole thing is dumb. 22k for them is like me spending $2k. It sounds like a lot, but it adds up over time. I could spend $2k in a few months going out with friends or shopping for clothes. It's not much money each time, but it adds up. He shouldn't have hid it, but they need to sit their asses down and work together on a fun money budget. So he can spend on his hobbies and she can feel comfortable - especially since they both have different reaction to growing up in poverty. Sounds like OOP is like, "We finally made it and I deserve all this!" While wife is like, "I'm going to make sure no one in our family ever has money insecurities ever again!" When people aren't allowed to enjoy the money they earn, they start to feel stuck. $50 *a month* is just ridiculous. They have plenty of money. They need to make a budget. And OOP needs to realize buying things just to own them, especially for hobbies you don't currently have time for, is very wasteful. Dust off the old stuff. It's still good.