H read my CC statement he's not happy

[totalblindspot]

I've had the silent treatment all evening and him muttering under his breath about my spending. I've got 3k on there which has built up over 5/6 months. It's mainly family spends, weekly shop, petrol, kids stuff. Nothing extravagant at all.

I was an idiot for forgetting to shred it. Gah!

I don't understand why people are making comments like

" £X seems enough to me - what are you spending it on ? "

I bet that's EXACTLY what OPs husband says! we have no idea whether or not £X is enough, because we don't know

What their income is
What their outgoings are

And it's not about the actual amounts - it's the way in which one person uses money to CONTROL the other one.

She is SCARED of him and alters her behaviour and lifestyle to avoid trouble from him .

He has plenty money and his wife and kids are short . That's abusive . They are his kids and he benefits greatly from the work she is doing ( caring for the kids , running the house ) .

The word OP used was managing finances, not hiding,

Sorry Lweji it feels like you are inventing and exaggerating what OP is saying to support your thesis that he is abusing her. Other posters have projected "what he might do next" andjudged him for that too.

This may be abuse but there's insufficient evidence, as Wips, Miss Clarke music and others agree.

Ok, hiding might be jumping to conclusions a bit, but even if she knows what is where, it's out of her reach and control, whereas he does what he wants with money in joint access and scrutinises it all, which is just as bad.

BTW, I did comment initially about making sure the spending is reasonable. But, taking the OP's posts at face value, everything that goes on in relation to managing the family money is abusive.

It is about control. Money is being run up on a credit card because insufficient money is being transferred to op to cover all household expenses and I assume OP is paying interest on the card. This is madness if the op's dh has enough income to ensure this does not happen.
For DH and I all money is family money - who spends it is irrelevant. I spend the majority as I am the one who does the shopping and pays the bills - the bills we incur as family and the food we all eat!

Maartje - you seem very invested in defending the OPs husband - why is that ? Do you manage the money in your own relationship in a similar way ?

Sorry you felt my tone was prickly OP, but without any background info your opening post gave me that impression.

You manage to spend £700 a month on paying off credit card debt? That is an awful lot of money. You shouldn't have to be asking him for money but surely there's a big lack of communication going on here?

What did your H say when he saw the statement? Did he provide a solution to the problem or did you both go off sulking?
I manage the finances/bills in our marriage and when I see spending getting a bit above our means by Dh I always gently remind him, which I think is fine and he always restricts his spending when a big bill is due.. If he was racking up credit card bills and loans behind my back I would be really really angry and vice versa. The money he earns belongs to you both; maybe it's time you had this conversation?

If you pay off £700 a month but have built up £3000 debt in 5-6 months if I understand correctly you are adding more cc debt each month as well as cash from the joint account. Do you have an idea of monthly outgoings and what is needed for food, petrol, kids stuff etc and whether that is manageable on what you have coming in. At various points DH and I have has only one income, at the moment that is mine and it could simply not support spending £700+ a month on the items you mention. He'd not have to ask me for more money though - we'd have to sit down together and balance income and outgoings.

Btw, does he never go shopping with you or by himself for food or things for the children?
It is an awful amount of money to spend on the family (if it's food/household and children) without him being aware of the amounts.

There's £700 available to pay off the credit card each month, yet it's crept up to £3000?

No idea about abusive, but if Dh managed to overspend on our budget and put us in debt, I'd be angry and vice versa.

Do you know how much your husband earns? How much the mortgage is etc? It's either a case of you not managing the food and household budget well enough or him wanting you to provide a certain standard of living on not enough money and keeping the lion's share of money away from you.
I'm guessing it's the second.

Kr1stina no my DP and I keep our finances completely separate. She is much wealthier than me.

I responded to what was an AIBU and replied someone who replied to me, basically the point every time being we don't know enough and can't judge either party yet. I don't know where you get the "very invested in defending".

I think this is really tricky, dh and I have a combination of joint and separate finances. My CC is mine and his is his, neither of us would dream of opening each other's statements, but then neither of us put the family shopping on it either.

I have not RTWT or your posting history

one question from me, could you and would get a job? what's holding you back??? as clearly your family needs more money as a basic starter for ten

Sorry Lweji it feels like you are inventing and exaggerating what OP is saying to support your thesis that he is abusing her. Other posters have projected "what he might do next" andjudged him for that too

You accused other posters of

Inventing
Exaggerating
Projecting
Judging

Quite strong words

The op seems to have no idea of how much money they actually have.

My dh does our finances and he would be very angry to find I had an undisclosed cc bill, as I would too if the situation was reversed. There is transparency in our finances though.

What we don't know is whether the money he draws down on from the joint account is for essential things or whether he spends it excessively on himself. We don't know if he deliberately keeps her short or if he makes all their spare money available to her.

It does seem he is making unilateral decisions about their finances. This may be because she has been financially irresponsible in the past or it might be because he is a controlling arse. We don't know.

You need to sit down together op and look at your finances. Together you need to agree on how that money is spent and allocated. Then you need to stick to that budget. This needs to be reviewed often.

If he refuses to be open and transparent then you have a relationship problem.

So he's financially abusive
He stonewalls you (abuse - look it up)
He rants.
Nice!!!!
Does he have any good qualities at all?

Do some sums and find out how much better off you might be without him.
You'd get tax credits, child support from him, child allowance and maybe housing depending on your current situation.
You might be better off without him.
There's no harm in knowing what you would get without him.
Check the child support calculator and maybe have a chat with CAB.
If you understand this you have more ammunition when you tackle it with him.

I would imagine if he's like this with money there will be other things as well.
Womens Aid can help you see things for what they are and support you if you need it!

OP I hate the sulking bit , makes you feel like a naughty child not a fully functioning adult ! My DH used to be a bit like this , well a lot like this really , I ended up paying for things using my CC , I was working though so could manage the debt ( badly) , I owed what you owed , but had accumulated it over a much longer period . In the end I went with honesty and the fact that I was'nt a bad person or a stupid person , just a person who had constantly been kept away from all our finances and like yourself hated asking for money . I told him what I owed , explained what it had been spent on over the years and then told him how much money I would need every week to feed and clothe us all . He got angry , but so did I , he agreed to my terms and apologised for making me feel ridiculous and like a lesser person . I find it much easier now to say to him , we need to pay this for DD or DS , he still comes over all scrooge , but instead of feeling awful for asking , I tell him to stop being silly and cough up !

It is hard to tell from your post if you are being extravagant and your DH is right to be concerned by how much you are spending or if your DH is being tight and controlling. Whichever the case, paying interest on credit cards is a shocking waste of money and should be avoided if at all possible. It sounds like the two of you need a serious talk about finances and budgets.

I don't know if this could work for you but when I stopped work to become a SAHM my DH and I talked things over and agreed a sum that would come out of the joint account every month by SO and go into another household account. This money covered groceries, petrol, children's clothes, haircuts etc, Xmas and birthday presents and my personal money. Only I held a card for that account and it was up to me how I distributed and budgeted. It gave me some financial autonomy and saved the potential embarrassment of having to 'ask' for cash every month. The amount fluctuated from time to time (when he had a pay cut it went down, when times were better it increased) and it is much lower now the DCs have grown up.

It works well for us, but my DH is not financially controlling at all. He earns much, much, much more than me but considers everything that comes in to be OUR money and I pretty much run our finances. I don't know if I could be so generous/trusting if our positions were reversed. I can see that if your DH has issues around money this might not be doable for you.

Really need more information before jumping to financial abuse.

Racking up $3000 of debt in less than 6 months WHILST paying off $700 a month and having access to at least some money from another account is a bit insane if it is mostly all on food and petrol and clothes/uniform and kids activities/school stuff and so on. Unless OP is covering something exhorbitant like public school fees out of what she has access to, it seems like it should be more than enough to quite lavishly feed, clothe and otherwise provide for everyone.

I have family with major shopping addictions. My sister could easily spend $500 a week on food when $150 would be more than enough with plenty of luxuries included. So her DH has to limit what she has access to, otherwise they wouldn't have a cent saved. She still racks up debt on her CC's and is constantly asking for more money, but the damage is far less than if she had complete access. On the one hand she hates it because she can't feed her addiction to the extent that she wants to, on the other hand she loves her house and the family holidays and not having to work full-time, and when she has a rare moment of honesty she recognizes that none of that would be remotely possible if she was let loose on their accounts.

This sounds a lot like my father.

Yes it 's financial abuse.

My mother worked part-time so had a little money of her own so didn't have to ask him for extra money for clothes for me or her. Food was fine because that was in a joint account and he didn't take money out of it.

One immediate step would seem to be to open your own account and as soon as he pays money into the joint account, transfer it into your account so he can't take it out for other things.

It is a bit hard to manage joint finances if one or the other party is deliberately hiding what they are spending money on, though. It's wrong to hide the fact you are spending a lot of money on credit card interest every month. Either he is genuinely financially abusive and that explains why you feel the need to hide it (although your reaction to him finding out is more irritation than fear of the consequences), or you both need to sit down together and discuss a more sensible arrangement.

Is your joint account the one his salary is paid into and if not, why on earth not? Imo, the joint account should be the main account, ensuring at all times that family food, children's clothing and activities, bills, etc, can be paid, including a cushion for unexpected costs, and then excess amounts taken out each month for individual and possibly joint savings. Being a SAHM, it's actually more tax efficient for savings to be in your name, so illogical for him to keep most of the rest of the spare cash... Clearly you two don't trust or respect each other very much when it comes to money!!

I would say that I manage our household finances.

I would be furious if DH got us in £3k of debt.

There's a lot if stuff we don't really have the details of here, what has OP discussed with her DH. Is OP a spendthrift or does the household budget need increasing? Is it the DH's fault for taking money out of the household budget for non- household items?

It's not ok that OP feel she needs to beg for access to money but then if my DH was running up thousands of pounds of debt behind my back I might be tempted to keep some money he couldn't access too.

If the OP's husband isn't putting enough of his salary into the joint account for her to feed and clothe the family and/or is leaving it run short so that she is forced to use her credit card or beg him to top up the JA, then that is financial abuse.

If you have a healthy income (which the OP sounds like she does if she can pay off the card in £700/month chunks), then £3k of debt is not much. It may be on a 0% interest card for all any of us know.

And there's nothing wrong with using a credit card for weekly shops or day to day living. I do it because I earn cash to spend in John Lewis.