Heads up: this is a very long post with lots of background info.
I am a 25 year old woman old engaged to my fiancé who is a 29 year old man. We have been dating since I was 19 and he was 24. When I say we are madly in love with each other we are madly in love with each other. We are each others first relationships. We mesh together perfectly. We had a bit of a long engagement not due to any issues at all in our relationship just because I was in college and my fiance was still getting figured out in his career.
We both met when we both didn’t have a lot of money I was living at home with my parents and he was living with an older man that used to be his neighbor who was renting out a small spare bedroom. Since then we grown into our careers and adults lives together. He moved and we did long distance for 16 months until I got everything together and was ready to move together into our apartment and then we got a house. once we moved into the house together we decided to start sharing finances and viewing things as “our” money instead of “his” or “her” money. We have a joint account where we would put all the money in that goes towards necessities such as bills and home repairs and groceries and what not. Then based on percentages we would take out our respective amounts of the joint account for the necessities. We then have our own separate account which our “fun money” goes in and then another joint account of a budgeted amount that our savings goes in that we don’t touch.
Then this way we have the same amount left over for fun things such as he has his truck hobby with his pick up truck that he owns that he likes to tinker with and I get a pedicure and my hair colored now and again or dinner out with friends stuff like that. This is the obvious way to do it to me bc obviously we operate as a team and engaged and not roommates so we want to make sure each other has the same amount to “toy around with” so to speak. We weren’t nickel and diming each other. He makes a little over 2 times what I make not that I don’t work just as hard it’s just our chosen careers which we are both very passionate about happen to pay that amount.
We would base what we contribute financially based on percentage so we still have the same money left over and I wouldn’t be stuck with nothing or very little while he has a lot more left over. To us that’s what being a team and getting married means. He pays the mortgage and I pay utilities such as electric, water, internet, toilet trees, I pay for our home delivery meal service that comes for dinners 5 nights a week. I also am responsible for cleaning the house and if there are home repair issues or something needs to be renovated like for example our master bathroom recently got redone I handle all that. Finding the contractors to come out and manning the job and picking out what we want.
We never argue about money and we are both very happy with this financial set up and we both feel it’s very fair and equal. Multiple people have commented on how it’s beautiful we are so in love and have built our lives up together after meeting each other when we both basically had nothing or very little to our name and they can’t wait for us to be married.
The one thing we disagree about is his mother. I feel my fiancé involves her very heavily in his/our life. She lives 13 hours away and my fiancé is the oldest and she has 2 younger sons. She has a big family lots of friends and isn’t lonely by any stretch yet my fiance tells her at any given time the exact home repairs we are doing, if something goes wrong with our home, if we happen to have less money than expected. They talk everyday or just about and I feel like it’s a bit overbearing and strange given she isn’t lonely. I don’t meet that many adults who want their parents that heavily involved in their personal lives. I think I would cry and feel suffocated if my mom was that involved in the knowing of everything that happens. Well the icing on top of the cake for me was he told his mom our exact financial arrangement/set up. He told her how we have our accounts set up, who contributes what, who pays what. The only thing he didn’t tell her was how much we have in those accounts.
i cried when he told me this because I said finances and inlaws/family don’t mix. I said I understand you are close to your mom and fine even though I find it annoying that she has to know every detail of our lives telling her our exact financial set up is not ok. I said I’m beginning to feel like his mom is a third person in our relationship and there is no reason she needs to be privy to our finances and how we have it set up. I said a couple’s finances is between them and them alone and a possible financial advisor who is a professional and not a biased party like a parent and of course our bank. Unless his mom is giving us money which we are independent adults on our own two feet so she isn’t. So absolutely no reason she needs knowledge on our banking info. To me that hooks be common sense. My fiancé and I have such a solid and close relationship I also underneath the anger feel very hurt and betrayed that without me there or even checking with me he just told his mom all our financial info not even thinking about my feelings. For her to know about such private information I feel “exposed” not in the physical sense but the mental sense.
I said when we get married I don’t want to feel like your mom is the third person in our marriage. He did apologize and explain he told her because she was just talking about finances in general and it flowed with the conversation but I told him I was still upset and just needed some alone time. Not alone time to rethink the relationship obviously because every relationship has issues once in a great while but just time to calm down.
Im sure we can all agree that given his mom that much access into our financial set up isn’t a good idea but AIBU to be this upset and worked up over it? I just feel there needs to be boundaries especially as an adult in a serious relationship. And maybe when you’re a teenager telling your parents every little thing is fine but I don’t want his mom living in our pocket.