Enforcing accountability?
Posted on May 13, 2009
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I got my Discover bill last month, and oops… $708??? I’d gotten in trouble the month before for a $1500 bill, even though my purchases were things for my Barracuda, which my wife had agreed I could start fixing up. Well, you can’t fix up an old car without spending money on it, and she had also agreed to a general budget for the project as well. The problem was I hadn’t told her I was going to buy the stuff, and she kind of freaked out when she saw the withdrawal from our bank account.
When I got this month’s bill, I new she’d freak out again. Besides some stuff for my car, I’d also bought a model airplane engine and some books without telling her. I knew she wouldn’t be happy, because I hadn’t mentioned the purchases – yet I feel I have the right to buy stuff without getting her approval for every little thing. To fix it this time, I used money from my cash stash to pay part of the bill and paid the rest from our bank account.
This kept my wife happy because she only sees a withdrawal of about $300 or so for the Discover payment. I’m not happy about it for several reasons. First, I don’t like doing things like this because I know it only leads to problems. Second, it does nothing to help us resolve our differences over how money should be spent. Third, I shouldn’t have to do it – I should be able to spend some money without being questioned about it. We’re not living paycheck to paycheck any more.
I haven’t decided the best way to handle this yet. For now it seems like I dodged a bullet, and I don’t like dodging bullets. Doing so is a good way to get hit.
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