Breadwinner husbands with SAHM wives: would you loop her in before taking on six figures in debt for an investment? Where’s the line between managing finances and abusing your role?
For the men here who are the primary financial decision-maker in the marriage, with a wife who’s home with the kids (or in my case working as a teacher but my income goes straight into the kid’s tuition) — I’m curious how you think about big financial moves, and whether my husband’s approach is normal for this kind of setup or crosses a line.
Back story is we’re Married 15 years, 5 kids. My husband wanted me home homeschooling from the start, which I did for about a decade. A few years ago I went back to work as a teacher, but the deal was my paycheck goes entirely to tuition (he insists on Christian private school for the kids — so I bring home nothing — and he manages everything else: mortgage, debt, investments. That’s worked for us for 15 years and I’ve been fine with it. He’s not a micromanager with my spending or anything and I grew up poor so I’ve always been very grateful for the life he’s provided.
Recently he asked me to sign for a 300k HELOC (I’m on the deed) for an investment he had planned. I was hesitant but agreed, partly because he had built up around $300k in Bitcoin over the years and I figured he’d earned some right to risk it. He said if it went south he’d sell the BTC to cover it. However soon after when MSTY started to drop and I confronted him about when he would unwind. I found that he’d also borrowed roughly $250k more against that Bitcoin to buy more of this ETF — without running it by me. I only found out because I started asking questions, and he brought it up casually, like it was no big deal. The investment has since continued to drop hard.
So — for the guys who run point on finances: is it normal in your marriage to make a six-figure leveraged bet without discussing it with your wife first, given she’s not bringing in outside income? Or would you consider that a breach of trust regardless of who “handles” the money? Where do you draw the line between “this is my domain” and “this affects both of us so I owe her a conversation first”?
Not trying to build a case against him. But I’d like to understand how guys in this exact dynamic think about it because my husband claims this is normal and I only ever grew up in a poor family, single mom household. So these kinds of things were never problems I envisioned dealing with. I just want to protect our assets like our home but don’t know how to except by appealing to him.