Money Matters
LosCabosBride
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Was I right or did I completely blow it?
I need some advice, as I am not sure that despite my best intentions I did the right thing.
The background: our friend owns a water sports company and got us hooked on kayaking. He offered to sell us amazing custom kayaks at cost, but we originally declined since even though he was saving us $1000 we didn't have the rest of the money. He was placing an order anyway and said he regularly carries thousands of dollars of unsold merchandise, so he was happy to get them for us and said we can pay when we had the money together. Fast forward nine months and we still owe him $800 dollars and I am mortified. I have told my husband we need to scrape the money together and pay our friend, but my husband argues that he told us to take as long as we needed and since our friend hasn't asked for the money, everything is fine.
The issue: I received an unexpected $500 Christmas bonus and decided I wanted to use that toward the kayaks. I knew if I told my husband, he would say that we needed to put the money in savings so I decided to hang onto the check while I figured out what to do. I finally decided last week that I was going to cash the check and give our friend the money, but my husband found the check last night when he was grabbing cash from my purse and is livid that I withheld it from him and we're in a huge fight. All of our funds are commingled, so his argument is that I should have deposited the check into our account so we could discuss what to do with it together. I told him that while I probably should have told him about the check, I still feel justified that I could have decided what to do with that bonus, especially since the right thing to do is to pay our debt.
I can see from his side how he would be mad at the concept of me hiding money, but since my intention was to pay for something that we owed I don't think I did the wrong thing. I make almost $20k a year more than he does and every cent goes into our joint account, so I think in this one instance I was justified but I am completely open to everyone's opinion and to the possibility that I handled this the wrong way. I appreciate your opinions!
The background: our friend owns a water sports company and got us hooked on kayaking. He offered to sell us amazing custom kayaks at cost, but we originally declined since even though he was saving us $1000 we didn't have the rest of the money. He was placing an order anyway and said he regularly carries thousands of dollars of unsold merchandise, so he was happy to get them for us and said we can pay when we had the money together. Fast forward nine months and we still owe him $800 dollars and I am mortified. I have told my husband we need to scrape the money together and pay our friend, but my husband argues that he told us to take as long as we needed and since our friend hasn't asked for the money, everything is fine.
The issue: I received an unexpected $500 Christmas bonus and decided I wanted to use that toward the kayaks. I knew if I told my husband, he would say that we needed to put the money in savings so I decided to hang onto the check while I figured out what to do. I finally decided last week that I was going to cash the check and give our friend the money, but my husband found the check last night when he was grabbing cash from my purse and is livid that I withheld it from him and we're in a huge fight. All of our funds are commingled, so his argument is that I should have deposited the check into our account so we could discuss what to do with it together. I told him that while I probably should have told him about the check, I still feel justified that I could have decided what to do with that bonus, especially since the right thing to do is to pay our debt.
I can see from his side how he would be mad at the concept of me hiding money, but since my intention was to pay for something that we owed I don't think I did the wrong thing. I make almost $20k a year more than he does and every cent goes into our joint account, so I think in this one instance I was justified but I am completely open to everyone's opinion and to the possibility that I handled this the wrong way. I appreciate your opinions!
Re: Was I right or did I completely blow it?
My husband makes about 5x more than I make and we share funds for everything. Granted every debt we have been working to pay of is his but I handle all of our finances. He will get a bonus in July and we have already agreed the bonus is his to spend on a golf club membership. I would be very angry if he hid $500 dollars from me and it would be a monumental fight if he chose to spend $500 without discussing it with me first and he feels the same towards me.
If you are going to have completely combined accounts then you can't bring up you making more money than him so you are justified to spend this bonus as you please. But your husband does need to realize that this debt needs to be payed off ASAP just because your friend said to take your time doesn't mean you should. If you have the means to pay off this large chunk I say go for it! If your husband is truly against it then go 50/50 with it and put $250 towards the kayaks.
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
I think you & hubby need to come up with a plan to make repaying your friend a priority. You don't want it to start impacting your friendship with him. I would talk with hubby and figure out how much you can comfortably afford to pay your friend each month and come up with a date you will send the payment. Basically turning this into a monthly bill.
Did you handle your bonus in the best way, no. But you've learned and can change things going forward.
However, just so you know, my dh and I are are very different than most people I've met in terms of how our marriage functions. In regard to finances, we don't have many hard rules. We just do our best to spend responsibly and if someone feels strongly about a purchase then they buy it. End of story. No prior approval needed. Neither of us abuse this system so it works fine. If he came home today with a $500 purchase I didn't know about, I'd just think, "cool, I guess he really wanted that, I'm happy he bought it." I trust him to weigh what we can afford against his wants, and he has my full support in making those decisions by himself. We've never fought about money. It's all our money, so either of us can spend it on whatever. Sure, if one of us starts eating away at our e-fund or consistently makes us spend more than we make or throws off our retirement savings, then that would warrant a discussion. But the discussion would be after the fact, and we would just resolve to do better next time. But that's just what works for us, and it isn't right for everyone. So also, in my marriage, what you did would be totally fine, but if the "rules" are significantly different in your marriage, then your actions could possibly be more of an issue.
Eh, hope that all makes sense.