Frustrated Husband Asks If His Family's Budget Is ‘Unreasonable’ After Wife Accuses Him Of Financial Abuse
This is more a relationship problem than a money one, and they're both potentially in the wrong.
pixelshot | Canva Pro Everyone but billionaires knows that right now, economic times are tough, so much so that even those making six figures are coming up short. That's nothing new, but it's risen to a whole new level the past couple of years, and belt-tightening has become a national pastime for all but the lucky few.
For one dad on Reddit, it is threatening to upend his marriage, because, try as he might, he and his wife cannot come to a place of agreement on their monthly budget. And it's resulting in recriminations and assumptions on both people's parts that are not only unfair, but point to a deeper issue.
A frustrated husband asked if his family's budget was unreasonable since his wife refuses to abide by it.
The dad's situation is an all-too-familiar one for families these days. Despite his $200,000 salary, he and his wife and two kids are consistently coming up short financially week after week after week. As he puts it in his Reddit post, "my wife won’t stick to a budget and I’m at my wit’s end."
When they had kids, the dad told his wife that he would support her in whatever decision she made in the debate over whether to go back to work or be a stay-at-home mom. When she chose the latter, he asked for one condition: That they create a weekly budget and stick to it.
"We have agreed upon a $600 per week budget for groceries, gas, and 'extra' activities like local pool, occasional trip to the indoor play place, etc.," he wrote, adding that this amount is necessary in their very high-cost-of-living area. Despite it not even including bigger expenditures like school clothes, sports, eating out, and vacations, it has proven a disaster.
His wife consistently goes over budget and has called his attempts to rein her in 'financial abuse.'
Despite what he considers a generous budget, even by the standards of their very high cost-of-living area, his wife consistently goes over budget every week, sometimes by hundreds or even a thousand dollars.
"What seems to be happening is that once the 600 is spent she will just reach for another card," he wrote. "Or worse yet, she will just choose the wrong card out of her wallet and then plead ignorance."
When he tries to discuss it with her, she calls him "controlling" and "unreasonable," and also says there are certain purchases she is simply not willing to "compromise" on. This has led him to escalate his control over their spending, suggesting she remove credit cards from her wallet, for example, which has resulted in her accusing him of "financial abuse."
"Even worse she is constantly telling me how frugal she has to be and how she doesn’t spend much money," he wrote, despite the "Starbucks/Whole Foods/Target runs" that blow past their budget every week. Meanwhile, "I spend absolutely zero dollars on my own hobbies, interests etc because there just isn’t anything left. I just work extra shifts."
Most people took the dad's side, but there is likely more to the situation.
With very few exceptions, Redditors were immediately on the dad's side. Most of the commenters were women and stay-at-home moms themselves, and were nonetheless adamant that this situation had reached a point that required whip-cracking, ultimatum-issuing, and credit card-cutting.
But there's an elephant in the room nobody seemed to want to acknowledge. Men often have no idea what things cost because it is women who control 85% of household spending. Men may be the ones paying the bills, but they're almost never the ones doing the actual mental and physical work of purchasing everything and keeping the household afloat.
KatarzynaBialasiewicz | Getty Images | Canva Pro
It may very well be the case that the budget this dad is setting simply isn't enough, and she is furious that he's refusing to listen to reason, and constantly cracking the whip on all the work she does in the process.
The fact that she is constantly lying about why she's using the "wrong" credit cards is also very telling. Is it really more plausible that she's just a dishonest, sneaky profligate than it is that her husband is being way too draconian about the rules and she's anxious every time she has to break them to get something they or their kids need?
Of course, it's just as possible that his wife really is a spendthrift who's way too blasé about weaponizing therapyspeak like "financial abuse." But most likely, the truth lies in the middle. There's a very real disconnect between these two that's rooted in relational issues, not financial ones. No amount of whip-cracking is going to remedy that, and in fact, it's likely to make it worse.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
