A**hole Husband Proves Why Some Wives Have Separate Savings Accounts
This husband threatened to take half of his wife’s savings because she was keeping it a ‘secret’
Raise your hand if you’re a woman and at some point in your early adult life, an elder woman in your family told you to always have money on hand that your husband doesn’t know about. Not because being sneaky in a marriage is okay if a woman does it, but because our mothers and grandmothers have seen what happens when women who have less agency over their finances get totally screwed if their marriages break up. Well, this husband in Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole” subreddit found out about his wife’s stash, and unintentionally proved why some women need these accounts.
Sure, you could say 2020 looks a lot different than the periods of time our grandmothers were getting married. But also, in a lot of ways it doesn’t! Which is why some wives (who are able to) keep some money tucked away for a “rainy day.” That “rainy day” could be financial hardship or it could be “my husband abandoned me and my children and now I’m f*cked.” You never know, really, so it can’t hurt to be prepared.
Unless you’re this guy.
“I found out that my wife of 4 years has been having a secret savings account,” he writes. “I just went through financial documents in our house because something was wrong, and I figured it out.”
He says his wife has had the account for about four years and has been consistently depositing 10% of her income into it every year. Suffice to say, he’s not happy — even though she told him she was saving in case something happened to him, or if he started abusing her, she’d have something to fall back on.
“I find that extremely illogical and that it’s pretty bad that she’s been lying this whole time,” he continues. He says she’s been “hiding $25,000” and he’s salty because he puts money right into their joint account. She told him he can start putting 10% of his own income into his own account, if he wants to.
“I then threatened to take 40% of my income(4 years times 10%) and put it into a separate account just for me,” he says. “She’s now saying that’s financial abuse and called me an asshole if I did that. I honestly don’t see what she’s thinking. She put 40% of her income and it’s been accruing interest.”
Now his wife is temporarily staying with friends and they’re “probably getting a divorce” but he still wants to know what people think. So, in true Reddit form, they let him know.
Can he be insulted and a little upset? Sure, no one’s telling him how to feel. But what he needs to realize is that this isn’t a personal insult to him. This is a woman who knows that in a patriarchal world, women have to look out for themselves.
No one goes into a marriage expecting it to implode. But you can’t fault a woman for protecting herself should things go downhill. My grandmother loved my grandfather fiercely until his dying breath. But she also knew he liked the sauce and that there was value in not having to rely on him for money should things go kaput.
It’s rarely ever men who need protection when marriages don’t work out — financially, legally, or physically.
