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[MUSIC PLAYING] Brought to you by the EveryDollar app, start budgeting for free today. So I'm having a bit of some marital disagreement. I'm hoping you can give me some clarity, or at least how to approach it with my husband. We've been married for eight years. I'm going to stay at home on for two. And he makes about $250,000 a year and receives it to give me access to the finances pretty much. I'm not on his account. He does give me X amount of money each month to pay the bills. It doesn't even really cover the bill amount, to be honest with you. And I'm always left with $0 to my name. So I just wanted to talk to you about this and get some feedback from you. Dang, Angela, why won't he put you on the account? What does he say? To be honest with you, I think it's maybe fear of giving that control up. When we got married, he was very established. He's 12 years older than I am. He's always been on his own. So I think he's having a really hard time really pushing that up. Eight years later? I know. Yeah, because that's where the difficulty comes in. Yeah, I mean, it would be. I mean, to a degree, Angela, I'm like-- I mean, it's a level of the splitting of finances to the point that you don't have access. I mean, that borders line financial abuse, that you don't have the ability to access money that is coming into your household, regardless of who makes it or not. The idea that he's withholding that, that's a big red flag to me. Are there other areas of your marriage that you feel this controller is it mostly to the money? Honestly, it's just the money. Everything else feels great. And, of course, I can ask him for $20 or $50. But he wants to ask that. You're not his daughter. Yeah, exactly. This is bothering you because it's wrong. Yeah. And so let me just confirm for you this is wrong. And what you're describing to me is, it sounds to me like it's a whole lot more toxic. And bad than you actually think it is. You've normalized this and you're trying to just kind of, well, it's not, but it's just like I can't get him. No, I mean, this is like weird, OK? This is strange. It's at that level, and it's wrong. Relationally, it's a disaster. So I don't know-- I can't judge, you know, not talking to him. I can, but I might be wrong. What is the root of this for him? But I really honestly don't care either. If you were my little sister or my daughter and you told me this was going on, this is not a financial problem. You have a very serious marriage problem. OK. You have an older guy that is-- you married a man older than you that thinks he's your dad. Or he thinks he does not have any-- he does not have to involve you. So I mean, you're just to do what you're told. OK. And I just, boy, it just sounds really icky. So I think you guys need to sit down with a marriage counselor desperately. OK. I have tried that route, and he wouldn't, though. I still went-- Oh, no kidding. He was a little bit-- Of course he wouldn't go. You need to go. Yeah. And the marriage counselor needs to explain to you how icky this is and how you can start having conversations that he either comes to the table or you're leaving. Because this is not healthy, honey. This is ugly. And I am not telling you to leave, but I am telling you to get some people in your life to walk alongside you so you don't continue to tolerate this. Eight years is too long. OK, perfect. Yeah. You put up with it so long, it starts to kind of feel normal to you. And Rachel and I both, like, we about flipped out when you told us this, right? So we're trying to temper and be nice. Yeah. Because, I mean, there's degrees of all of this, Angela. We get this call a lot of, how do I get my spouse on board? And there's everything from, how do I get them on board with the intensity of which we're doing baby step two, but we're doing baby step two. But I want to do more than he does. Or how do I get it where we vote? Oh, this is control-free. What that's what I'm saying is the checking account. Like, we have separate checking accounts. I don't know if we want to do one. Whatever, whatever. This is like-- this is on the extreme scale of it, that you don't have access to your money to run your household. And your husband is holding the keys. And so there's probably a level two, Angela, that-- and I think Dave's right. I think going to-- if he won't go to marriage counseling with you, then you need to find a counselor or a therapist and start walking through. Because there's a level of strength, Angela, that you may have been giving up over the last eight years due to codependency, really being kind of warped into what is normal. And this is just your normalcy. And so to have this level of-- and it's scary, because you're going to start to learn some new tools and new realizations of what's really going on. And it's going to give you the strength, though, to speak up. And I pray that with that and through that, he comes to the table and starts to do work and understands all of that, right? And you guys can move. I hope he loves you more than he loves control. But I'm not sure right now. OK. Yeah, it feels that way. Do you guys have kids, Angela? You've been home for two years? You have three. You have three, OK, OK. Mar? What did you do when you set up in home for two years? What were you doing before that? When you were working and making an income, where was that money going? Well, I worked for a municipality. And I tried to get him to combine finances then when I was bringing in money, but he wasn't interested. So I just kept it to myself in my account. But since we've been married, I had tried to get him to combine finances. We did go to SPU together. That was one of my things I wanted us to do at front. I think it helped for about a year. But he never wanted to actually make that step and combine our account down to our account. Well, and more than that, he's still doling out money to you. Yeah, I'm going to have to ask him for $20. It sounds like you're 16 years old and you're asking your dad for money. That's the way that sentence structure came out. And I got to tell you, man, somebody, a guy they can go through Financial Peace University and see that whole scope of information, viewing it from an emotional, spiritual, mathematical process. And then go back to doing what he's doing. There's something going on here. There's something going on, OK? I'm so sorry, Angela. Yeah, this is fine. I know. I'm sorry, darling. Yeah, I don't want to be some doomsayer and I want to add drama, but I want to add enough drama that you do something about it. Don't stay in this situation. Do something to cause the situation to change. Like, see a therapist and let them walk you through some structures of what you can do to get some help in this relationship. Create your free $3 budget today, the simplest way budget for your life.
