What is it with the partners/spouses and their inability to manage finances??!!! And then have the audacity to complain about it and blame others for their deficiencies?

I didn't want to hijack Dtzy's blog, but this has been rearing its ugly head in my relationship lately and I HATE HATE HATE it. My marriage broke up mostly due to finances....my ex was unemployed for the majority of our marriage (got fired 2 weeks before we got married, so should have seen the writing on the wall then!!) and would have bankrupted us had I not kicked his ass out and divorced him.

My SO makes about 50% more than I do, but has made some extremely poor financial decisions that has him in the hole with the IRS and a credit score less than 500. Now of course, having primary custody of 3 kids puts his expenses MUCH higher than mine (no kids), but it's still ridiculous how much money troubles he has with how high a salary he makes.

My mother died last year and I received a nice inheritance. I can't retire or anything, but if I play my cards right, I should be in a very comfortable financial situation from here on out.

SO and I got into a blowout last weekend. First fight we've had in a long time. Bear with me, it's long.

SO is a total DIY kind of guy and I have asked him to help with a few things around my house that needed to be installed or fixed.
It took over a year to get him to put up my bathroom cabinet.
It took 3 weeks for him to install the dishwasher. To be fair, the dishwasher thing was delayed because I was out of town twice, then he had some stuff come up with work and the kids....so it took a while.

He seemed a little butt-hurt that I didn't ask him to install my kitchen cabinets and countertop.....HE installed HIS in one weekend!!! I was told this about 100 times. I hired a contractor and I'm glad I did. My house is crooked and everything that involves plumbing or electric work causes more problems. I have no doubts that I would still be waiting on the cabinets to be finished if SO was doing it.

He is all hurt that I won't "let" him redo my deck. HE installed HIS deck in one week!!!! I did point out that he took a week off of work for it and I didn't want to wait 3 months of weekends to get the deck done!!!! And how in the heck am I going to get rid of all of the wood from the old deck? A contractor takes all that stuff away! But I am a fool, apparently, cuz I could save at least $500 if SO did it!

Then he gave me a hard time for purchasing a $200 piece of artwork at the art fair. It was an artist that had been there last year and I really liked his stuff and promised myself I would buy one if he was back this year. Holy cow, you'd have thought I just bought a Rembrandt or something, the way he was going on about it. HE could MAKE something JUST LIKE I BOUGHT for only $50 or something like that.

The final straw was the tile for the backsplash in the kitchen. I had been to several hardware stores and could not find anything that I liked that wouldn't cost a fortune. I was expecting to pay about $150 just for the tile. We went to a specialty tile store, and I found one I liked that was about $350. SO went on and on about how much of a waste of money it was and did I really think that paying that much for a backsplash was going to increase the value of my house.....blah blah blah.
Well that was it, I flipped. Told him that it was NOT his business how much I paid for what and I wanted that tile because I LIKED IT and wasn't thinking about the house value and FOR CRYING OUT LOUD it was an extra $200, not $2000. I told him I was not going to apologize or feel bad for having money. I also told him that I was going to keep him out of any of my future house stuff since he was being so snotty about it. I said that I was getting some very resentful vibes from him ever since Mom died and I started getting more money and I was tired of it.

He said something about "being wasteful" and then I said, "Well, maybe I should cancel the kids' summer camp and cancel the boat for SD17's birthday since it's all SO WASTEFUL."
He was brat about it the rest of the night and was all sulky and butt-hurty.

He has been doing some major sweetness and sucking up since then so at some point he must have done a cranial-rectomy and realized what a douche canoe he was being.

I've been trying not to sound like I'm bragging or "rubbing it in" about the money stuff, but now I am going on RADIO SILENCE.
Oh, and he had NO PROBLEM with me buying dinner and our movie tickets the other night! No snide remarks about "being wasteful" then!

If the situation was reversed, I'm sure I would have a few envious thoughts of "I wish I had that money", but then I would just sit back and enjoy the ride! SO with money is a pretty nice thing to have if you can't have money yourself!

And it's not like I'm Donald Trump for crying out loud. Friggin idiots, can't you just enjoy what you have and quit yer bitchin??!!!