Damned if I do damned if I don't

When it comes to household finances I have been in charge our whole marriage. Hubby and I are trying something new as we work through our issues, full disclosure when it comes to bills and spending. In the past I paid everything and just gave him an allowance. There was a time in our lives when he had no clue how much things cost and even more shocking had no clue as to what his take home salary was. This created a problem when he got fired from his job and took a, "fun," job that paid a fraction of what he was making before. We are still recovering financially from the chaos that ensued from that decision of his. The other problem we had was my spending addiction. When we had money I could spend frivolously when I was stressed and it would not get us behind in bills, but it meant we had no savings. When things were tight, I spent more because I was stressed, but had less money to spend so this got us in trouble. Now I still pay the bills, but we sit down once a week and go over our budget and analyze every penny we spend, and we have agreed to stick to the budget no matter what.


Until yesterday we were starting to fall behind again in the bills department. I had been doing ChaCha for extra money on the side and had two bills that we were paying late because I knew I could get away with it. When I went to the mailbox yesterday we received a wonderful blessing, unexpected money. When I told hubby about it I saw the look in his eyes, he wanted to go on a spending spree. He said he wanted to go get the kids baseball stuff this is something we had in our budget for 3 weeks from now. I said let me look at our budget because it is more important to pay everything on time. When it was all said and done we had $300 left over after paying the bills plus I was excited at the idea of not having to do ChaCha to get us caught up. So I tell hubby, yes we can spend the $70 we budgeted for baseball stuff now instead of waiting.

We were at the store and I was keeping track of how much he spent, then he starts looking at stuff we had not discussed buying. When I said, no, he got angry with me and threw a fit like a two year old. He said, "we are caught up, we have the extra money, whats the big deal?"

Over the past few years I have been the one in trouble for going on shopping sprees, then later when it matters we are broke. YES I do have a shopping addiction, but after reading several Dave Ramsey books and sticking to the plan, I have curbed my spending. I admit, I felt that rush sitting there looking at the extra money yesterday. I started thinking about all sorts of things I would like to buy. Then I told myself I did not need those things and fought the urge. Hubby on the other hand was not in control of those urges. If the situation was reversed I would have been in big trouble for trying to spend extra.

Double standards happen like this all of the time in our marriage. He gets mad at me for things I do wrong. I feel he should not get so mad because he is guilty for the very same things. When it comes to insignificant things I let this go. For instance when he gets mad because I waited until late at night on a Saturday to do all the dishes for the entire day instead of doing them after each meal. (and yes he is guilty of doing the same thing) Yesterday was a different story, fighting with him on this double standard was very important. In the past I would have let him overspend, then I would have been the one catching the heat when something unexpected comes up two weeks from now and we do not have the extra money.

So Damned if I do. Damned if I don't.