What is controlling with money and what's financial common sense?

[IsThisLifeNow]

So my ex has accused me of being financially controlling and I really don't think I am so after a few opinions please.

He says he didn't like me going through the bank and joint credit card statements and asking him if transactions were his. We'd pay the joint credit card off from our joint current account where both our wages went into. We both work 4 days and earn a similar amount, he'd maybe earn £100-200 pound a month more. I do shifts so some months were better for me than others, but everything was split 50/50.

I didn't question what he was buying, but literally 'is this your transaction?' To me that's financial common sense to make sure you aren't paying payments to things that are fraudulent or no longer needed.

We both had our own personal credit cards that were paid from the joint account which I didn't look at. He isn't good with money and was the higher spender in the relationship, not like big items, but constantly spending out on bottles of juice, sweets, snacks etc when we had a bag with waterbottles snacks etc. I didn't mention that spending to him other than to check transactions.

He says going through statements is weird.

Edited to fix my spelling

Common sense.
I always check cc statements to ensure I know all the spending is real.

I would hate this, which is why I don’t have a joint account.

I don’t think I would say you’re financially controlling but you obv thought you were in charge of it and he didn’t like it. Your comments are telling “he was the biggest spender” and “we had bags with water bottles and snacks”. He obviously didn’t want his child bag and wanted to be able to spend the money he earns on what he wants without comments.

it makes little odds now if you’re split, he’s decided it wasn’t for him.

Thank you. I should note that we are separating due to him sleeping with men and his lying. It's fairly new, only 5 weeks, but I feel he's repainting our relationship to be an unhappy one to make himself feel less guilty.

It is financial common sense to go through statements.

having said that cards are used for much smaller transactions these days and honestly it someone was asking me if I bought a bottle of water at a day out three weeks ago I wouldn’t remember.

if there’s a lot of small transactions and it’s the sort he won’t really remember (coffee, bag of crisps etc) then asking him what they are is a bit unreasonable.

if they’re his spending get him to put them on his card.

if they’re joint spending (snacks on a family day out etc) then you might have to accept that it’s not reasonable to ask him to remember every single time.

Good grief, that's quite the dripfeed!

Congratulations for escaping.

Ok I take your point about the snacks, but I was in charge of the money because he wasn't good with it. Would forget to pay nursery bills, car tax, would let the account get overdrawn instead of transferring money out our joint savings to cover it meaning we paid interest unnecessarily. I didn't like being reminded when dropping DS off at nursery, it was awkward

Obviously if I knew the transactions were him on a family day out I wouldn't ask if they were his

To me, being controlling with money is when someone is prevented from accessing money at all, or has to ask their partner whether they can buy something, to justify their expenditure, or if the word 'allowed' creeps in somewhere.

So maybe he felt that you were asking him to justify what he was spending, whereas in fact all you were doing was making sure that all the transactions were either yours or his, there were no fraudulent transactions, and that neither of you'd had your cards cloned. It is common sense to do that, but it seems he thought you were questioning his spending.

No it’s not controlling but it sounds like you had different attitudes to money that might have made you incompatible (him more free and easy, you more organised).

Of course he is rewriting the relationship and trying to save face. Blaming you for being controlling is so much easier to palate than his bisexual affairs. You must be gutted.

Of course it is common sense on a joint statement, how would you spot errors if you didn't check it together?

He is re-writing history.

He's your ex. You no longer need to care what he thinks.

I would only have a joint account for household bills. Any personal purchases would come out of personal accounts.

While it wasn’t controlling to ask him to confirm he had made the purchases you didn’t recognise, in that you weren’t saying he should ask for your permission, I can see how he would have felt that you were checking his spending. That’s always a potential problem when only one person does the admin. Maybe he would have felt less answerable to you if you had printed the statement for him to tick off his transactions, it would be more open as yours would be on there too and although the result would be the same it would make it seem less like you are Head of Accounts

He’s an ex. Who cares what he thinks? In the global scheme of things, sleeping with other people vs going through bank statements is no way equivalent. Ignore him!

Thanks for your input everyone, Interesting things to consider.

Yes I'm devastated, He's come out as gay, not bisexual which feels an even bigger rejection of me.

I know I shouldn't care what he thinks, but I'm sad he considers me abusive and controlling. I was really happy up until 5 weeks ago and just feel really stupid for that.

Yes we are different financially, but he always used to say how grateful he was to me getting him to think more about his finances and that he had savings for the first time in his life after we got together

It's well known that when your card is cloned, the criminals start out with small random transactions to see if they can escalate to bigger stuff, so it's always worth checking. It's common sense, not controlling.

That must have been a terrible shock, OP. Be kind to yourself.

He's lashing out now - I imagine there will be some payments he doesn't want you to notice.

Please don't take too seriously anything he's saying at the moment. It's quite common for people to re-write history when they abandon their partner. This isn't the time to be doubting random things about yourself.

Hope you've got some real life support around you x