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He isn't skint.

1000 replies

AmIbeingUn · 19/10/2024 09:32

NC for this as personal/outing. Am wondering AIBU? Or WWYD?

Began seeing a local man met on OLD. We matched so perfectly: same age, local, some mutual acquaintances, similar hobbies, outlook, politics, music taste, humour etc. Found him incredibly sexually and emotionally attractive and vice versa.

We became very close and cosy very quickly: daily contact, usually in person, in and out of each others' houses for coffee and a chat, sleeping over at each others houses often, meeting each other's friends and family. Talked loads, for hours, about a wide range of subjects and very frankly. Within weeks we were so close and comfortable with one another it felt like we'd been together for ages.

The only thing that wasn't perfect was that he had no spare spending money. He had gone part time at work to give him the time to renovate his house, singlehandedly, and those renovations also ate up all the money he had left over after paying mortgage and bills. He warned me that, until the house was finished and he returned to full time working, he could not afford to spend much on going out, going away, buying me gifts, unless it was cheap and we split the costs. I am not materialistic so I did not care and to be honest I am a homely person who is more than happy to have dates at each other's houses, cooking each other a meal or watching a film. For Xmas he saw something in a charity shop window which he knew I would love and he even admitted it had cost him only £2 and said he felt guilty and mean and sorry and hoped I would tolerate his being skint until he got back to work and could treat me properly and take me to a swanky restaurant now and again.

Whilst chatting and being in his home whilst things were happening in his daily life he would mention now and again that he was down to his last few pounds, or that the purchase of some essential building materials or an emergency dental problem or vet bill had wiped his bank account. I am not wealthy but I do have a couple of hundred pounds left over every month which I usually just put into a savings account. He never once asked me for money and in fact when I offered to lend him money once or twice he absolutely refused. When I offered to treat him to a fancy meal out or a theatre ticket he also refused, saying that unless he could pay at least his own share, he would not go. I saw these refusals as a confirmation of his honesty and integrity.

One day I was at his house reading the paper after breakfast and he was opposite me on his laptop. As he went to answer the front door I took the dirty plates to the sink and as I turned round to walk back to the table I could not help myself, my eyes were drawn to the screen which had some kind of spreadsheet of figures. I was absolutely staggered to see that he had stocks and shares and an ISA totalling £1.5m. When he came back into the room I just pretended I had not seen anything because I knew I should not have been snooping but I went home and was literally in shock and also really angry that he had been lying to me the whole time.

Next time I stayed at his I deliberately snooped when he was in the shower, and read an open letter about the sale of a flat he owned (which he had never mentioned to me). £250,000 from the sale had been deposited into my boyfriend's bank account about a week before, and yet that very day he had been saying how broke he was.

Am I in the wrong for snooping or is he in the wrong for telling me for a whole year the lie that he is struggling financially from month to month?

What would you do? Confront him and admit you snooped? End it? Tell yourself his finances are none of your business?

OP posts:
YellowphantGrey · 19/10/2024 18:34

SomethingFun · 19/10/2024 18:03

So many misers crawling out the woodwork - your sensible financial situation is everyone else’s Scrooge McScroogeface 😁 Life is to be lived and it is so sad that rather than have the ice cream or see the show so many people are living a grey life so they can put that extra £5 in the bank. And I say that as someone who takes their own snacks to the cinema and doesn’t spend savings on meals out.

If he always talks about how skint he is, he is lying. Most people would take money out of savings to look after their sick cat or a broken boiler - you are meant to save for a rainy day as well as retirement after all. I’d hate to have wasted years of my life eating yellow stickered meals from Lidl and staying in a building site for ‘love’ when I could’ve been living the high life at the cinema, or having a pint in the pub 😁

So you take your own snacks to the cinema and don't spend money on meals out but scorn at someone who doesn't buy an ice cream and saves the money?

How is that any different?!

WhitneyBaby · 19/10/2024 18:35

I would end the relationship not for the £2 Christmas present or the misleading about his financial situation but mainly for the insisting he does all the building work himself .
If it was me then no way would I wait around for him to finish his house and only do free or nearly free things with him in the meantime.
My friend’s DH is like this, they have no life, he insists on doing up the house himself incredibly slowly and refusing to get a loan or employ anyone to help.

BirthdayRainbow · 19/10/2024 18:35

goody2shooz · 19/10/2024 18:19

@BirthdayRainbow - you’ve spectacularly missed the point, he’s been pleading abject poverty for the entirety of their relationship. There’s ’wanting to see if you were genuine’ but the constant , daily, lies?? For almost two years??

If she'd put two years in the op it would have helped..

AmIbeingUn · 19/10/2024 18:36

BirthdayRainbow · 19/10/2024 18:32

I never said you wanted him to spend loads on you. Calm down. I'm not misquoting or lying about you fgs. If you'd put the length in your OP you'd have got different replies.

"I never said you wanted him to spend loads on you."

LOL read your own post back to yourself. That is the EXACT phrase you used.

OP posts:
BirthdayRainbow · 19/10/2024 18:36

For the record I don't think @AmIbeingUn is or was a gold digger and I never said she was.

BirthdayRainbow · 19/10/2024 18:37

AmIbeingUn · 19/10/2024 18:36

"I never said you wanted him to spend loads on you."

LOL read your own post back to yourself. That is the EXACT phrase you used.

No. I said he hadn't. I never said you wanted him to.

AmIbeingUn · 19/10/2024 18:38

GROMIT50 · 19/10/2024 18:32

Perhaps in his eyes, he is skint, stock and shares are not cash he can spend straight away, £250,000, from sale of his property could be renovation cost, if your snoop at least do it properly, it seems you only got half the information, no disrespect mumsnet, if it was the bloke snooping you would accuse him of being controlling and to leave him, maybe he should leave her.

"£250,000, from sale of his property could be renovation cost"

He is three years into the renovation. He won't employ a labourer even at £10 an hour. Where on earth would be be spending £250,000 on the place? It's just a two bed house not a palace.

OP posts:
WhitneyBaby · 19/10/2024 18:39

Actually thinking about it the £2 Christmas present would have pissed me off, he could have easily said no presents as he knew it was highly unlikely you’d only spend £2 on him.

Rainbow1901 · 19/10/2024 18:39

Gwenhwyfar · 19/10/2024 10:46

" had to buy my own Maltesers in the lobby and he would not pay the theatre's inflated price. And in the interval when everyone made a dash to the bar he pulled out a small carton of Ribena."

Now, you know he's just tight and not really anything to do with the renovations. This goes beyond being frugal and I'd argue that a rich person breaking theatre rules to bring their own stuff in (I presume it's against the rules) is bordering on being ill.

I think that fact that he brought his own Ribena carton from home and never brought one along for you speaks reams about his stinginess. I would raise my eyes to heaven for that but probably let it go.
The lying (if it is construed as lying) seems to be more that he with-held certain information from you but gave you other snippets of information and let you draw your own conclusions, says to me that were this relationship to continue - you would always be wondering if he was telling the whole truth about anything you may discuss between you.

wordler · 19/10/2024 18:39

You don't know for sure what his financial situation is - and you can't be in his head to know whether he really feels skint even with the income and savings he seems to have. It's not really lying if he really believes that he doesn't have the extra money to spend. He's never taken money from you - but I think his view on money will never really change so you have to work out whether his way of living is something you can cope with for the sake of the rest of the relationship.

I think after two years you should just stand up for the type of dates and life you want - lay it out for him. And if he can't meet you where you need to be then leave him. There's no point telling him you've seen evidence of more money - whatever amount it is if he thinks he's still skint, no amount of you telling him that it's enough will matter.

Stop buying him extra gifts, stop being his unpaid labour. Tell him you want to go on holiday with your boyfriend next year. Tell him you want to go to dinner at a nice place. If he says he can't then say 'oh well, I'll find a friend to go with' BUT don't substitute with a 'cheap date'. If he wants to see you then he has to step up.

WhitneyBaby · 19/10/2024 18:40

So was it stocks and shares ISA’s?

HollyKnight · 19/10/2024 18:41

Jammedchakra · 19/10/2024 18:30

ISA can also be stocks and shares, an ISA doesn’t mean cash. I don’t hold 85k of cash and have >£1m invested. I’m a Chartered IFA 😂

Living off investments isn’t liquidating anything.

I already talked about S&S ISAs. Whether it is cash or S&S he can only invest a max of £20k in ISAs a year.

I have a lifetime ISA, cash ISAs, and S&S worth a nice bit. But we live off the income from our jobs. The investments are for retirement. Not for Christmas presents and pizza. We have separate savings for those types of things. This man is spending his savings on his house. He was upfront with the OP about that. What he has invested for retirement is not money he could be spending on her instead.

Gigihadid · 19/10/2024 18:41

You’ve written about 50 very wordy responses on this thread and it doesn’t seem like you’ve actually got anywhere with it. Baffled how anyone has the time for that.

BMW6 · 19/10/2024 18:42

He's never going to be any different OP.

No matter how much money he really has he's got this hoarder mindset with money just as other hoarders have about physical objects.

They never ever say "right, that's enough now".

He will never spend money if he can avoid it.

It's up to you - do you want to continue like this until one of you dies?

helgel · 19/10/2024 18:42

There's different kinds of clever OP, as I'm sure you know. He's found a great partner and he's treating you badly......not clever.

A clever man would carry on with a well paid job and pay experts to do the work on his house. It's illegal to do your own electrics unless you get a qualified electrician to check it all and sign it off. Plastering will always look amateurish unless done by a professional, etc.

You sound like a good person, him not so much.

Mookytoo · 19/10/2024 18:42

Mirabai · 19/10/2024 18:00

Well no, you put it in an investment portfolio and live off the income while growing the fund. He’s doing a diy version of that but it’s not very efficient.

Agree, but point is … he will be living off that for 50 yrs. It’s not like he is going to be spending it now.

Cartwrightandson · 19/10/2024 18:42

He sounds like his mum and him both have a hoarding mentality and extreme anxiety around money...some sort of trauma?

The money in his ISA/accounts might not be his, his mum might have transferred assets to him that he can't touch, in order to avoid inheritance tax, hence he's not lying, as that money/sell of flat proceeds aren't his to spend

And as for buying you a £2 present, he doesn't spend much on himself either, so it's not like he's being tight/Scrooge with just you.

Dmsandfloatydress · 19/10/2024 18:43

Oh chuck him back! I mean what else has he lied about. In a two year relationship and he still doesn't trust you enough to tell you the truth? Yuck! Also, I loathe tight fisted people. It's a quality I won't tolerate in friends , nevermind boyfriends. Speaks to a selfish, miserly, miserable mindset. Really grim. Doesn't he know he is going to die one day? No pockets in a shroud!

northernsouldownsouth · 19/10/2024 18:43

This is a major deception OP.
Possibly grooming you for a swoop on your finances
Be very careful

TheShellBeach · 19/10/2024 18:44

goody2shooz · 19/10/2024 18:19

@BirthdayRainbow - you’ve spectacularly missed the point, he’s been pleading abject poverty for the entirety of their relationship. There’s ’wanting to see if you were genuine’ but the constant , daily, lies?? For almost two years??

Exactly!
He's lied for the whole of their relationship.

I'd end it if I was the OP. He's taking her for a mug.

Crikeyalmighty · 19/10/2024 18:44

You've done nothing wrong OP - I would certainly have been snooping myself - and it's easy for those not in this position to say they wouldn't.the fact is it's a fine line between being economical with the truth for whatever reason he has been or out and out telling Whopping porkies, which I think he has been doing. The thing is it sounds like you wouldn't have given a shit if he said I'm working part time on 28k and doing a house up so it's bit tight for awhile as I don't have loads of surplus cash - and he had bought normal presents at 'modest' levels , you were not looking at him in a bank of boyfriend way - what he has done though is effectively said he hasn't got money to spend on normal dating activities or the odd present on special days when quite clearly he has plenty of it - he just doesn't want to spend it on you and gets more pleasure growing his balance sheet .

To those who think this is all totally fine and she shouldn't have snooped and seem to run your relationships like an accountancy spreadsheet , I suspect some of you will be featuring in the elderly parents section in years to come moaning about your heating bills or the fact your adult children have gone NC because you won't get any help in at all and are always moaning about money when you have hundreds of thousands stuck away. You can't take it with you, yes it's good to be reasonably sensible and have good savings if possible but most people don't like utterly miserly people and they especially don't like miserly people of any age who moan they are broke, when they are anything but and often have far more in terms of cash and assets than people who are generous to them with time and money /gifts and take them at their word- I remember being very gobsmacked in my early 20s when my aunt and uncle died in quick succession- they lived in a bit of a hovel but strangely she did like nice food and I always felt sorry that they seemed to be really hard up and used to talk about it a lot- I used to take her bags of M&S shopping that I bought and she was always really greatful- so quite suprised that in the late 80s they left their fully paid house plus around £120k ( which went to my grandmother) as they had no kids.

AmIbeingUn · 19/10/2024 18:45

mumda · 19/10/2024 11:03

If you want to go forward then

  1. Suggest things you'd like to do.
  2. Don't offer to pay for him.
  3. Go do the nice things on your own.

He can be mean with his money, as long as he isn't expecting you to cough up, but if he wants you to not spend your own money as and when you want that's another thing.

This is exactly what I have been doing for the past nearly two years. I see entertainments advertised, tell him I want to go, he whimpers "oh that sounds nice but I cannot afford it" and then I go with friends or by myself instead. But believe me it is quite miserable sitting alone in a theatre knowing your boyfriend is at home because he could not afford a ticket. I've also been away on two holidays, for a couple of weekends, to restaurants etc. Afterwards he just asks if I had a nice time and is happy if I did.

One time I had an idea to book a room at a hotel near his workplace on a Friday night, for a fun sexy time a la "dirty weekend". The town he works in is by the sea so there are loads of hotels and b & bs. He instantly said OOOOH that sounds great but I cannot afford it. I then searched and found a Travelodge room for just £46. I put this to him and he said he could not afford even his half if it, the £23. So you can see this is another reason I am so shocked and also livid to find he is a millionaire.

OP posts:
WhitneyBaby · 19/10/2024 18:45

What he has invested for retirement is not money he could be spending on her instead

I thought the OP had said earlier that he said he has a very generous pension.

coffeesaveslives · 19/10/2024 18:47

Why have you stayed with a man who (in your own words) "whimpers" and "whinges" and "looks sad" every time you ask him to spend his own money?

Honestly, more fool you. He sounds like a right dick.

IOSTT · 19/10/2024 18:47

I would just stop replying OP, most people are not reading or understanding your post correctly / are putting their own assumptions onto you. I’d call it a day! 😆

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