He isn't skint.

[AmIbeingUn]

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?

I think this revelation would make me realise how I’m not a priority in his life. He is putting his obsessive money saving lifestyle ahead of you and your time as a couple.

Even when he gets his generous pension, these habits won’t die. He’ll still sneak a 20p carton of Ribena into a theatre, that’s if you can persuade him to go in the next decade.

A financial hoarding disorder doesn’t explain the lies and acting.

I think it’s more likely that he’s selfish and miserly. It sounds too calculated for a compulsive disorder.

Ok @AmIbeingUn iIasked this a couple of times. And now you've answered 🙂
He didn't bring you a Ribena carton. At a cost of 20p.
I know about money hoarding as my old Dad was one (and I know all the reasons why) but it was a MH disorder . He also was a paper hoarder (and because he lived in 5000sq ft of house it didn't show as he filled a 1500sq ft basement with it all).

This is who he is.

To save money on drinks out, he brought his own.
A miser does that.
A frugal person (for whatever reason) brings 2 so 1 each. Because they aren't selfish but just frugal/skint.

THIS is your issue going forward in a relationship with this man.

Misers can't share their precious money but they also can't share a part of themselves. The inadvertent 'scrounging' off you will start to irritate and, eventually, show as resentment. Then game over. It could take a decade.

What's his love life history? Ling marriage prior? Or a series of long term (10 yrs?) relationships that went nowhere?

A hoarder is a hoarder. The hoard is valued higher than anything else in their life.

Oh dear OP - I’ve read all your posts. This guy is a miser and a liar.

Do yourself a favour and walk away.

Yes I mean nothing can compete with his love of money.

He has put money before OP for the entire relationship.

Now that you know the truth, that he isn't skint, I honestly don't see how you can stay in this relationship.

At the very least, he'd have to drop the constant act, the whinging and whining every time he has to pay a normal everyday bill. I'd also expect him to delete the words 'I can't afford it' from his vocabulary asap. Me personally, I'd also want a clear explanation of why he's been putting on this act for the last 20 months...

The more you post, the more I don't understand why you started out saying how well-matched you are. You're obviously resentful so just stop going over there. Someone else out there will be better for you.

Why not? 🥴

It seems like your starting to looking for things now to be nasty about.

Taking his own drink to places (which plenty of people do)
Shopping at Lidl and buying yellow sticker (which plenty of people do)
Shopping in charity shops (which plenty of people do)
Shopping in an out of date food shop (I have one near me and it's always busy, I go there on occasions)
Describing his as miserly

Why haven't you finished it?

I smell a predatory financial scam. Happens more than we realise. People pretending to be skint who aren't, and getting others to pay for everything.

She hasn't finished it because she's only just found out about his perfidy.

I agree this seems more like potential financial abuse in the making than a true compulsion.

id ask him if he knows anything about ISAs or Investing in rental properties etc… if he tells you he doesn’t have any knowledge about those type of things then you’ll know just how much of a liar he is x

@WhitneyBaby asks "Do you know much of his past relationship history?"

Yeah we have told each other a rough outline of our pasts. He says he left home aged 27 and has only ever had three girlfriends, and he cohabited with each one for several years. He never wanted to get married because he never wanted children. The first two may have left him because they wanted kids, because both subsequently had kids with another man. Then he bought a house with his next gf who had two grown up sons who had left home by that time. They split up about 6 months before I met him.

It does actually. It explains a lot.
The hoard trumps everything in their life.

They don't even see it as an issue.
It's a reason to lie and 'fake' behaviour because it's the most important thing in their lives.

It's sad as the relationship sounds lovely but, 2 years in, is when one gets to know the lay of the land. And then decide if that's how one wants to live.

It's also unattractive that HIS choices override @AmIbeingUn . It's his way or nothing.

If @AmIbeingUn wanted to see a show desperately and suggested it he'd just decline because he's actually, deep deep down selfish (and yes, that may be his MG disorder) but it doesn't change the fact that that really impacts the quality of the relationship going forward.

He has no reason to be this frugal.

Why must posters take personal offence rather thing reading posts objectively?

It must have been quite the shock for you OP. You were happy in your relationship, your life. Yes, it would have been nice to do theatre trips, weekends away too, but you were content to do without because you expected that in a couple of years he'd have finished his renovations, return to full-time work and with his finances being less on-the-edge he would relax and feel able to do theatre trips, weekends away etc.

But now, that you know his being skint was all a lie, a lie that he repeated and reinforced constantly - it has all gone. This new piece of information about him has given new meaning to everything that has gone before. All his lies - and they've not just been about his claims to be skint - are now sitting exposed. And it's not a pretty picture.

Renovating his house - well, it's a lie, isn't it? That house will never be renovated. His part-time job involves a 2-hour round trip - daily. If his company was willing to let him go part-time, they'd have been willing for it to be over, for example, three full days, giving him two full days to get on with the renovations. Or, as an IT consultant, that's perfect for WFH with maybe the occasional day in the office. His current work arrangements however, are perfect if he wants to minimise the amount of time he has to spend renovating.

And now that you're looking for logic, you've seen other illogical things. You're connecting the dots, now that you realise they're not just dots they're a pattern.

"He has gone part time, losing £28k a year to free up his time. He will then spend that free 4 hours that he isn't earning money scouring one charity shop after another looking for clothes and bent brown frying pans. Then when he gets home he's too tired to do any work."
So he trades income for time to spend renovating - but instead spends it in charity shops? Again minimising the amount of time spent renovating, pushing that end-date back and back and back.

"Surely it would make more financial sense to spend that four hours working on his renovation project then hop onto ebay or amazon for five minutes before bed and spend £10 on a tee shirt?"
Yes, it would make far more sense. It would also make more sense if he'd stayed full-time and had another £28k to spend on tradesmen - but that would speed up the renovation.

"He says he cannot predict how long the house renovation will take because he won't employ any help so everything from gardening to plumbing to plastering to kitchen fitting is all down to him and he is learning as he goes from Youtube videos. Every time he pulls a muscle, sprains an ankle or gets a cold he stops work until he's better."
You thought this 'not employing help' was because he wanted to be able to look at his finished house and to be able to say, with well-earned pride, 'I did that!'. But now, seeing the bigger picture of who he really is, you can see that it's all aimed at slowing the renovations down. The renovation will NEVER be finished.

But it's not meant to ever be finished. It's meant to provide him with a story that people will believe. Renovations are time consuming and a total money-pit. I've done some, I have family members who have done far more and devoted years of their lives to the task. Of course, they intended to finish. Took on second jobs to pay for proper tradesmen, the lot. Relaxed in their beautiful homes at the end of it all. Their renovations were not a cover-story, not a disguise. His are.

I think the person who pointed to Financial Hoarding Disorder might be on to something. He has it, just as his mother is a more conventional hoarder. ANd he is bending his life all out of shape because of it.

More importantly, he is bending YOUR life out of shape. You have willingly done without the trips, the holidays, the restaurants that you can afford and would like to do, because he convinced you that he can't afford it and he convinced you that he was too proud to let you sub him and he convinced you that "yes if things go well we will have lots of holidays and days out and meals out and trips to the future."

How do you feel about him manipulating your life in this way? Because yes he has told you lie after lie; and those lies have manipulated your choices to suit him. That's the man you're in a relationship with. The one who on the surface has "similar hobbies, outlook, politics, music taste, humour etc." and that you found "incredibly sexually and emotionally attractive", but who, hiding behind an endless 'renovation' is more than happy for you to go without the experiences that make you happy. His focus is not on renovating his house or being with you - his focus is on the thrill of buying a tee shirt from a charity shop for 50p.

He's not the man you thought he was. He just looks very, very like him.

This is potentially a brilliant idea.
However he has admitted he knows about ISAs and investing and we sat together at my laptop last year whilst he set me up with an online account with an investment company and showed me how to buy stocks and shares and which to look out for and he also taught me about ISAs and SIPPs and set me up with these accounts. (BTW he told me to choose and input a password whilst he left the room so he does not know how to get into the accounts.) I have already made a lot of money because of his excellent advice.

Oh, OP, don't get bogged down by all the nutcases trying to bait you. You don't have to justify yourself to any of us, least of all those who turn up purely to parade their sexist beliefs about women as gold-diggers!

I bet your boyfriend's many apologists here would take a different view if you were seeing someone who'd faked a disability or a serious illness - both of which I've seen in real life. They, too, were manipulating others' good will in a warped effort to control what went on around them.

It's a strong parallel: fabricating disadvantage due to psychological problems; deliberately misleading others to gain favours and validation.

All of your later comments, describing how your boyfriend actually misuses his time and funds in order to scrimp, point to a mental disorder.

I’m not as wealthy as your BF nor quite as tight but DH and myself are milder versions of your BF. We match in our attitudes and we made our money together as got together young so there is no secrecy. Saving and getting bargains gives us genuine pleasure. If I ended up widowed so with the same amount of assets still and dated again there is no way on earth I would share my financial information.

As soon as people know you have money they tend to want money. You just have to see the posts on here with people trying to borrow money if they hear people have a windfall.

So what's the acceptable wait time before you end it with someone? Is it when the you start treating them with this contempt in real life?

He hasn't disclosed his true financial status, she's not happy, he doesn't know she knows because she went through his things twice to, why not end it?

It's not going to end well, especially when she describes him and his behaviours with such contempt

OP - all that matters now is - can you continue this relationship? You can’t continue it as it is because now you know, so you either have to say nothing and live a lie like he is or call him out and he might end it anyway.

You need to decide if you want to stay with him. Is there any reason he could give you that would satisfy the lies? Or is it just too much? You need to figure out your boundaries and make a decision based on that, but it sort of sounds to me like it’s over.

He's bent this relationship soley to his preferences. He obviously feels he is worth all the compromises you are making.

I don't know what I would do at this point, you were happy. I don't know whether that hsppiness is still possible.

Have an honest think about what you want and whether you are likely to get what I want with this man.

It does. It's to protect the hoard.

I get he may have a large retirement fund that's not available to spend but he lies. He fakes being skint. He does a fake 'humble' act, he fakes being a 'skint victim' and the poor cat can't have treatment.....but he fakes being so caring and pays for the cat anyway then fakes even more.