Forum topic: very frustrated with adhd husband, especially over money

Here's is what I do.  I pay the bills, and don't sweat it anymore.  I was so resistant to pay the bills and manage the money on my own before because I felt it shouldn't only be my responsibility, and I was right, but you can be correct to a fault.  Someone has to manage the money responsibly, and if that person is you, then that person is you.

I got a separate checking account, and twice a month, when he gets paid, and I get paid, the bills get paid out of my account.  We don't split them down the middle because he is on my health insurance and I don't take anything out of his paycheck for that, but I make sure we both have some spending money for the week after savings, fuel, groceries, donations, etc.

I'm telling you, it's so much better than waking up sick every night because you are afraid to lose everything.  Believe me girl, I was there, it ain't worth it.  Yes, we fight over money, but after 3 months of having everything paid on time, no late fees and having cash in his pocket, he doesn't push it too much.  And, if he does, I just quiz him about how much money is in the account, how much has he spent, how much was this bill and that bill.  After not being able to answer my questions, he lets it go.  I let him know when funds are low and he shouldn't spend, and I always invite him to help pay bills or simply tell him how much things cost.  He listens for the most part, but I think is pretty relieved not to have to have that pressure, and I am relieved that we are financially secure. 

Actually, this arrangement is more common than you might think, I work at a bank, so I see it a lot.  It seems pretty even across the board gender-wise also.  Our married clients always have one person who just more in tune with the  personal finances than the other.  Also, from personal experience working with folks in sales, they don't seem to be detail oriented unless it directly relates to the big picture.  They bring in the business and let operations crunch the numbers.  Sales folks are big picture people, even at a bank.  It's their assistants that add everything up and make sure it gets onto a power point or spreadsheet.

My husband has adhd, is on medication and sees psychiatrist and counselor.  Even with all of this help, he still struggles.  He doesn't think ahead, is disorganized and bad with practical matters, also.  Of course, I'm just the opposite, which does place me in the overwhelmed category.  My husband can be impulsive but this has improved somewhat after I put our financial crisis down on paper and showed him just how much debt we were in.  It was a tough time for him, he hit 50, spiraled into a midlife crisis, I hit him with the debt situation and he was diagnosed with depression and adhd.  My husband is into the stock market and can tell you just about anything you want to know about the stocks he has invested in and how each of them do on a daily basis as he watches the charts all day long.  Unfortunately, I have taken care of paying our bills, among other things, all of our married life (27 years), so I hesitate to just turn over everything to him, which I would love to do because I'm tired but feel this would overwhelm him even more.  He does help out now by getting online and paying the bills but I still keep track of when they are due, etc.  I find improvement is going to be a slow go.  I hope GOD gives me the patience to endure and I hope that is your case, too.       

I stay with my husband because no one on this planet will love and care for our son as much as we do and because we are genuinely are compatible in just about every way except for those functional things that everyone has to do regardless.  Who else is going to come home after a 10-12 hour day at work and play trains and read books with my son?  No one.  There is no one else that I can enjoy South Park, Nova, NPR, and radical leftist ideology with all at once on the planet.  After I got on my gardening kick, he got all excited with me and is looking into raising goats.  No one else really gets my desire to live on a sustainable farm somewhere in the wilderness with wireless internet and a satellite dish so we can keep up with our favorite sci-fi shows on fox.  I have never met someone with so much respect for women who isn't also a slight sycophant.  We're a smorgasbord.

Also, it's important to remember and recognize the small, incremental improvements.  He is about 60% better than he was before the therapy and medication, and he really does get better at it every day.

Taking over the bills isn't the same thing as parenting.  All it is is taking a sensible look at where your strengths lie and where his lie on an issue that is critical to your marriage.  The fact that he can do it at work doesn't mean that he can do it at home.  He has different support systems there, I suspect.  And, managing lots of accounts that big may well take a different skill set than paying small, boring bills.

NOT paying the bills, and the stress of thinking your spouse might not be paying attention to them is doing a lot more damage to your relationship than paying the bills would.  So while it would be more work for you to pay the bills, ultimately it sounds as if it would be better for your health and for your relationship.

That, of course, is a slippery slope.  You can't take over everything that he forgets or doesn't do, or you end up in a mess.  But I do make an exception for the financial side of things because lack of financial steadiness can take a marriage down in no time at all, particularly in these high-stress, uncertain times.  The trick will be figuring out a way to talk about it that doesn't create resentment on his side.

If it makes you feel any better, I pay the bills around here.  And it's a good thing, not because he pays late, but because his filing system is so disorganized that we would never know WHAT was going on if I didn't pay them.  Plus, he's only interested in the big bills, not the little ones, nor all the "coordination" stuff, like census forms, town requests, etc.