7. “I have been married for almost 20 years. My wife is a well-educated person who was doing well in the workforce, but she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom when our first daughter was born about 10 years ago. We are happily married with no prenup, and my career has gone very well, where our income is now what most would call wealthy. My wife’s grandfather recently passed away, and she received about $20k from his will, where he said in the will he’d like the money to be enjoyed.”
“I deposited it into our checking account and asked my wife if she wanted to save it for a trip, do some house upgrades, or if she had other thoughts for the money. She got mad that I put it in the joint account as opposed to her setting up an individual one (we don’t have separate accounts). She told me not to worry about it and that it’s her money, pointing out how my side of the family doesn’t have anything, and we won’t inherit anything from them. I was pretty caught off guard. We have never fought about money, even when we had a lot less of it.
This isn’t a significant amount of our savings. She has expensive habits that I encourage because they make her happy. I ended up saying that I was a little hurt that she would be so selfish with this, considering the financial contributions that I make to our family, and maybe she should use the money on her $300 haircuts or clothes. I am at a loss how money was never hers or mine until this.”