Hey everyone,
My wife (29), and I (29) have been married for a couple years and have a child together. Throughout most of the relationship I have always been the saver, managed the bigger financial purchases and for the most part taken on the burden of ensuring any surprise expense is taken care of. I do make more money than her. We recently purchased a home together which emptied our savings. The rates also being high has pushed me to be close to paycheck to paycheck for our mortgage until I get a tenant in our rental unit in the house.
We have separate accounts and I have tried to break up our expenses based on our incomes to be fair. However, I have always needed to bail her out here and there, and she never really met any savings goals we put forward for her. This is an issue I have been aware of and hoping I could help her overcome so that 1. our family is financially better off 2. she develops her own healthy spending habits and 3. It relieves some of the pressure off of myself.
Then recently I discovered she had opened a line of credit to consolidate her CC debt. Then I learned actually this line of credit has existed for a while and with the CC debt and her existing debt shes up to 8k. At this point I’m worried she will get worse and drag the family down with her, and the lying and hiding bothers me. She gets defensive and says its her problem not mine.
tl;dr Wife hiding finances, my trust is being eroded. She needs financial literacy help but wont allow me to take some control over her until she learns.