Rich Man Mean?

[247]

Had a crappy long and drawn out debate with DH in which it is very obvious we have quite different values. Since he is the breadwinner then I guess I have to accept it, but boy I am not happy. DH had nothing when i met and married him but we were happy and in love, isnt that the most important thing. Anyway, the years have gone by, 20 to be exact and he is now rich. We have a 2£m home, DCs in private ed, expensive cars etc, successful business etc, but we do not live an expensive lifestyle, ie lots of holidays, designer gear, trips out etc. I just happened to mention that DD would like (has not asked and never does) 3 expensive items including a handbag. Now she is only 13 and he has a problem with the fact a) she does not need a handbag b) she should not be wearing any designer clothes and c) if he lets have have these things she will be spoilt! I just don't get it, she is not a brat, never asks for anythingand more often than not wears quite cheap clothes. Whats his problem. I told him if I had money I would like my family to have the finest of everything. Now I know that is not the main focus in life but surely it would be a different matter and I was asking for stuff that we cannot afford. Am i so very wrong. Opions please, but please don't slate me. I grew up with not much at all and we have made a lot of sacrifices to be where we are now, 20yrs down the line should we not be enjoying the fruits of our labour?

247 - you built your own house, wow

Your DH must be immensely proud of that acheivement, as must you. You know what, i would go along with the IKEA thing, because it will look wrong and six months from now it will irk your DH to the extent that he will have to eat his words and get the furniture that the house demands. Then you can give me a shout and i'll send my DP round to give you a quote

Your DH is a bit stuck in the stone ages, but you have let this happen for quite a long time i would presume. Im not slating you, but now your children are getting older, i think it is time for you to find something to do for you, whatever it is that makes you happy.

Oh and for the record, i still think you should buy the girl a horse . Why don't you buy her a course of riding lessons, and while your at it, book some for yourself - you might enjoy it and that would be a great thing for you do enjoy with your daughter. It doesnt hurt THAT much when you fall off - honest

i came from a priviledged background, but i would not have been given a designer handbag when i was 13 nor permitted to own one.

my mother felt such things on people that age were tacky.

Its only a Juicy handbag FGS, not LV, its what teenagers have, priviledged perhaps. No IKEA will be fine for many years to come, he has a thing about not really caring what things look like as long as they do the job. We have no mortgage either so I'm not asking for big stuff on top of big bills to pay out

247 - i think that if your daughter is as well mannered as you say, then why not get her the bag ? its the same as many other parents on here buying their kids nintendo/xbox. your husband seems to have double standards and i think you should just stand up to him, or live the rest of your married life resentful and unhappy. Life is too short for being unhappy.

Yes mapleleaf I hear what you are saying, but DH has a problem with the whole designer thing for kids (girls shall we say) he thinks its all about Paris Hilton and trailer trash etc, he doesnt want DD to have or dress like her and the rest of them to which I understand to a point, but not all girls who wear juicy tracksuits or carry their bags are trailer trash. Clothes do not maketh a person.

247 - with the greatest of respect, may i ask, was your OP really about the whole bag thing? Its just that your issues about DH do seem to run much deeper. Maybe there is a compromise, i do think that the whole designer thing for young girls looks trashy, and on a 13 year old, it would look common. Maybe something more age appropriate and classy??

I do feel for you, you sound like a lovely mum who just wants to spoil her children, we all want to do that, even your DH i suspect. The thing is i guess with the inequality of the boys being able to wear whatever it is they want to wear is that they are probably not going to be sending out inappropriate messages with those clothes. Tarty clothes on young girls, makes me want to vomit and it feeds the imaginations of dirty old men in my opinion. I would insist that you have a certain budget to spend on DD for xmas and that it is spent sensibly, i personally hated getting clothes for xmas, they are essentials so that only took from the main present. What about an i-phone?

'but not all girls who wear juicy tracksuits or carry their bags are trailer trash.'

but they sure do look the part!

sorry, i'm with your husband on this.

as coco chanel said, 'there are people with money, and people who are rich.'

Is this thread a wind up ?

The OP's husband is a buly, a sexist and a control freak. He'll buy designer clothes for himself and his son but refuses to 'permit' his daughter a fancy handbag even if she saves up her own money for it.
THat's the root of the problem. 247 you need to start looking around for either a class of some kind or a small job, and a few good books on feminism and raising your self-esteem. Because if there's any merit in your DH, he needs a wake-up call to the effect that you and your DD are people, not just two walking talking items of his property.

I personally don't know anyone who gets an allowance from their dh. When I was a sahm I shared the money that dh made in his job (and in factI made all the financial decisions) and would never have let my dh dictate to me what I could and could not spend. For me it would be a make or break issue if he treated me like your dh treats you.

The money is legally and morally half yours - certainly if you divorced him that's where the courts would start in splitting assets (and you'd end up with more if the kids stayed with you). What's more you have made an equal contribution to the marriage - you have made it possible for him to concentrate on the money. If you weren't there, he'd have had to spend a lot of £££s on childcare alone.

Don't let him bully you!

I have an allowance due to the fact I spend a lot and a couple of times he has had to pay the credit card bill, but I'm not talking 10s of thousands. He works hard (very hard) and wants to invest as much as possible for the future. Very admirable, but at the same time I do believe you should enjoy your income too, who knows what tomorrow may bring. The house and office premises are all paid up and there is land and property in another country too. My biggest bug bear is the fact that yes I am on an allowance and no I do not believe it to be sufficient given the wealth we have. He will not hear differently and thats why I put up with it. He tells me some of his workers have less to raise their family and pay thier mortgage with than he gives me each month. Yes I empathise, but we didn't get to where we were without sacrifice. I have dropped the designer debate with him for my daughter, BUT if she decides to save up and buy these things herself, I will not stop her. Thats my compromise. Yes I would be incredibly rich if I divorced him but my DC would be incredibly unhappy, and I will ALWAYS put them 1st.

aha now we are getting to the root of it 247! So because your dh knows your fond of having a bit of a fritter now again and has to bail you out credit card wise before he 1/ perhaps feels you need the discipline of an allowance (I've heard MNrs on here saying they keep there dh on a budget because they're crap with money and that seems to be accepted and so hoping double standards wont come into play here) and 2/ feels that you wont all the reward with none of the graft and the allowance is what he thinks you 'earn' in the relationship.

Remember, I am empathising here - am crap with money myself and well aware that if I wasnt with dh I would probably be living in a squat penniless somewhere having frittered it away on something other than boring old bills and everyday stuff.....Do the above sound a bit like you.... I am getting close or am I way off?

247, you did not answer my previous question, but I am beginning to get a clearer picture now.

It seems that both of you have different approaches to spending money. You being more extravagant (hey, your dh can afford it), but him being more frugal.

You say you have both made sacrifices. I would agree that is right in the initial stages of your marriage (say 50-50). Now you want to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The problem is your dh is still labouring to bring home the bacon (say 70%)and you probably less so (say, 30% as your dcs are older) but you want to spend more because your dh can now afford it.

Not saying your dh or you are right or wrong. But the reality is he who pays the piper calls the tune ... I will join others in saying, get a job.

Otherwise, you will have to continue putting up.

I can feel myself running out of patience now.

your monthly allowance is more than your DH's employees wages??? I dont think you have anything to complain about really do you? Maybe you should do some volunteer work helping out young families who struggle to make ends meet, yes your DH has worked hard and i respect that, but my DP works just as hard, maybe even harder and we struggle to keep the wolf from the door. THere is a lot of luck in business, we are waiting for ours to arrive. If you maybe could see how the other half lived, you would realise that whining over designer clothes is really quite trivial.

I really do think you should get a job, there is a real world out there beyond gucci and channel, or whatever the latest fad is.

247 - will he let you have a job? In my experience men like this don't. They are control freaks and i suspect that him not letting you have a cleaner is his way of keeping you busy in the house so you have little time for anything else. can i ask aobut your social life together? Does he take you out much?

My dh wont 'let' me have a job or at least one which he considers beneath him (yes, him) in fact he PAID me not to take a part-time job in a shop last xmas - the equivalent of what I would have earned. Pride is pride and all but sometimes money in the hand is better

and yes, I am shallow

I like the way he compares you to his employees. That shows you exactly where he sees you in his little hierarchy.

"I have an allowance due to the fact I spend a lot and a couple of times he has had to pay the credit card bill"

And how much does he spend on his Armani suits and Range Rover and other boys toys? Does he consult you about his expenditure? I bet he doesn't. He wouldn't have to pay off the credit card if you had equal access to your family money. And I bet his bills have equalled or exceeded yours. I mean he's happy to spend 2 million quid on a house FGS then he's complaining about buying a designer handbag for your daughter for a Xmas present.

Why are you tolerating this?

wait a minute. I empathise with 247 and I have been in her position with dh settling bills for me. Wealthy men tend to be paranoid men - they worry that they will lose the wealth, that they will be seen as a meal ticket - even to the wife who was with them before they accrued all that they have now.

If you allow yourself to run up debt that he then feels (rightly or wrongly) he is settling (as opposed to paying out of the family pot because you bring in no income) then he may feel you are using him as a meal ticket.

Sometimes dh says things like this to me. Sometimes I worryingly think maybe I am but I try to rationalise it by thinking that we are a family that loves each other and he WANTS to be the provider and WANTS me to be the little woman. Sometimes I think, do I really want to be or even could I manage to be self-sufficient, to get a job or do I know in the back of my mind that I could never match his earnings and would always feel resentful for working for little return as opposed to my dh's income so what is the point. Self-respect? I already have it thanks to many areas of my life where I know I am strong. Sometimes I think I have the life of riley and love that I can nip off to the gym or for lunch with my friends and not be accountable..

Life is full of conflicting emotions about this kind of stuff and I'm pretty sure 247 is fed up with her dictatorial, rich dh... but, hey, not enough to change him

Yeah, paranoid men who treat their wives like nannies and servants.

The problem is they don't respect that kind of work so they treat their female relations like crap. Marriage is supposed to be an equal partnership nowadays, not a throwback to when men literally did own women (not that long ago).

Yes blushoes, I am a spender and yes he is a lot more conservative on that front, although having said that he now refuses to wear M&S shirts because he can afford not to. He buys his clothes in the sales and would never pay full price. To those who think I do, I DO NOT HAVE ANY DESIGNER CLOTHES AT ALL, many of them come from M&S. This whole thing was started after I said DD would LIKE a Juicy tracksuit and Juicy handbag. She never asked and I just ran this by him. Elizabetth, how interesting that he associates me with his workers, I never really took that on board before and yes, if I had access then you are right he would'nt have to bail me out would he. The last time he bailed me out was January to the princely sum of £1,500. Hes the sort of person who could fill his supermarket trolley full and still only pay the same as me who would have only a basket IYSWIM.

I would love to have a rich dh where i didn't have to work etc but i think that 247 should still have some sort of emotional support from her dh and may be he shouldn't be tight. After all he is supposed to love her so why doesn't he spoil her and his dd and not just himself and ds? I feel sorry for you 247. Money i beleive can buy you happiness but only if there is already lots of love!

but Elizzabeth lots of men treat women like that - but dont have much to offer either (in this case financial) so I suppose what I am saying is, it could be worse? You could have a complete waster for a partner who would still treat you like a nanny and cook etc all the time contributing nothing whereas 247 and I and others are treated a bit like we are on the payroll but our dh's have the mentality that their role in the 'company' (family) is to bring the money in and seeing as they bring so much in they shouldnt have to do much else IYSWIM and should also get to make the decisions about the finances.

My dh is a financial director so lord help me!

247, would you prefer a dh who was less rich but a more equal relationship? Perhaps hark back to previous (harder) times.

Hypothetical question, but would reveal your values and priorities.