Since the point where my husband and I combined finances, bills have been my job to manage. We have been married 3 years, together for 8. We both make salaries, but my job is to make sure all the bills are paid and we still have money, and where that money goes.
It’s to the point where we will be out, and my husband will look at me and ask which card he should use when purchasing something. He doesn’t know what has a balance and what doesn’t. He doesn’t know where his money is. He doesn’t know really anything about where his money goes. Not because I don’t share, everything is in spreadsheets and notes he has access to, he has ownership on all accounts, mobile access to all the accounts, etc. He just doesn’t check, because he doesn’t need to.
For a while, he had a few bills to manage, but they would go months late. He would forget. Months later I’d follow up, see where those bills were at, to find out they were massively past due. At that point, I took over all of it. I have systems in place, they work for me, and it takes several hours out of my week to manage, but it gets done. I’d say managing our finances takes up half my head space. I’m always thinking about it, especially considering we’re 2 under 2 right now and live somewhat paycheck to paycheck while both on paternity/maternity leave, so money is tight. I’ve had this leave planned out for months financially, considering we’re both on pay cuts in order to be out.
The problem is, because my husband has this soft life in terms of our finances because everything is handled for him, he also doesn’t really get the weight that a wrench in the plan has. For example, he might find out about an unforeseen larger expense a week ago, but he’ll tell me about it the day it needs to be paid. If I pitch a fit, his response is something like “chill. I’ve had a lot on my plate with ______ (insert whatever life shit we’re dealing with at the time)”. He really doesn’t understand why it’s so frustrating for me to have to re-assess our finances when new information is presented, partially because he didn’t do any of the work to manage them in the first place.
I want to change the system. I know I get resentful that this falls entirely on me. When he asks me which card to use, every bone in my body wants to be like “I have no information that you don’t have access to. Why aren’t you just as informed as me as to where money is??” I’ve asked similar questions before and his response is usually along the lines of “well why would I if you know the answer already and can tell me?”. I want the work to be more split, but I have no idea how to do this without having anxiety that we’ll end up late on all our bills and get things cut off or shut off. What do I do?
TLDR: I solely manage our finances as a couple and would like to figure out how to somewhat evenly distribute that responsibility so it doesn’t burn me out. How do I go about doing that?