My Wife Makes All The Money — and All The Decisions

We both have full-time jobs but my wife makes extremely more money than I do, and she’s really generous about how she spends it, covering most of our rent and bills and so forth. But this also means she can make all the decisions about what we do, where we travel, what we get for the house, all of it. After putting my (much smaller) share of money towards our shared expenses, I have very little left over for just myself (maybe $150 or so a month), and sometimes I do wish I was able to make more decisions about things I might want to do for myself, not have to save up for things that are just for me, or ask her for money when there’s an emergency, like a car repair. (i don’t have any savings, she mananges the savings for the family!) I do sometimes get jealous that she is able to do stuff like buy clothes or get her nails done on a whim whereas I have to plan really carefully for expenses like that. Or wait for her to invite me to go with her and offer to pay for whatever it is she is about to spend money on that I would also like. I think this is normal for couples where one person is the breadwinner? But I’m not really sure…. so I guess I am asking you all if this is normal. I am really afraid that asking her directly about it will make me seem ungrateful for everything she pays for, and everything I’m able to do because of her, like live in this beautiful house and go on nice vacations.

Summer: Hey lovely! My previous relationship was a bit like yours at times, but I was the higher earner. My girlfriend at the time even jokingly referred to herself as the ‘breadloser’ in contrast to me being a breadwinner. To actually address the question, what you’re going through is pretty normal in relationships where A. There’s an income disparity; B. The finances are largely kept separate. When partners choose to not intertwine finances, it’s a little bit more ‘pull your own weight’. There’s more self-reliance since there’s no expectation that the higher earner must cover the majority.

One downside to that is the higher earner tends to have more decision-making power because they simply have more leeway to do things. However, one could argue that if the high earner extended their influence to cover the low earner, they’d still have more power. It just looks different. It’s also normal to feel a little uncomfortable if your mindset prizes resource application and ‘fairness’. Money is a critical resource in this wretched world we’ve built, so it’s understandable if you feel like you’re contributing less of a critical resource. However, relationships are about much more than money. Your time shared, personal connection, mutual support, are all meaningful contributions. I mean, the 50s housewife dynamic was built on the idea that one person brings in wealth and the other provides value in other ways: household and financial management, childcare, and emotional support. That system isn’t bad because it’s inherently immoral. It went sour when the woman’s work was devalued next to income, and being a housewife didn’t grant access to public life.

It sounds like you have a fairly good relationship. Finances are a serious topic worthy of discussion, so please talk to your wife about your feelings and whether she feels your contribution to the relationship is fair. In her view, you may already be giving plenty, or there might be room to provide things that aren’t cashflow.

Nico: Like Summer said, when finances are somewhat separate in a household, things can be tricky if there is an income disparity. However, you also mention that your wife “manages the savings” for both of you and that you “don’t have savings,” and it feels like both can’t be true at the same time! Is there a way you can talk to your wife and ask if you can take on a bigger role in managing the household finances with her? It may just be that she’s taken on that decisionmaking by default or because she feels she has to. You put all your money toward shared expenses and have just $150 leftover for discretionary spending that seems to include car maintenance, among other things that don’t feel like discretionary spending items, but rather like household expenses.

I think you just need to be honest. You expressed yourself pretty well here. It’s hard on you emotionally to have to ask for money in emergencies and it’s also hard for you to save money after contributing to the household expenses. You feel unsure about asking your wife to pay for things like nails for the both of you when you know she is already shouldering most of the household expenses and that you are enjoying things like your house and vacations because of her. You can say these things to her, and hopefully, she’ll be understanding and open to working on ways for you to feel less stressed and awkward and yucky! This might include being brought in on decisionmaking in a different way, or finding other ways to contribute to the household, or her reassuring you about things. I would definitely prepare for the conversation ahead of time, ask her to have it at a time where you can both be relaxed, and avoid hitting her with it out of the blue. Money can be an emotional topic so you want to make sure you’re taking care to have this talk when you both feel emotionally safe.

i was seeing someone and it was going super well. we clicked immediately and shared many interests. but i took a step back after my first visit to her apartment. i’m a very clean person, and this place was a mess, even though she knew i was coming over. clothes everywhere, dirty dishes, cat hair on everything, a refrigerator full of stuff that needed to be thrown out. i was immediately honest with her, and she wasn’t insulted, or it didn’t seem that way. she said cleaning just isn’t a priority to her and that she was fundamentally opposed to changing just to make a partner happy (she had been in an abusive situation before this where she changed for someone else and had vowed to never do that again). my apartment is spotless and i really like to keep it that way. i said we’d probably be better as friends and she was okay with that, again at least on the surface. we have kept texting and seen each other in group situations, and i’m still drawn to her. still, I just can’t imagine it working. am i being stupid?

Valerie: I don’t think it’s wrong for you to consider a dirty apartment a dealbreaker if a clean space is important to you. It’s a fundamental lifestyle difference. You have to imagine living together: would you be okay with always taking on all of the cleaning tasks and never asking her to pitch in? Because she has made it clear she probably won’t, so that’s not something you can count on. If you like cleaning enough that you’re willing to take that on, then it’s something to consider. If not, if you think you’d come to resent her for not pitching in or for leaving messes behind, then it’s not worth starting something. That said, if the attraction is there and you both would be down for something more casual, explicitly stated going into it, there’s no harm in that.

Summer: As I get older, I’m starting to realize that a person’s default approach to cleanliness is reflective of their well-being. That’s not to say that tidy and fastidious people have ‘better’ mental health, or that messy homes are a sign of moral failings. Instead, I now believe that when a person’s housekeeping will match their state of contentment. A happy person in a messy house is happy living there, and imposing tidiness would probably push them out of their comfort zone and into unhappiness. A happy person in a clean house probably won’t revert to mess unless something really goes wrong. I’m firmly on the clean-and-ordered side and I would not be happy in a relationship with someone whose preferred state is messy. But I’ve come to see that not everyone is happiest in an environment that’s completely tidy and ordered.

Based on that? Yeah, I’m with Valerie. If your happy state involves cleanliness, then it’s fair to not wanna change or adapt to someone else whose living environment would be bad for your well-being. The person you’re seeing appears content with their space and also has their reasons, so I also don’t think it’ll be productive to push them into change.

Nico: It sounds like your date/friend knows herself and her priorities well enough to be able to articulate them to you and to stand her ground on what she is and is not going to compromise on. The thing about dealbreakers early on in dating is that literally anything that will bother you later in the relationship to an extent that will compromise the relationship can be a dealbreaker and that is totally okay. Early dating is the discovery stage, when you’re trying to determine whether or not to move forward, and it can take a lot of dates with a lot of different people to find someone who is compatible enough to pursue deepening the relationship. If you cannot date someone who is a higher level of messy, then you can’t do that. It sounds like she took it relatively well. If you do decide to change your mind, then I do want to caution you that if her messiness becomes an issue for you later in the relationship, then that will probably be pretty hurtful to her because by changing your mind, you’re saying that you are going to overlook the messiness that originally gave you pause.