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I used to handle all the finances in our marriage, now I'm paying the price for trusting too much
For 8 years I managed every bill and savings account while my ex just signed whatever I put in front of her. When we split in Austin last spring, I found out she had opened two credit cards I didn't know about and racked up $14,000 in debt under my name. How do you get someone to take financial responsibility when they never had to before?
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xena5823mo ago
Man, that $14,000 number hit me hard. Honestly, it's this weird thing I've noticed where we teach kids in school how to balance a checkbook barely, but nobody ever talks about the psychology of money in relationships. Like, some people just never have to face the consequences of bad money moves because someone else always cleans it up. I've seen it with my own friends too, where one person handles everything and the other just floats along, and then boom, it all falls apart. It's almost like we treat financial responsibility as this boring chore instead of a basic life skill everyone needs to own. Ngl, the real problem is we let people stay clueless about money until it's way too late.
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colethomas3mo ago
Yeah that $14,000 figure really puts it in perspective. I've got a buddy from high school who's been married for like eight years and his wife handles every bill, every bank account, everything. He literally doesn't know their password or how much they spend on rent. Then last year she got sick and couldn't work for a few months and he had no clue what to do. It was a mess. I think part of it is we just assume someone else will step in and fix things if it goes wrong, so nobody really learns until they have to. And by then it's usually too late and the damage is done.
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