Episode 12: Financial Fuckups & Lessons Learned

Hey, welcome back to Yoga Pants and Bad Decisions. This is episode 12, thanks for being here. If you don't already, please make sure to follow or subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And as usual, I always appreciate feedback. Feel free to leave comments on the Spotify page. You can also find me on social media, TikTok, Instagram and Blue Skies under Yoga Pants Bad Decisions. You can always reach out to me there. And I would love to hear from you. Any kind of feedback is well received. And I always look forward to hearing about what you guys think about the episode. So welcome back. This episode we're kind of going to circle back to some of the things that were discussed on episode 10, which was relationship takeaways. I got some great feedback in regards to that episode, and that certain listeners felt that I didn't touch upon the heavier hitting takeaways or the heavier hitting deal breakers in relationships. I kind of focused on the smaller potatoes, I guess one would say. And you know, some of the comments that I got back where you didn't discuss like parenting style, you didn't discuss ambition, you didn't discuss how money management factors into relationships. And all of those points are valid. I guess my stance on episode 10 was focusing more on the smaller things, things that in the grand scheme of things, yeah, like they might not seem important. But when you add those little things up over lengthy periods of time, in long term relationships, they do kind of become a bigger deal. So that was kind of what I was trying to touch on. If you recall, I talked about sexual compatibility, food compatibility, music compatibility, and then kind of just a little bit on politics. But while money, finances, ambition, how you raise your kids are all 100% deal breakers in my book, those things tended to be like no brainers to me. Those were things that yes, like before you enter into a long term relationship with anyone you should be on the same page with those certain things. Especially if you have kids, yes, you want to make sure they have similar parenting styles. Right now, like my youngest is nine and my older two will be out of the house within the next four or five years. So in my mind, whoever is next in my life as far as relationships and long term relationships won't really have that much bearing on how my kids are raised. I've already laid the foundation. Their father is very involved in their lives as a my. So for me, the next person that I enter into a relationship or whoever becomes significant in my life to the point where they actually meet my kids, that will be something like they won't have any parenting role with my children. Like yes, they'll know them, but they won't be parenting my kids. They won't really have a say in how I parent my kids. They can have an opinion, of course, but my kids have a mother and a father. So honestly, like moving forward with any romantic relationships, I'm not really looking for anyone to become a step parent to my children. They would kind of be like a bonus parent, which is fine, but like that's like so far removed from where I see myself anytime soon. So it's kind of like a moot point, but yes, very important. But really the topic for today that I wanted to get into was something that was brought up and that was the financial part of being in a relationship, how do you handle finances? Who's got the fiscal responsibility? Who doesn't? How involved are both partners in your finances? And I found this to be very interesting because for the duration of my marriage, I've always been the person in charge of the finances. It started very early on in our marriage. Now I'll basically go through the timeline and the chronicle series of events that have kind of changed my opinion on how I will move forward in any future relationships in regards to finances. But that's what we're going to be talking about today as finances. Do you keep your finances separate as a couple or do you keep your finances combined? I would love to hear how my listeners fall on that line of thought because I know there is two very significant camps on that. Everybody keeps their money separate, everyone divvies up the bills, and then there's people who combine everything. Is there a right or a wrong way to do it? What works for you? What have you found in your life and your relationship makes the most sense? And who is in charge of finances in your world? I'm curious to hear all of this, so please feel free to leave comments on how your householder, your relationship works in regards to finances. But to start things off, I have to give history and background story on how I became to be how I am now and how that's changed over the span of my marriage and things that I've learned from the financial takeaway for the future. And I hope again, I tell the good about the ugly, I don't leave anything out. Again, there are things that all of us do that we aren't proud of. We all make mistakes. This isn't an episode where I'm placing blame on any particular person. I take responsibility in it as much as my husband should. But again, it just gives perspective. And if you can learn from mistakes that my husband and I have made from a financial standpoint, so please do learn from them. Don't do the same thing that we did. So let's get started. So to start with finances, we kind of have to start from the beginning. And I have to paint the picture of what the financial situation looked like when my husband and I first got married. So to recap, I was 28, we got married. My husband was 25. So relatively young, both of us college degrees. I was working full time already kind of like in my career path and haven't really deviated that from that in the course of my life. I've been in the same industry since I got out of college. My husband was trying to do several different things as far as work. At the time that we got married, I think he was working like two part time jobs. At one point in time, he tried to go back and get his master's degree. And while he was doing that, he was doing it. Doing an internship. The master's program was actually paid for by the internship that he did, but he actually never finished the master's program. Got all the way to his thesis and just could not get the thesis paper done and the presentation done. Had two years to do it, never completed it. And then so basically the time that he spent getting his master's, he kind of didn't use it for anything. And during that time, he'd kind of jumped around. We had met while we worked together. So he was in the same industry I was, but then kind of moved on. But all this to say that we were making, you know, stereotypical money for people in, you know, their mid to late 20s. I was making good money at the time. I shared a home with my older sister. So we had a townhouse together. I was paying half the mortgage, half the bills. And my sister was paying the other half. Once my husband and I got married, my husband moved into our house with me and my sister. And the plan was once we moved in together that, you know, we would save up money. And I was very clear with my intentions with my husband and that I wanted to start a family sooner rather than later. So that would require us to purchase our own home and that would require us to, you know, have our ducks in a row, get some money saved, get some money banked, both be gainfully employed with more than just part time jobs. So that was kind of like I, in my mind, I had a very clear and concise plan. Now, prior to us getting married, my husband had said that, you know, he didn't feel like he was in a financial position to really get married. And my explanation to him was like, well, when will you be ready? Like, you know, like we've been dating for over three years now. It's kind of like what's the hold up? And it was shortly thereafter after getting married that I realized, I guess the financial situation that I was getting myself into. So after we got married, I remember very distinctly coming home from our honeymoon and seeing my husband's credit card statement on the counter. And of course, now that we're married, you know, what's his is mine, what's mine is his. So I opened the statement because now we're married. So his business is my business, right? So I opened up this credit card statement and he has over like $13,000 in credit card debt that I was not aware of. Now I didn't ask if you had credit card debt and that's my fault. Like again, that's a conversation that everybody should have prior to going into marriage, seeing if you're on the same page. I obviously didn't and I've paid the price for it ever since, but you know, my husband had a friend who was heavily in debt had spent a lot of money on like toys, dirt bikes, ATVs, a motorcycler or whatever and he would constantly talk about this friend negatively and be like, oh my god, I just don't know how he's carrying some money. which debt like what is he doing? That's so stupid. Like why would you do that to yourself? Set yourself up for failure like that. So like in my mind if you're like talking smack about your friend who you know has a significant amount of debt that you feel is not warranted or was spent on frivolous things my assumption was that you were not carrying a significant amount of debt yourself. So I remember very vividly coming home and opening this credit card statement and just seeing this $13,000 in debt because at the time I was debt free. I was already a homeowner. I was debt free and here I am with my brand new husband who our game plan was to buy house, start a family is sitting with $13,000 in credit card debt and I'm just like what the actual fuck and I ended up getting like very hysterical and calling my dad because I was like dad what the fuck do I do? Like I didn't know about this. Like how are we going to get rid of this money because you know like yeah like I was debt free I was taking care of my own bills and whatnot but like I didn't have a crop ton of savings that like I could just easily throw you know 13 grand on this credit card and be done with it and my dad was like well it's your problem now I suggest you start digging. So that was my first inclination that perhaps mine and my husband's financial literacy were not in the same place. So of course it became an argument between us very early on about where this debt came from how it was accrued why was I never told about it and his response was always I told you I wasn't financially ready to get married and I said yes but at no point during that conversation did you disclose that it was because you had a shit ton of credit card debt. So whereas he felt I was pressuring him to get married I felt that he was not being honest or transparent. He seems to have a hard time and I've noticed this in our 20 year marriage telling the difference between honesty and transparency. I seek more transparency as well as honesty like honesty is always appreciated but I would rather not have to dig for the truth and rather be presented with the truth prior to it becoming an issue because I feel like when things aren't disclosed up front when you know that that whatever it is that you're not disclosing could potentially hurt your partner it just feels shady and disingenuous and it and becomes problematic because as you've noticed in my relationship with my husband that has been an ongoing theme where he is not transparent because he might think he knows how I'm going to respond to it or how I'm going to react to whatever it is he's not telling me and it might be in a negative manner so he thinks that by avoiding it and not telling me that we'll just bypass the whole argument bypass any kind of negative reaction and every time he does this it blows up in his face so you would think one would learn over time to stop doing it but obviously that hasn't been the case and it's been one of the biggest challenges within our marriage this whole time so 13,000 dollars in credit card debt if I told you what I found out all of this money was spent on you would probably laugh and it would and it would probably give you a negative view of my husband that I don't necessarily need to you know throw out there but let's just say it was on the dumbest stuff he had absolutely nothing to show for it and it was a classic case of a young college kid gets his first credit card and literally decides to just go ham and buy all the things that he didn't actually have the money for and the mentality was I'll worry about it later but instead of disclosing this to his you know fiancee and future wife he kind of just figured he would take care of it on his own and no one would ever be the wiser what he didn't understand at the time was that that 13,000 dollars in debt was going to set us back on what we had discussed to be our plan to buy a house and start a family by several years because it took us a couple of years to get out of that debt and to be able to save up enough money to move forward in the purchase of our home so that was kind of you know strike one so after that once we got married we both we merged all of our money together and the reason for that was because that's just how I thought it was done again you have to remember how I was raised how both of us were raised and that both of our parents were still together both of our parents were were raised relatively conservatively in old school like yeah like both of our parents are I mean I don't think they're not considered boomer status but you know if the shoe fits short like the mentality was that of of boomer so they just did things a certain way and we were both kind of raised in that when you get married everything is shared that's just what marriage is so it wasn't even a thought or a concept to either one of us that we split up our bank accounts now my bank accounts were a little more established at the time because again I was a couple years older than my husband I had a little more experience in that like you know I'd already had my first credit card had several you know accounts I've already had a mortgage at this point I've already purchased my own car and paid for it in full so like I have great credit my husband had great credit that his father had actually set up and built for him before he was even old enough to have the credit card so even though he was sitting on a mountain of debt his credit was still good because he paid you know the card off or you know the minimum payment every month there was never any lateness and you know so it was fine but the card was pretty much maxed out so I became the one in charge of the finances and basically spent the next you know year two pushing my husband to get a better paying job so that we can you know get our lives started I I used my money that I earned to contribute to paying off of his debt and then we finally got that debt cleared out and everything was fine I was the one who was basically paying all the bills we I based added him to my bank accounts we opened up another credit card line like this is back in the day where like APRs was like 8.95 which is like unheard of now so the two credit cards that we still have till this day 20 years later we won't get rid of because the interest rate is so low and you just can't get rates like that anymore so we pay off the debt we end up getting in to our first home and I'm the one that's tracking the bills everything's great everything's fine then we have two kids then the the the child care stuff starts hitting and slowly but surely we both you know continue living a certain lifestyle that is beyond the means of which we have and it's not that we're like living anything extravagant like I'm not buying like coach bags I'm not I'm not wearing Prada we don't have the boozy money like we are very much like middle class middle of the road but we just never really changed our spending habits while incurring more not debt but like more expenses like having two children very close together I was paying child care prices for two under two at the same time which any parent knows two under two that's like prime real estate for daycare because most in-home child care is currently have two so you're basically monopolizing both spots in in a child care so you know we were paying you know five hundred dollars a week just in child care on top of our mortgage and then like anytime anything happened with like cars or expenses like we just didn't have the opportunity we weren't making enough money we weren't tightening up the belt enough to save so when anything would break or when anything happened it just got slapped on a credit card the plate of every American who is you know just and I wouldn't even say that we were struggling like we were never poor it's not like I've never been in a position to where I've had to worry about like feeding my kids or finding food it was never that but I've also had the luxury that I know a lot of people don't have to have good credit so when things got tough I could put something on credit on a credit card and then worry about it later versus the person who is shit credit and is dealing solely with cash if something comes up and you don't have the cash to pay for it you don't have the cash it doesn't get fixed and then you're fucked so I am very much understanding of how I am privileged in that regard and that I had established credit to the point where I still had the means to fund certain things that came up whether it was repairs car repairs house repairs things that we need to replace sports extra curriculars stuff like that and then you know I was the one in charge of paying for all of those things and making sure that everything got paid which I did but at some point in our marriage and early on we just continued to spend money that we really didn't have and then with the house payments and having to replace things again it was like a series of unfortunate events whether it was car repairs medical issues we had vet issues we had a sick dog for several years that kind of snowballed and it became problematic but every year for many years we would just wait until tax season came along we'd get our tax return and knock a bunch of the dead out and it just you know in our mind we just thought that that was just normal is that we would we would always hold some debt but then it became okay it started started creeping up a little too high. So then we were starting to outgrow with the townhome that we were in, and we had to start setting our sights on moving out of our house. So we bought the house as a starter home in 2008, and it was a two-bedroom townhome with the finish basement, and then the two bedrooms were like both masters. So ideally, like, we were like, all right, we'll move in, we'll pop out a couple of kids by the time their old enough will be out. Like, the whole plan was to be out in five years. Anyone who bought a house in 2008 knows exactly what fucking happened in 2008, the housing market went to shit, and everybody was underwater for several years. So we were like, there was no way we were getting out of our house because houses were selling for way more like, than we could afford, and we owed on what we would get for our house. So we kind of just had to sit tight, and we just stayed in this house for as long as we could. We ended up staying for 11 years. So fast forward to 2020. We're trying, you know, 2019, 2018, we're like, all right, we need to start getting our shit together so that we can get into a bigger house. Because now, you know, we have three kids, and we had all three kids sharing one bedroom. We had bunk beds, and it was two boys in the girl, and it was getting to the point now where, you know, our older two kids were going to need their own rooms and have separate space. So it was, it was crunch time. It was kind of like, do or die. We were still living comfortably, but we had, you know, a significant amount of credit card debt that it's slowly accrued over the 11 years that we had lived there. We had never really put too much thought into it, because again, we managed to pay our, all of our bills. We just didn't have anything to really save. That falls on both of us. I'm not placing blame on anything. We just, we're young and stupid, and didn't know what we were doing with our money, and just lived above our means, and didn't save and budget, and all of those things. So then we kind of had to hunker down. So we both started doing like a side hustle where we were working almost like an insukur chopper, but with like a different company. So we were doing like, you know, the grocery, grocery game, and basically side hustled our way out of debt. And it became like something that we just did, and all of that money went right towards paying off our credit card debt. And it took us about like a year to two years to pay off the debt we had. We loosely followed the Dave Ramsey snowball method. If you're not familiar with Dave Ramsey, highly recommend, it definitely can get the job done. And it probably could have been done even sooner for us if we had gone harder and really just tightened up on our budget. But again, we did it for what worked for us at that time. So we knocked out close to $25,000 in credit card debt. So now this is the second time we've had to clear out a shit ton of debt on credit cards. The first time had nothing to do with me. That was all my husband, the second time, I'll take responsibility for that. That's, you know, for my contribution to that. But during all this time as me being the one who was paying all the bills and in charge of the finances, the conversations in our house were always the same. Hey, you know, you're spending too much money. Like, you need to tighten it up. And my husband was the type who would basically eat out every day at work. And I would eat at work and it would be free because of the industry that I work in, my meals were paid for. My husbands were not. And he would go out and spend $30 anywhere from $15 to $30 every day on lunch. And it his mind felt that he was totally justified in that. Well, guess what? Like, no, like, I'm eating for free. You need to start like packing a lunch or something because $30 a day times five days a week that you're working adds up. And it's just money that we didn't have. And those were kind of like the conversations that we would have when it would be about finances. You're spending too much. You need to cut back. He would say he was going to do it. And it would last for maybe a month. And then the same shit would continue happening. He wasn't aware of what money was coming in, what money was going out. And there have been many times where I had told him, like, hey, you need to make yourself aware to our finances because you're the one that's overspending. Like the only thing I'm spending money on is groceries and kids' necessities. And you're the one that's basically going out and buying things that we necessarily don't need, don't want convenience items versus necessity items. So it was a constant battle, which I'm sure everyone has had at certain stages of life where it's like one person is just not aware. And that's kind of where I don't think I would ever be able to go back to that, moving forward in relationships. And then our financial situation just continued to kind of like go downhill after that. So we got into our dream home. Everything's great. But now we're in this house where the mortgage is almost close to double of what we were paying in the previous home, but we're still making the same amount of money. So again, we're house poor, which is fine. But then I ended up switching jobs and taking a job that was $20,000 less than my previous salary. It was supposed to be a temporary fix. It ended up being two years. During that two-year time frame, do you think we changed our spending habits? Absolutely not. So we're basically like robbing Peter to pay Paul because I'm making $20,000 less. And we're still spending money as if I'm making my old salary. Again, initially we thought it was going to be a temporary thing. It ended up not being temporary. Blame is on both of us for that. I'll take the hit for taking a job that paid less, but for my mental sanity and my mental health and my stress level, it was a necessity. It would have been more detrimental if I had stayed in the situation that I was in. So I don't have any regrets in switching careers. I do have regret in not adjusting to the change of salary as we should have. It should have been a team effort. It was neither one of us did anything. So we both take the L on that one. So then as time goes on, things start to-- and this is where things kind of start to derail. And this is where I will no longer move in a certain way. So everyone knows his con face. Yay, con face. So this is where she rears her ugly, conty face yet again in my life. So one day-- and this is after all of the shit is at the fan. She's persona non grata in my book as far as I'm concerned. I wish she moved. I wish she was no longer in my life. I have nothing nice to say about this woman. So I open up my husband's credit card statement. So at this point, let me set the platform is that we both have our own major credit cards. We pay-- like I just blanket pay, whatever the minimum balance is or whatever we can afford. It's just-- honestly, it's just set up on auto pay. But he has his one credit card. I have my one credit card. That way, he keeps tabs on each other, but kind of know who's spending what. And it's on two separate accounts. His card, he was earning rewards and gift cards for mental note to self. Remember to put phone on Do Not To Start While Recording Podcast. Apologies for the abrupt stop. But anyway, so two separate credit cards. He had his credit card. I had mine. It kind of just kept things separate so we could kind of-- I guess, regulate. We didn't have eyes on each other's statements. We weren't monitoring what the other person was buying. But it was kind of just understood that you're not doing anything crazy. And at some point in time, I think we had even established the rule like anything more than $300. If we're spending on something, we have to clear it with someone else. Because depending on if it was going on a credit card, if it was coming out of the joint checking account, he needed to check in with me and vice versa, not really vice versa. But on the one that's controlling the money, I know what's in the account. I knew at any given point in time what's going out, what bills are going out, when they're due, when we're getting paid. My husband only gets paid once a month on biweekly. So a lot of our bills have to be staggered at certain times to make sure that the accounts were flush. So I get home one day, open up his credit card statement, and in the credit card statement, I see a $300 charge for a U-Haul moving van and a storage unit. And I'm like, what the fuck is he getting a storage unit and a moving van for? And why do I not know about it? So of course, I wait for him to get home and I ask him. And I was just like, is there something that you want to tell me? Why is there a charge on your credit card for a storage unit and a moving van? Because I'm thinking, oh, you're leaving me. That was where my mind went. So I had that feeling of panic thinking, oh, it's finally happening. He's finally leaving me for converse. And he was just like, oh no, Jane, because he doesn't refer to her as converse. That's just me. Jane needed it because Chris has been actin' full and she needed to move some things into a storage unit. Because I guess he was finally coming back the marital home, even though he'd been out of it for like two years at this point in time. And basically, she wanted to make sure that stuff in the house was protected while he was coming in and finally moving out all of his stuff. And again, let me remind you, like this is the type of living situation that they've had for like fucking years. So like when I talked about how she came into my house, trying to clean it and like prove her worth, like this is stuff I'm talking about. Like who keeps their soon to be ex-husbands crap in their house for multiple years? No, make like get the store unit and move his shit in there and be like, hey, you have until X day to get this or it's getting tossed because I'm not paying for the store units. So like every, at every turn how she handled the situation with her soon to be ex-husband boggles my mind. I don't know if she's just that stupid that she just doesn't know how the law works or like what her rights are, but like you don't have to keep your ex-husband shit in your house. Like you could have put it on the front lawn and told him to come get it and been well within your rights to do so, but you're stupid and you choose not to. So instead you come and dear my husband to turn around and pay for a store unit and a you all to move all of your shit into a store unit and I was like, did you clear this with me? Did you ask me if this was okay and he goes, oh no, no, no, no, Jane paid me for it. And I said, cool, like but where's that money? Because guess what? Like I'm the one who pays the bills. So if she gave you money to pay for all of these things that you put on your credit card, where in fact did that money go? Because you never came to me with like $300, $300, $400 and said, oh hey, Jane asked me to do this for her. I put it on the credit card, here's the money to put towards the credit card. Like that's how it should work and he was just like, well I just use that as pocket money instead. So basically Jane gave him, we'll say it was like $400. $400 to put towards this you all and store a unit. He slaps it on his credit card, which has interest on it. At no point in time does that $400 make its way back into our joint account, make its way into my hands so that I can pay the credit card off of the $400 that he's put on it. He just keeps it as his slash money and instead accrues interest. And I so of course my response to him is, well did you charge your interest? Because you know we're now gaining interest on those fees that you put on the credit card for her. And he goes, no, I'm not alone shark. And my response to him was, and we're not a fucking bank. We are not a fucking bank for your contas girlfriend because her finances are in worse shit than ours. Like you're fucking up our finances to help your fucking side piece. No thank you, that can't happen. So it ended up being like a giant fight for us. And he was like, yeah, I'll never do it again. And you know what else never happened again? Never got a credit card statement sent to the house again. Shortly after that, I think he turned off the paper credit card statements so that I would not be able to see what he was spending his money on. Should have been glaring red flag number 52 in the conface and my husband saga. But alas, I again was still eating shit thinking that this was my lot in life for the time that I cheated on him 12 years ago. So again, I just tolerated all of this fucking nefarious behavior. In the hopes that eventually, you know, we would find our way back to each other and write the ship and that conface would just kind of gracefully exit from our lives. Sadly, that was not the case. Even worse was that the financial situation after that got even shadier. So we fast forward, you know, after that credit card, you know, incident, he said, oh yeah, that'll never happen again. And, you know, we kind of moved past it. And I kind of, you know, check him and I'm like, "Nah, like this isn't gonna happen again." So then I started getting inklings from my older son who basically says, you know, dad buys Jane stuff on Amazon, right? And I was like, whatever. I was like, I know that he gets her like little gifts and stuff, whatever, you know, that's his girlfriend. He can spend money on her, that's fine. And he says to me, no mom, like he sends stuff to her, he buys stuff for her kids, like he's always sending stuff to their house. He's like, I see it all the time on the Amazon account. So Amazon, we have the same Amazon credit card but we have two different accounts attached to it. What started as innocently enough a way to purchase each other's Christmas gifts without ruining the surprise for the other person, we basically set up like I had my Amazon account, mine was the one that we basically used for the household. His Amazon account, he used for like Christmas gifts and stuff like that. So all of my kids have like wish lists on Amazon and they were linked under my husband's account. So he had access to it. And whenever the kids wanted to add stuff to their wish list, they just top on my husband's laptop, log in under the Amazon account and just update their wish list. Now this is where, you know, my son is like me and he's nosy and a busy body and you know, doesn't stay out of his own business. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree there. And that he basically, when he was on the Amazon account one day adding to his wish list, he must have gone on like previous orders and saw a bunch of stuff that my husband bought for Jean. And you know, multiple times he had told me about it and I just kind of just like, poop-poo-dix, I was like, no, no big deal. And like honestly, like I never thought that our Amazon account like was so exorbitant that, you know, there'd been times and usually it was around Christmas where we would go like, ham because like all the in-laws had wish lists like it was just within our family that we used Amazon a lot for a lot of things. So like we were constantly paying it off and you know, for the better part of the year it would have a zero balance because it was a higher interest account. But around Christmas time we would always be like sitting on a couple thousand dollars that I would slowly pay off you know, after a couple of months or like when the tax returns came in, no big deal. It was like our smallest credit card like, you know, I think we couldn't put more than $5,000 on it because you know, that was like the limit, which is totally fine. I would never want to spend more than that. So after hearing it a couple of times like I finally, you know, it was just one of those little nuggets and kernels of information that festers in the back of my brain until finally one day my laptop had crashed and I needed to use the computer I think to do something. I don't know. Again, nothing on my end nefariously. I literally just needed to use. I think I genuinely was using his laptop to like log in and pay a bill on some website that I couldn't get to on my phone. Like literally paying bills and while I was on his laptop the Amazon account was up and any other time I had been on his computer the Amazon account was never logged in. Didn't even really think of it but it was already like a window open on his laptop. So he, it's there. So inquiry minds, you know, that curiosity killed the cat knowing what I knew from what my son had told me I took it upon myself to basically look at the Amazon history on my husband's laptop. And what I found made me want to throw the laptop on the ground. I literally first saw what he had his girlfriend saved as on the Amazon account. So like every time he would send a gift or whatever to her house, it would say my boo thing which just made me want to vomit because like that's just disgusting you're a grown-ass man. And like, no, like that's just an insult to the person who is paying for the Amazon bill for you to be sending cute cute little named packages to your whore. So I'm looking through, you know, the most recent things that he sent to her and I'm just like, all right, are these just all gifts? Or is this like everyday stuff? And, you know, here we are at 2026 and I'm seeing, you know, I think in 2026 alone or up until that point, like I'd already seen a couple hundred dollars spent in 2026. And then I go back into 2025 and there's like $1,300 worth of stuff center. And then the year before that and the year before that, I think I went back three years. And then the span of the three years that I looked back, it was well close to $5,000 worth of stuff that he had sent her. And I'm just like, what the actual fuck? Because I was like, like, why? Like at this point, get your own fucking Amazon account. And I remember him early on, like right after her and Chris broke up, that like Chris had commandeered the Amazon account and like she, you know, it was his name on the account. So she had no access to it. So I think initially like very early on, there was a couple of things that, you know, she had asked us to buy because she could get it prime, she could get it cheaper on Amazon. And like she gave us the money. Cool. Okay. That was like supposed to be like a temporary situation while you were getting your feet back on the ground and navigating your life now as a single mom and the solo contributor to the household. So I got that. But then so now here we are like five years later and my husband is still using our prime account to basically fund her household. So I was like what and the craziest part is not only just the randomness of the stuff that was on there that she could have easily just gone to Walmart and bought or gone anywhere and purchased herself or you know signed up for her own prime account at any given time in the five years that you know he was ordering this stuff. She could have had her own prime account. And a prime account costs what $180 a year and it's worth its weight and gold around Christmas time. Like it pays for itself. Like it would have paid for itself literally in two months with the amount of stuff that she was ordering through my husband. And like you know so she must just be shooting him text, oh hey, hey Pookie can you buy me some household cleaner? Oh hey Pookie my vibrator died. Can you buy me a new one? When I tell you folks that like I wanted to take the laptop and throw it to the ground when I saw not one, not two, not three, not four, but five, count them mother fucking five vibrators that this fucking had sent to her house from my prime account makes me want to just fucking vomit. Like really bitch? Like you can't even afford your own fucking toys. Like how often are you using these suckers? Like is my husband not doing his job right? Because like if you busted up through five vibrators in that span of time, then maybe you need to fucking chill out and find a better hobby. Like but like mind blown. So of course I'm seeing right at this point because I was like cool. So you've just been like throwing shit on our prime account, sending it to her basically financing half of her household on my prime account. So of course he's like, oh she always paid me for it. And I was like again, like where did the money go? Well I would just use that money instead of like taking money out of our account. Okay, so the mapping again is not mapping. If you're spending money on a credit card that incurs an interest rate and he goes, well I thought you paid it off every month. And I said most months I do, some months I don't depending on what's going on. And I said, but the bigger part of this whole thing is that you never once conferred with me, consulted me, asked me. And I said and we've had this argument about you purchasing things for her on our credit card. She goes, well that was a credit card. This is a different card. And I said, oh, so because one was a chase card and this one is the Amazon account, you thought that the rules were different? You stupid motherfucker. Nobody like same rules. Like I don't know how differently I can break this down for you. But no. So that caused another huge breakout. And then I was petty enough to actually change the address on her account under my husband's account to conface. And do you know who pays for this account? 'Cause it's your fucking wife. And he swore to me that he wasn't gonna send anything else to her. And at this point I don't even fucking care. Like let him, like if you're gonna be stupid enough to cross me after I already know, cool. And then I also reached out to Jane too and basically told her that her Amazon Prime gravy train is ended and she's like, that's a conversation for you and him. And I was like, no bitch, like you know, you're 40 years old. Like open your own fucking prime account and stop being a goddamn mooch. Like grow the fuck up and take care of your own fucking kids and leave my family alone. So yet again crossing those boundaries and then my husband basically thinking that he did nothing wrong. Finally on the financial front with him, the final last straw was when it came time to do our taxes this year he wanted to do them. The last year he did our taxes for the first time. This was the second year he's done them. So we've been together for, it'll be 20 years now. So we've been filing our taxes for 19, 20 years together now and the last two years are the first two. Which I find hysterical but now that I know why he wanted to do the taxes, all of a sudden it all makes sense. I just didn't find out about it until this year because last year I guess the amount of money was so insignificant. I kind of missed it. But then this year when I was going over our taxes again and going through our tax file that breaks down income and dividends and 401(k)s and interest accounts, I stumbled across a 1098 from eBay and I'm looking at it and I don't really know what it is 'cause I had never seen it before. Whenever I'd done our taxes that was not one of the things that I'd ever had to use or fill in information for. So I'm looking at it and it says it's like $5,000 over $5,000 and box I or whatever. And I'm just like, so I take a picture of it and I send it to my husband and I'm like, what is this? And he goes, oh, it's ever since Trump changed the rules on selling and buying stuff on eBay. Like everything has to get taxed now. And I was like, okay, selling stuff on eBay, you don't get taxed up or buying things on eBay, you don't get taxed on. And that was kind of how he was trying to mansplain it to me why we had this form. So then of course being the person that I am didn't believe a fucking word he said because he hasn't been transparent about his finances ever in his life. So I googled it and it ended up being like an income stream. And so he had generated over $5,000, selling stuff on eBay. And I never saw a dime. And so like at the time I had been contemplating getting a second job because at this point, we had already kind of decided that we were moving towards the path for divorce. And unfortunately like our house, neither one of us can afford to live in this house by themselves. And in order for us to sell this house and move into our own separate homes, it would require us to again clear out some debt that we had. So I was contemplating getting a second part time job on top of my full time job or like a second job on top of my full time to help knock out some of the debt. Only to find out that like he had a little side hustle selling shit on eBay that I never knew about. So when I had questioned him about it, I was like, where's this money? Like money that you know would have been great for our household while I'm robbing Peter to like pay Paul. He's making money on eBay and everything's like, you know, great. I'm like, where's this money? Like I've had to put groceries on a credit card before because like we didn't have the money to do it, but we needed stuff to eat in the house. Meanwhile, he's sitting on five grand in eBay sales and never shares a dime with me. And he's like, why just use it to buy other stuff? And I said, so let me get this straight. Like for the last like year and a half, two years, like you've known our financial situation and how it needed to change and what we needed to do to fix it. And I said, and meanwhile, you're spending money on your girlfriend that we don't have, pocketing that money and then you're also generating income on eBay and pocketing that money as well. And you don't see anything wrong with this picture. And he's just like, well, I mean, when you put it like that, well, what other way is there to put it, sweetheart? Put the shoe on the other foot. How would you feel if I was generating money from a different revenue stream and keeping it from you? When you know that we could easily use that money, that money could have paid multiple bills. But yet you just use it as your fund money. And spend it. Who knows what you're spending it on. So then after the Amazon thing, after the eBay thing, I kind of just lost it completely on him. And I was like, I need access to your credit card statements. I need to see what you're fucking spending your money on. Now my name's on his credit card. I would have to like call the credit card company and get them to like, you know, get me on. Like I tried on my own, but I couldn't. But like, it's the same account. Like we each have our own, you know, cards that are tied to the same account. But like he just uses the one chase account. I use the bank of America. And he basically said, no, I'm not going to give to you. And I was like, well, like you do really realize I can get it. What are you hiding on your credit card statements that you don't want me to see? And he goes, well, I just know that you'll see things that I've bought Jane on there. So going back to the Amazon account, like there were certain things on there that were obviously gift items. Like for one year for Christmas, he got her like a cricket, which for people who don't know, it's like you can, it's like a machine that almost like a, I would equate it to a sewing machine, but for like making sweatshirts and stuff, making decals, stickers, stuff like that. But it's like a high priced ticket item and all of the accessories that go with it. You're talking, when all is said and done, this is a $500 piece of equipment. any bot that for. like two Christmas's ago or like for her birthday. Not once did he ask if that was okay with me. So like come to find out like this motherfucker spending $300 on his girlfriend when like I'm Robin Peter to pay Paul to like fucking make sure that we don't go into collections on bills. So it had finally gotten to the point where like I had had enough because once all of these things came to light and the amount of shady dealings and the amount of mistrust that had happened with all of that like I lost my shit on him and I was like cool and I was like you can cut up your credit card right now which you did and you better not send her one more fucking thing on our Amazon account because I'll have find out about it like they're we're gonna have this use. And then after that like I got I ended up getting a couple of bonus checks at work and I made the decision at that point in time to open up a separate account from him and it's like and it wasn't from anything that I was trying to do like truly shady but I was just trying to keep money that he couldn't touch. Like I know legally like once we get the divorce proceedings rolling half of everything that we have whether it's debt or income is gonna be shared. So it's not like I was you know squirreling money away and the hopes that I would have like some secret you know nest egg that I would run away with you know once the divorce is finalized I'm not that stupid I'm not that ignorant. I know he gets half of whatever I have but I just kind of wanted to keep money separate from him to see how our funds do when like we have some separation. So he's obviously still you know because now I monitor our accounts even more heavily you know and I would ask him like how much are you spending because if you remember he sees conface every other Saturday he spends the night with her and that's usually when they do their date night. So like I can see when they go out you know if they're going places you know restaurants that they've been to not a big deal. Like I know that it happens just like you know there's been times where I go out with my boyfriend and girlfriend and like pick up the tab or like well door dash and it'll be my night to you know do dinner and we'll door dash food and it comes out of our joint account. Like that's just part of like polyamory nom and nom and like yeah you're gonna date other people so you're gonna incur you know expenses that come along with dating. So that was like never a thing we discussed it even when we opened initially like you know what is our you know what's the frequency in which we can go out on dates financially because we know that okay like you know my husband's not gonna be going out on five dates a week and he's paying for those dates which is how you know like I'm not against you know the guy paying for the first date but you know being physically responsible having a family like no we can't afford for you to go out on five dates a week so let's be realistic and you can go out like once a week or like a couple of times a month if you're gonna do you know more expensive dinners. We had those conversations early on. So it was kind of just to assume that yeah like we were not like you know taking our dates to like fogeau to show or whatever and spend in $300 on dinner and or if we were it was a special occasion it was kind of like hey do you care but then to find out that he was buying these like expensive ask gifts for her and not even consult me on it like at this point like you're both kind of just dead to me like financially like you can both just pound sand. So I basically opened up a separate account for my stuff. So now like honestly like when I do stuff that's for me that I consider self care like I get maintenance massages it comes out of my slash fund. The MacBook that I'm recording this on all of the recording stuff that I got for the podcast came out of my separate account. Certain things that I get for my boyfriend and girlfriend like gifts for them or things that I have on my wishlist to by them like comes out of my personal fund and now my husband I guess still has like his eBay fund. So ever since I've kind of opened this other account and if kept funds separately from him the amount of money that we have in our accounts is kind of like a herd herd of. So now I'm starting to see how couples do this with separate finances and why it works. So all of that backstory and yapping just to kind of get to the point where now moving forward financially all of our money will be kept separate. Like so whoever I end up with after this marriage ends you know like I joke with the couple that I'm dating like we talk about moving in together and like you know getting a big old house and having like a homestead. So like if we were to you know actually do that hopefully that will come someday and if it's not with them maybe with someone else I don't know. If I ever do move on with someone else and live with someone else yeah like it's gonna be like okay like here's your half of the you know we'll open a joint account and then every time that bills do each of us will be responsible for moving those funds into the account to get a paid because there will never be another relationship for me where I'm the only one who's stressing about money on the only one who loses sleep over how things are gonna get paid because my partner is completely financially oblivious and financially illiterate and doesn't really show any signs of even wanting to learn any of that to become financially competent and that's kind of like the real kicker is that my husband really is still so clueless on the finances of this house that I joke that if I die tomorrow like good luck because like he doesn't even know what we owe financially like what bills have to get paid when they have to get paid what account it comes from who it's getting sent to and it's just like to me I feel like everyone in a relationship where you share assets should have access and be 100% knowledgeable about those things and I feel like that doesn't always happen I feel like in most marriages there's always one person who is in charge of the finances and while that does make it easier you know too many hands in the pot like can Crayol create problems and cause issues I agree with that but both of you at least need to be knowledgeable like you know to me I feel like moving forward I would want to do like either monthly, quarterly you know financial meetings with whoever I'm living with or sharing expenses with kind of just to give like a state of the union where are we currently what are our goals, what are we saving for this is what we have in our slush funding case anything breaks like planning for that whereas I don't feel like I've had the opportunity to plan financially for my future because I haven't had a partner who's one given a shit wanted to learn how to do it has any concept of how to save or what expenses are actually within our family unit and as much as that might you know you might be hearing this and be like well you didn't tell well I shouldn't have to you're a 45 year old man with three kids educate your fucking self on how everything in this house works and how much it costs like I am not your fucking mother I am the mother of our three kids I'm not your mom too so if you don't know what funds are coming in and how much money moves in and out of our accounts every month shame on you like that falls on you so to any of my listeners who are currently in a relationship and you are that partner who is utterly clueless about the finances in your relationship I highly recommend getting educated and don't default to the partner who's already doing it like because one it's stressful for them two it's your business two and it's your future that you're being ignorant to and don't end up like me where you're constantly fighting against the current because your partner is not working with you they're working against you it's very frustrating it leads to resentment it ends up you wanting to just split entirely financially from them and when kids are involved and you have a family involved it just makes everything infinitely harder so finances definitely a big deal definitely a takeaway moving out of this marriage and into future relationships that I will definitely reflect heavily on and move towards being a lot more transparent and honest with whoever I'm with as far as what my expectations are and kind of will have to be on the same page on that front because I will not go through this again and guys and gals if you don't have access to your significant and others credit card statements and they refuse it like I don't know might be questionable might be something you might want to look into might be hiding something you just never know like I think if you're going to share a life you should you know share finances as well I think that's a key takeaway from all of this and if they're not willing to do that that obviously means they have something that they're hiding whether that's some kind of gambling addiction, shopaholic I don't know it could be a bunch of things but learn for my mistakes and don't assume that because you think you know your partner you know their spending habits and their financial habits some people just really are that clueless and it's unfortunate and I hope that my kids will have a better foundation for that and their relationships moving forward and I most definitely will Alright, I've drained on for an hour now, so I think I'm gonna wind it up. up but thanks again for joining me on yoga pants and bad decisions. Don't forget to subscribe and follow wherever you listen to your podcasts and of course leave any comments on Spotify. I love to hear from you guys. Have a great day. See you next time.