I spent £5

[KitKat500]

Hello all

Yesterday my OH and I got into it over £5.

Basically, we have a budget for our monthly groceries which we put away in a pot at the beginning of each month. This money covers all food and drink needed for our family for the month. Some months we spend less and other months we go slightly over.

Anyway... I took £5 out and purchased a few bits and bobs such as pasta, pasta sauce, veg, fizzy drink, garlic baguette and crisps.

My OH noticed money was missing from the pot and questioned me if I’d taken it, to which I responded yes I’d bought some bits and pieces. (His approach was very negative, he was clearly angry)

I then showed him the receipts (I had kept them as I knew he would bring it up at some point, he’s very tight, a total miser who keeps tabs). Instead of toning down his voice and adjusting his horrible attitude he continued and scolded me about how it was an unnecessary spend. He said the things I’d bought weren’t really needed and we could have done without them. (He ate the pasta the previous day, drank the fizzy drink too)

My view on food and his view on food is very different. He’s happy to eat from what we have at home but if I feel like cooking something up I’ll happily go and buy the ingredients and cook it. I don’t restrict myself, never have in the department of food. If you have the means I don’t think you should live like you don’t.

I was embarrassed, he humiliated me. Made me explain myself over a £5 spend. I was absolutely mortified and I’m aware this is financial abuse.

For all those who will say “just leave him” - we have a child to raise together and that’s not quite the solution I’m after.

I’m just disgusted with him, money isn’t an issue for us. We both work. He’s just a total tight man, everything starts and finishes with money for him. I’m not an excessive spender, I’m good with money but when it comes to food and drink I don’t restrict myself.

Is your food budget very tight OP? We've had occasions where we have to watch every penny, and that means that the food budget is spent on basic food items not non-essentials like fizzy water or crisps. When we were in that situation DH would constantly go off and spend the food budget on things like snacks, which meant we were short for actual meals at the end of the month. He'd probably frame this as me arguing over a couple of quid, but that wasn't the issue - it was his inability to see the bigger picture.

If you've got plenty of money and a fiver is neither here nor there, then your DH is out of order.

Well, if you’re after a solution that will change his behaviour then he’d have to be onboard with it. You cannot change someone who doesn’t want to. Does he want to change?

The only thing YOU can change is your reaction to his behaviour, i.e. accept it, don’t react to it or remove yourself from the situation (which you pre-excluded).

This is no way to live.
Strongly suggest to OH that he takes control of all food purchases.
Online, in person, realise-you-need-milk etc etc.
A week or two of tomato pasta, toast without dairy spread, tea without milk, will wake him up to the reality of living against existing.
Hand the whole thing over to him. Make no comments.

Perhaps he has missed the whole, food shopping is now more expensive because of world wide pandemic restrictions.

My sympathies OP, it absolutely sucks living with a miser.

Utter ridulous questioning of a household spend - especially in this covid environment .. and its not cavier or smoked salmon entree's .... if he didnt question where the pasta meal came from before he merrily scoffed it. Charge him £10 for labour for cooking his ready meal and drink - he is being petty - aka like living with uni flatmates again.

Don't go out of your way for his needs until he profusely aplogises for the utter nut job he has become.

Sounds like you didn’t really need to buy that stuff

You just fancied it

And that’s fine as both your money and the pot is for food

Maybe do a weekly shop and once gone wait till next shopping day

I'd expect a round of applause if I managed to get that lot for a fiver.

If I read this right you have a pot that money for food goes into every month and you spent a small percentage of it on stuff he ate, but felt unnecessary, once he found the pot had less in it than there should have been.
The way couples budget is entirely up to them, but for one of them to have such tight control over what in effect is a joint budget is not right and needs to be thrashed out between you before it’s too late.
If he wants to be tight with his own money - fair enough but the money you spent wasn’t just his, and unless you have form for wasting joint money on genuinely over the top food purchases just because you want them , then he is 100% out of order over this.
Other than he’s tight you don’t say much about how the rest of the household finances are managed, but he obviously has a short fuse when it comes to money and I don’t envy you trying to resolve the food issue with him.
However you decide to go about it, don’t let him persuade you you were wrong. You weren’t, and the problem is most certainly his not yours.

Next time he questions what you spent £5 of the food budget on, tell him Food, anymore questions from him and your response should be fuck off you miserly twat, and repeat. Was he like this before you had a child with him?

If there's one thing I know about misers, it's that they only get far worse with age.

I still don't get it. you have a pot where you keep money for food. You took some money out of it to buy food. That's what it's there for, isn't it?
Or do you need to ask his permission every time and his approval for your shopping list?

Is this the kind of normal you want for your child? To see their Mum belittled and spoken down to for spending a tiny amount on essentials?!! It's not normal, rational, or acceptable.

You're a grown adult, FFS. It's controlling and frankly pathetic.

I'm afraid I'd be telling him to fix the fuck up or fuck the fuck off!

This sound really odd. If it was me, I would spend my own £5 to buy something I want to cook/eat and enjoy it rather than spend joint money knowing your dh gets upset.
I love cooking. If I have to cook everyday from what we have and both agreed to buy, the marriage won't last long for me.

@Blondeshavemorefun

Sounds like you didn’t really need to buy that stuff

You just fancied it

And that’s fine as both your money and the pot is for food

Maybe do a weekly shop and once gone wait till next shopping day

Why? It is either fine and no need to wit and only do a weekly shop or it isn't and she gives into a controlling bully.

Hell would freeze over before I, a grown woman with a job, house to run, MOT to book, and all the other myriad trappings of adulthood, would let someone give me the third degree over spending a few quid.

If you don't feel like leaving him then laugh in his face and tell the stupid bastard to catch a grip

He has no reason to change. You are going have to work around him.

You may like to try building up something like nectar points which can be spent like cash. I'm not sure about coupons, but there are cashback apps like shopmium which you may be able to use and allow you to build up a little stash of food money for when he's likely to kick off. Tesco clubcard also gets you money off vouchers, so you lose the receipt but he can check the prices online and be unaware that you've stashed a fiver here and there.

Selling on eBay, if you don't tell him, can also get a few extra pennies.

Be careful about receipts. If you make a good saving, you need to be able to hide it, and stash the difference between the bargain and the usual price. On the other hand, you may have to take things back. If you keep receipts, make sure he can't find them.

If he is going to complain about the cost of fizzy drinks, then you shouldn't buy them. You shouldn't buy any treats at all. If he wants them, he can buy them. If you are buying treats for your little one, you need to hide it from your OH, and buy them out of stashed money. You may even need to eat them outside the house. If you don't, OH will be asking (a) where the money came from and (b) why he isn't getting any.

Another serious issue is that food prices are likely to rise with the impact of Covid and Brexit. I wouldn't be surprised to see a rise of 10%. You need to keep a dialogue with him about the real cost of things. He will deny that things are more expensive and expect you to maintain the same food budget. At this point it is a good idea to let him do all the food shopping to 'show you how it's done'. Food quality is likely to drop, but that can't be helped and you will really need that stash to keep you going until he accepts the new normal of higher food prices.

Your child may well follow in his footsteps. I've seen children encouraged to berate their mother for silly spending and believe that she is incapable of handling money. You need to brace for that.

You need to accept that there is no way to change his mind on these matters. It is vitally important to him that he 'win' with money. You need to play crafty. Good luck.

I would of told him to f off as well

Years ago, I had to go and do the weekly shop. I schlepped to the shops, bought everything on the list then I saw a promotional fruit and nut toblerone. I love chocolate. It was 45p.

I bought it.

Took shopping home, put it away. Put the toblerone in the fridge.
Along came then H, went through the receipt and proceeded to berate and abuse me over 45p. He was utterly horrific about 45 fucking p. I went into my purse and gave him 45p (altho the shopping had been out of joint account to which I contributed a lot more. And we were no where near the breadline or in a situation where 45p would have been an issue.

I divorced the fucker, it was that 45p that pushed me over the edge.

I ended up throwing that chocolate bar out right after starting divorce proceedings. I couldn’t face eating it. Took a long time before I could even bear to look at tobelerones.

Does he get you to account for every minute of the way you spend your time as well, by any chance? Where you've been, who you've been with, why you're late home? Even if it's work related? Is this really what you want for your littl'un?

My dad was an absolute spendthrift and a gambler; my mother was extremely tight with money, to the extent that when my dad died, the money she had squirrelled away paid for her nursing home fees for several years. I'd personally rather she'd had a good time and gone round the world on a cruise and had lots of gentlemen friends, but she remained miserly even when she had the money. And in the end it all went back to the State.

And yet at the same time she was sometimes utterly irrational about the money decisions she made, often giving money to strangers, or buying things we really didn't need from the Ringtons man, or the Morses man. We had a miserable, miserable childhood as my parents argued non stop about money and it has affected my relationship with money my entire life.

So I'm not sure if I'd be quite at the LTB stage yet, but I'm definitely at the "please get counselling and split the accounts" stage. Does your husband even know how much food costs? (As someone else said, you did amazingly well to get that amount of food for a fiver so you're obviously brilliant with managing your budget.)

Rant away but your choices are stay and walk on eggshells and wait until your child gets the same treatment or leave. There isn’t a less controlling version of him waiting around the corner.

frazzled I think you should go and buy one of those human sized Toblerones to celebrate that it helped you to get rid of that twat.

I live with a grippy sod OP. Unlike you, I'm terrible with money (genuinely terrible, in case anyone thinks that this is something he's just cunningly convinced me of) and his thriftiness has meant we own a house and I've cleared my debts, among other things.

The difference is that he wouldn't ever speak to me like that about spending a fiver on some food. I know at times he probably still thinks I've overspent but he doesn't ever say anything.

What does he say if you tell him that you felt humiliated and degraded by that conversation about the receipts? He should be upset and apologetic that he hurt you. If he doesn't react like that then you have a worse problem as he doesn't care for your feelings enough.

What would happen if you tell him that the "pot system" isn't working; that you cannot have another conversation like the receipts one as it's humiliating and unacceptable and you need to work something else out re. household spending. I'd say that if you can't even have this conversation with him without it turning nasty on his part, then suggestions to leave or suck it up are probably right to be honest. People can have major flaws without it always being a relationship-breaker, but they have to be able to compromise or it's just hopeless.

Katharina I think I might you know! 😃

Take charge of your own finances so he doesn’t know what your spending on. Have your wages In a separate account and take charge of it yourself I couldn’t live with someone like this about money. Fair enough if your in the breadline but your not so there’s no need for it’s. It’s just for control

I PROMISE you, this bloke will only get worse as the years wear on.

Your call, but you wouldn't see my arse for dust.

Fuck that! Leave him