TL;DR: money goes missing from our joint account, wife gets mad about it and refuses to discuss it.
My wife and I have been married for a little over 2 years now. We've had a joint checking account since 3 years before we got married in order to make paying rent, electricity and other joint bills a little easier. While we've never overdrawn the account, we have come close due to one or both of us not putting the correct amount into the account or when we accidentally used the wrong card. This is exceedingly rare and hasn't happened in over a year.
The issue really began a few weeks months ago. I was checking my personal account and noticed that the joint account was super low. It didn't even have enough for half the bills that were coming out that week, so it wasn't just that one of us forgot to transfer money. I figured I made a purchase and used the wrong card and that my wife just hadn't added her money. But there was transfers from both of us, but there were charges from where we went out to eat a few days before, a trip to Walmart, and another transaction from my wife that we hadn't accounted for. No biggie, I transferred my bits and made a mental note to remind my wife. When I reminded her, she got angry and claimed that she already had money in the account to cover those things. She said it had to have been charges from me. It was a couple hundred dollars, so I wanted to make sure before I just gave up all the money I had.
We went though the statement and could not find the money she claimed she had in the account. She only made deposits in the amount of bills and other joint expenses (we can make notes when we made deposits/transfers, so there was proof of what the money was for). This made her angrier, and she claimed I was accusing her of stealing from me. I told her that I wasn't and that it just looks like she made a simple mistake (a mistake that we can fix together).
She then tells me that she notices that the account is short all the time and that she transfers her own money over to cover the shortage without telling me (I checked, the account does not reflect this at all). The argument went on, but got nowhere. She eventually screamed herself out and went nonverbal for the rest of the night (this is, unfortunately, normal). We slept in different rooms and didn't bring it up the next day. I now leave an extra $100 dollars in the account as a cushion.
Fast forward to now. I recently lost my job, so I'm trying to make sure that we have the right amount in the account before bills hit. I transferred my portion of bill money last week, and all but a few bills have come out. I know that my wife has a few bills of her own coming out of the account soon, and we both have a few joint bills coming out this week. These bills come out before her next payday and there is nowhere near the amount of money in the account to cover it all (just my bills and the cushion I leave in there).
I mentioned it to her this morning, and she immediately lost her temper. She claimed I'm trying to monitor what she does with her money and that I'm being controlling. I don't see it like that. We each have our own personal accounts that the other can not access. I never comment on her spending (I don't really even care about her spending so long as she isn't spending my bill money) and NEVER ask to know what she has in her own account; that is her business, not mine. But this is an account that we have joint bills coming out of. If I put in the right amount and she doesn't (or she spends money from that account), we get hit with a fee or (in some cases) the bill isn't paid and a late fee is accrued.
How can I talk to her about this without her thinking that I'm accusing her of anything? I just want her to be honest with me. I'm honestly afraid to bring it up to her now because I don't want her to yell at me. I also think she goes directly to her friends and tells them that I'm trying to control her finances and push her around, so I'm incredibly stressed out about it (I don't spy on her, but she usually storms off and yells "I'm calling so-and-so, leave me alone). I never yell, I don't thrown things or punch holes in the wall, but I fell that, when she's angry at me, she tries to make people see me as if I do those things.
Submitted February 24, 2020 at 11:18AM by bankaccountthrawy https://ift.tt/32ltBtE
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