Money and relationships can be a really difficult road to navigate. At some point, ideally, you guys should have conversations about money and likely should combine finances (obviously this is different for every couple). But when that conversation comes up can be hard to figure out and can lead to hurt feelings.
Take u/treetop-octopus, for example. He recently got into it with his girlfriend about money.
“I (29m) recently got into an argument with my girlfriend (28f) about money.”
He explains that a few years ago, he received a decent chunk of change. It’s not enough to consider him “wealthy” by any means.
About 2 years ago, I received a large inheritance from a wealthy aunt. Honestly, we weren’t very close, and I wasn’t really expecting to get anything. She left behind a couple million worth in assets, and most of that went to her kids. I was surprised to find out that she left me $50,000 (each of my siblings and cousins got the same amount).
When I got the money, I used most of it to pay off the rest of my student loans. Next, I bought a new computer and put the rest towards retirement.
He just invested a lot of it, paid loans off, and bought a computer. Really nothing to write home about. But the girlfriend recently found out about it and wanted to know why it was kept a secret.
Recently, my girlfiend was hanging out with one of my female cousins when she heard about the money we all got. This triggered an argument the next time we saw each other about why I was keeping this a secret from her and why I never offered to use it to help her with her own debt.
I told her that it wasn’t really a secret; it was just something I never really felt a need to talk about. I got the money, and used most of it immediately. There was nothing really left to talk about.
OP explains that there really wasn’t much left to do anything with, so he couldn’t have used it to help her. She insisted and OP rightfully was absolutely boggled by the idea.
She was upset at that, saying that I should have talked about it with her first and that the money could have really helped her back then.
I was kind of baffled because when I got the inheritance, we’d only been seeing each other for a couple months. Way too early for that kind of financial entanglement.
He explained again that the money was gone or in a retirement account and couldn’t be taken out. They kept arguing, she kept insisting there was more.
She got even more upset and said that I should use some of it for her now, but I once again told her the money was basically gone. All that’s left is in a retirement account, and I’m not touching that.
We argued back and forth some more, and I got the sense she didn’t quite believe me about the money and thought that I had more left than I said I did. Nothing I could say would convince her otherwise.
The GF lost her mind and went to stay with her sister. This argument has not ceased. So OP is confused: is he in the wrong?
All I could do was emphasize that everything left from the inheritance was in a retirement account that I would not touch. She called me selfish and left to stay with her sister.
We’ve been in a sort of cold war for about a week and I can’t help wonder if I did something wrong. AITA?
What is this girl thinking? The poor dude. Also, bless all their hearts for thinking $50k is going to catapult them to “wealth.”
Bless this Redditor for pointing out that, “50k isn’t even alot, ofc it’s gone after a few years.”
“NTA because it’s your money, and also pretty funny that $50,000 is considered ‘wealth’. It’s absolutely a game changer for someone living paycheck to paycheck, but when you said wealth, I figured you were hiding a couple hundred grand from your partner, not a windfall that has already been spent,” said another member of the community.
