To not see the difference between saving and inheritance?

[vibecheck]

If you were planning a fairly expensive holiday with a partner, and you’d agreed to save the money for it, but when it came time to book and pay Partner A revealed that they hadn’t saved anything and would use gifted money from a recent birthday to pay their half, would you be annoyed?

I can’t understand the difference between saving and spending money I have been gifted, but I’ve really upset my husband.

For various reasons we have separate savings accounts so he wasn’t aware that I hadn’t “saved” my half from my salary.

It does sound like you are both operating from extremes!

Oh I missed this little bit of insight. Wow OP I thought you were being unreasonable before, now I think you are very unreasonable

If this is genuine of course

@titchy @Womencanlift I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what I’ve done wrong there?

All I have ever wanted to do is share our money. Our house is bought with money from “me” but is in our name and always has been, even pre-marriage. As I said, I have tried to pay the same amount into his private pension as is in mine so we’re equal on that front, I have suggested we pool our savings and my investments so everything is in both our names and we both have equal access. What am I doing wrong in saying that him not wanting to do that holds us back from being a team just as much as me?

And to add - he’s been happy to accept certain things that come from my money, like our home or the private healthcare I pay for for both of us. It just feels like for things like this holiday which he now says he won’t go on that he’s doing something to deliberately make our lives less nice for no good reason.

For me, the issue would be trust. If you had no intention of saving, you should have said "Happy to go on holiday but will use my savings to fund my half." But instead, you agreed with his wishes "We should both save" then didn't.

From your OP, you didn't save anything. It wasn't a case of misjudging how much to save, or getting a few too many Costa Coffees so having to dip into savings to make up the shortfall. You didn't even make the effort to do what you said you'd do.

To me, if you say you'll do x, you should do x. A stupid example: I told DH that I didn't feel too good tonight, so he offered to cook macaroni cheese for dinner. I was grateful. When it was almost done, DH mentioned that 250g of pasta probably wasn't enough. I was confused and asked why he'd only cooked 250g of pasta. He told me that the dinosaur pasta bag only had 250g in it. I was pretty annoyed. I didn't want dinosaur pasta (thanks, teen DDs!!). He had said he'd make macaroni cheese and that was what I agreed to, and what I was expecting. He shifted the goal posts without telling me. Yes, it was still pasta, but it wasn't macaroni and macaroni cheese isn't macaroni cheese without macaroni.

I see your situation as the same. You changed the goal posts and told your DH that his wish that you put the same effort into your holiday wasn't important to you.

Because your respective efforts are hugely unequal. And you don't really want to understand his pov or move an inch towards him. It's all what YOU want.

He knows the value of money, and the benefit of working hard towards something, of both of you having a shared goal and working and sacrificing equally towards that. You don't. You're an adult who goes to mummy/daddy when you want a shared goal. At which point it is no longer something shared.

You have such different attitudes towards money and saving, would you consider relationship counselling?

Ooh this is complicated and as others have said I think it is a microcosm of wider issues.

Looking at this from a pure accountancy perspective, ultimately you both agreed to contribute your fair share. I'm not sure it matters where that share comes from unless you have spent money you had told him was earmarked for another purpose, for example. It's interesting that you both agreed to SAVE for it rather than simply to PAY for it. I wonder why that was?

I do not come from wealth but I have a (weirdly large!) number of friends who do and ultimately their income from things like trusts is another source of income, just like a salary. It's a totally different way of being in the world / with money, I think, to people who are used to income equalling salary. A bit more akin to how people think of income from a pension, to compare it to something more people are familiar with.

But ultimately this speaks perhaps to a bigger issue, whereby his financial security and spending power has always had to rest entirely on his own hard work and prudence/sacrifice, whereas yours hasn't. It's hard not to feel resentful about that sort of thing in his position, and I don't think it makes someone a bad person if they feel that way.

On top of this, as others have said, he might be looking at this as an example of your wider inability to save. If he's seeing this as part of a general and perhaps future pattern of behaviour then it makes his reaction more understandable, given his personal history with money.

Equally, in his position, I might wonder why you hadn't used that windfall to put towards your shared costs of the trip, leaving you both with half the amount to fund out of personal savings. You are married after all. Shouldn't you share life's financial upsides and downsides equally?

Can you ask him to unpack why he's upset? It might be worth undergoing some joint counselling, as others have said, as there's usually a lot of complex emotional dynamics around money and this could be beneficial to your relationship long-term.

It is the in the way I want that stood out for me from that post of yours

Why should the financial side of your relationship only be on your terms?

If you have all this money why did he have to bail you out? And how much did he bail you out for?

I’d recognise I was being a bit unreasonable but I would feel the same as him.

I just think it’s completely unreasonable. I can’t really understand why someone would feel like that, I know I wouldn’t.

You might well do had you had the life experience that he had. Can't you see that? You can't say what you would definitely not do, when your life is so fundamentally different from his.

You're glossing over your earlier accusation that he's jealous. I don't see it at all. For goodness sake, he could have sponged off you forever, but instead he's not let you top up his pension etc, because he has some self respect.

Your attitude to money is SO casual and confident, like you simply don't need to give it a thought. That must be maddening to him. You are able to be so thoughtless about money because you have this money tree that you're able to take for granted. He just sees you being irresponsible and is really frustrated.
You're really not seeing his point or empathising with his life experience at all.

Exactly that.

It was around £3000, at the time I didn’t have access to most of the money I have now as I wasn’t yet 25. We agreed not to ask my living parent for more money than they had already given us and he would pay the remainder of our balance (it was for our wedding).

@laclochette I think yours might be the best answer I’ve ever read on here. Very balanced and helpful. I’m going to think about a lot that you’ve said.

When you say ‘he covered the rest of my shortfall on the half’ - do you mean your parent or your DH?

I’d be annoyed if I had to bail out my DH because he hadn’t saved money that he’d said he would save!

Yeah me and DH have separate money to some extent but any trust funds etc (not that we are lucky enough to have them would be pooled). He’s basically sacrificed his disposable income to save for a holiday whereas you haven’t had to. I’m usually all for independence in a marriage but that doesn’t sit quite right with me

You two aren't compatible. Money will always be an issue and you don't seem to think very kindly of each other.

I think he will be fed up because in his mind yet again you haven't saved for something you said you would, showing your inability to stick to something you've promised and it can feel like someone is all over the place who overspends. However on the other hand he is possibly too anxious over money, so it sounds like a constant recipe for disaster between you both.

@vibecheck I'm glad. Ultimately it sounds like the issue is that you haven't fully merged your finances despite being married, ie a situation whereby you pool your incomes from everything (and I would personally include income from family wealth in that because it does function as a source of income), pay your bills out of it, and then pay yourselves each an equal amount of spending money. That way, you each have equal spending power, so you can't end up in weird situations where one partner can afford a holiday but another can't (or can't unless they have to make greater sacrifices). However, it does sound like your husband is resistant to pooling finances even though you've suggested this, which means you're left with a "my money vs your money" situation. Red and blue, instead of purple.

I don't know enough to know why this would be. It might be a fear of your fiscal irresponsibility, it might be an aversion to partaking in the kind of ease around money he has historically resented and perhaps even defined himself against, it might be both or neither... but that might be a good thing to explore with a counsellor.

Ultimately, with properly pooled finances you'd only have your allocated spending money each to play with , as you'd commit everything else to joint bills plus saving plans agreed upon together, so rationally, unless he's worried about you running up debts, it should be ok - but nothing is as deceptively rational on the surface, and as emotional in its depths, as money...

@Livingoncaffeine I want the money to be pooled - I offered to pay for the whole holiday. He didn’t want that.

It makes savings stuff complicated - he thinks I’m spoiled and can’t save money and I think he’s jealous with a chip on his shoulder.

You have demonstrated that you can’t save money, so he’s right on that score. And you do sound ‘spoiled’ as in the sense that it seems you cannot really appreciate quite how fortunate you are and how not having easy access to money is such a formative issue - he may well have a chip on his shoulder, but you sound like you cannot empathise with him.

One of the things you failed to save for was your wedding. That’s quite a rocky start to building trust! He may also feel that he doesn’t want to be subsidised by you as it feels emasculating - these things run deep.

Ultimately you’ll both be happier if you can both work through these couples emotional issues around money, compromise and pool resources. But you both have to be willing to examine your own issues without blame.

Christ. I’m cringing reading some of your responses - literally things only someone who knows there’s a neverending money fountain spaffing a few thousand their way whenever they want would say. The attitude is the problem, not the money. The absolute empathy bypass you seem to have when it comes to people from less fortunate backgrounds than you.

I find it quite astonishing to be honest that you really can’t fathom that most people’s money comes from what they earn, and that’s where it begins and ends, and financial security is entirely created by those earnings. Yes, some people get help and monetary gifts but your situation sounds unusual to have that much constant support. You don’t need to have experienced being poor to be able to imagine what that might make you feel about money, surely? The way you talk about it is so crass and blasé and I’m surprised he didn’t save himself £3000 and cancel the wedding rather than bailing you out!

My partner’s parents are very wealthy but he is absolutely nothing like this. We wouldn’t have even got past a first date if he was.

He doesn't want to be a kept man - he has self respect.

in his position, I might wonder why you hadn't used that windfall to put towards your shared costs of the trip, leaving you both with half the amount to fund out of personal savings. You are married after all. Shouldn't you share life's financial upsides and downsides equally?

Actually I think this nails it, at least part of it. In your DH’s shoes I’d be annoyed that you’d seen this windfall as a way for you - and you alone - to avoid having to save. Why wouldn’t you use it in a way that benefits you both?