My wife has done that.

The first time she was pregnant with our third child.  She obtained a credit card and had run up the balance to the maximum, and then started bouncing checks.  I found out 2 weeks before Christmas.  I sold a couple of firearms from my then meager collection so that our little ones could have toys for Christmas.

After counseling and promises from her, we stayed together.

She pulled the same shit ten years later.  I should have divorced her then but stayed together for the kids.  I dug us out of that even bigger hole and now watch everything that she does financially.

I put in far more money than she does. I get what I want and pay the bills. She wants a new car she can buy her own.

What's it called when a woman does it?

/thread

The moment she starts shitting on him to her female friends, she will be enlightened by them as to the potential financial windfall and that seed will have been well and truly planted.

Financial infidelity.

Oof. Once I brought home a new gun and was showing it to my son. Wife walks up and says “Is that a new gun?” I said No and she walked away. That works every time now!

Sure, terms are$5 usery per $20 owed, and kneecapping starts at noon on Saturday.

The amount does not matter.  The broken trust does.  The fact that this has happened multiple times should be concerning.

Man you know not all of us live and breathe this stuff on a hobby forum right?

Some people like guitars, some guns, some video games, hell I like gardening.

OMFG you don't grow food for your family to store in mason jars preparing for TEOTWAWKI?!

Sounds dumb, huh?

“Financial infidelity” sounds like something a woman or control freak would come up with. As long as you ain’t broke and starving it should be fine. But men need to be upfront about not having someone nitpick their every purchase, especially if it’s smart purchases on resources that have intrinsic value. If it’s just video games and crap, then that’s the least of the woman’s problems, being married to a boy, unless it’s on games that have collectors value and will skyrocket in price.

Life is too short not to have any hobbies or interests either. Some dudes drain that much or more in golf but nobody bats an eye at that because it’s socially acceptable as a big baller activity. Or race cars, hunting, etc. Also wives love fancy restaurants and vacations which is a waste of money imo.

Hiding it from her how? I've met some women that feel the need to know about and control everything that their husband spends money on, and of course that isn't reciprocated and she buys pretty much whatever she wants. Maybe he feels trapped or that she is overbearing and trying to control him?

If he is making the payments on it and they aren't hurting financially or going hungry, is it really that big of a deal? It definitely isn't good to have that much CC debt, and it is best to share finances between partners, but if they are in his name then there isn't much she can do.

I'd be upset if my wife went to any trouble to conceal that she spent $14, let alone $14k.

Its the concealment and dishonesty that sucks.  The money could be peanuts.  If my wife asks me if I spent money, or if I ask her, we are honest with each other about it.  As a result, we trust each other with financial stuff.

Found out that wife had secret debt during the divorce...no I didnt get stuck with any of it

Good friend/customer of mine passed away about a year and a half ago. He told his wife if something happened I was the person to talk to about his stuff. She called me about a month after he
died and I went down. I have never seen a bigger disconnect between what one spouse was doing and what the other thought was going on. He had a garage full of stuff that she knew nothing
about. I'm talking $10,000 worth of RC cars and planes,milwakee tools everywhere that were new in the box, all kinds of guns and ammo that she didn't know about on top of the guns she did know were there, 2 john deere mowers and piles of stuff I can't remember. Not junk but thousands and thousands of dollars of stuff that she had no idea even existed. I've since helped her sell
some it but it's not coming close to the bills he left her with. Thankfully Ford took his vehicle back and she doesn't have to pay on that anymore. He did however set up his NY retirement so that
he got the max amount while he was alive and left her with nothing. I was and still am furious about that.

ETA: weird formatting issue.

Shopping in secret because your spouse is a meany seems pretty bitch-made to me but alright

I guess the debt part is weird. I have accounts that my wife doesn't really know about. I mean she knows some exist but I don't think she knows exactly whats exists. I've never lied to her about anything though, I just don't think she really cares. Everything is taken care of.

I have money no one knows about nor needs to know about.  

I would never get someone into debt.

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-------He did however set up his NY retirement so that
he got the max amount while he was alive and left her with nothing. I was and still am furious about that.

ETA: weird formatting issue.

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It is very strange that he could do that in his retirement account without his wife signing off agreeing to it in writing.  All pensions I have ever heard of set up a survivor benefit for married folks which means you get a smaller amount but the survivor will always get the pension amount until their own death.  The only way around that is for the wife to sign off she is OK with no survivor benefit on her husband's pension.  

That exact thing happened with a coworker of mine (about 25 years ago) who medically retired and died from lung cancer about 4 months into his retirement and left his wife with nothing because she had signed off apparently years earlier without even realizing it.  She tried to claim ignorance and trusted her husband who asked her to sign off on the pension paperwork at some point and went to court but lost out on receiving anything.  He probably thought he was going to outlive her and wanted the larger amount of the monthly pension without a survivor benefit.

Edit

They were, and they did.  The CC companies were not pleased.

I don't understand wives that need to know every detail of every breath a man takes. I couldn't imagine having to worry about shit like this. If I want to buy something I buy it.  If I want to do something I do it.

I could open 10 lines of credit tomorrow without telling her no issues. Only way I could see a woman worry about crap like this is if the man is not taking care of business/ not making enough money and forcing her to go into survival mode.

This happy wife happy life boomer bullshit contributed greatly to the death of men and the nuclear family.

Humm, I know the military forces the wife to sign to deny benefits but not sure about any other employer, maybe the Feds?  I have not heard of that other than the mil, could it be a state thing?

Yeah,it happened during my marriage


In my case, when I came home from overseas and the credit cards were paid off, I told her that I wanted to make sure the card balances were paid off each month going forward.
She went behind my back and opened a new card without my knowledge. I ony found out about it because the first bill came to the house. After that she must have gone paperless. She claimed later that she thought my comment about paying stuff off meant that I never wanted the cards to be used. I dont see how she could have interpreted it that way
Meanwhile I came home from overseas to find out that she' used the power of attorney to open a 50,000 loan that was maxed out. She had said that the contractor working on the house needed payment up front so she was taking out a loan for about a third of what the loan actually was. I assumed that in the year that followed she would have paid off the loan in total. I'm pretty sure that it was an intentional act on her part to increase our debt load for the divorce SHE knew she was planning

I feel somewhat the same but many people will open up those 10 lines of credit and empty or stop investing in the retirement accounts to pay for it....all while telling the other half we are set.....I guess set to work for the rest of your lives part was left off that comment.


I got nagged to death by my ex on what was in all my accounts (checking, savings, retirement, etc), after a while I didn't give a rats ass what she wanted to know.  I did always max out my retirement accounts though and all the bills were paid for.  (exception to maxing out retirement is when I filed for divorce to until it was over, I only put enough to get the matching funds as everything over that I was pretty much giving half that money to her based on my state law).

She agreed to work when we got married.  I told her what I needed from her, half the electric, food & groceries and she would have to buy her own car and insurance.  Anything after that she could do what she pleases.  I pay the mortgage, water bill, internet bill, home owners insurance, and I also maintained our health insurance.  Of course I also paid all my car payments, insurance and the like.  I also bought the furniture and things for the house.  She might have worked a total of 120 hours at a minimum wage job while we were living together for 2.5 years.  She failed her part, she didn't want to commit to do what she said and didn't want to even talk to me about it.  If I mentioned anything I might have well started WWIII.  She had a hair license in this state, could have made bank but never did it while we were married.  Ironically she was really good at weaves.  Of course after the divorce she had to go get a job she had to follow through.

I agree that so long as all the bills are taken care of and as a couple both of you individually are achieving the goals you promised for each other, nobody should give a crap what the other person does normally.  If this isn't the case then there is a problem.  

The two problems I have with OP's situation is, one they both agreed to make a budget and he didn't follow through, huge problem.  Two, that if either party starts a new account I would feel obligated to tell my other half and also the debt limit on it (and any increases later if that happens).  If she wants me to get extra life insurance to cover possibly an unsecured debt, then I should do it and the same goes for the other party.  My opinion.

It's this.  He has a compulsive spending problem.  I own one Bluetooth speaker.  He has 10.  Why?  Because he has a problem and needs help.  I sure hope he gets it before she divorces him.   Like a poster said earlier, I couldn't imagine being in debt in my mid 40's.  These are prime earning years where your wealth should be hitting overdrive.  

$14k is a ton of money to most people but it's actually more than that.  If he's racked up a balance like that, the interest rate is normal at 20% and the minimum payment is 4%, his monthly payment is $560.  That's without adding any more spending.  If he's been doing this or 10-15 years, the amount of money he's wasted is staggering.  That's not taking care of business.

I’m pretty sure the poor guy didn’t ask to get cancer.      Maybe he knew  about the “widow’s exclusion” and wanted to protect her from the financial devastation which often accompanies terminal disease.

Evil, but

Brilliant!

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