'AITA for not telling my husband about my financial secret?' UPDATED

"AITA for not telling my husband about my financial secret?"

I (29F) have been married to my husband (30M) for 9 years. I am a stay-at-home mom with 4 beautiful children ( 8,6,4,2). My husband makes 150k+ a year but decides where every dollar and cent goes.

50% to day-to-day expenses, 25% to the children's education savings, 10% to family savings, 7.5% to his personal spending and 7.5% to my personal spending. Any bonus he makes or money back from taxes goes immediately into retirement. Doing it this way leaves us no money for vacations or big trips.

Since we got married and moved in with each other, I have been completely responsible for all the shopping, whether it is clothes, groceries, furniture or whatever else.

I learned very early on with the help of my mom how to coupon clip and how to use points cards to their maximum potential. I usually get 2 or 3 different reward points and save 10-25% per transaction I do. My husband only knew about the coupon clipping, not the rewards points.

For the past 5 years, I have been going on a 'Girl's trip' with my family, every year. I have been telling my husband that my sisters, sister-in-laws, mom and grandma have been paying for me to go since I can't afford it, but in reality...

I have been using the rewards points to pay for the ticket, using rewards to pay for our groceries and using my difference to pay off my credit cards so that I am able to go on the trip.

This year, my brothers, brother-in-laws, father and grandfather decided to do their own 'Boys trip' and invited my husband. My husband told them that unless they can help him as the girls help me, he would have to decline the invite. My brother responded to him with 'What do you mean? She says you pay for her to go'.

My husband confronted me about the situation and I confessed to him what I have been doing.

He was extremely hurt saying that with all these points, we could have done a lot more as a family, rather than just one person hoarding them all to themselves. And if I set him up with his own credit cards to get even more points, it would have been a lot easier for us to do big family vacations.

My entire family has been calling me selfish and a jerk for not being more open about the points but I feel that work very hard to get to the point levels I have gotten to and that making them more open for use would burn through them quickly and not allow them to be used for bigger things. AITA?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

johnnypasadena writes:

And by 'burn through them quickly and not allow them to be used for bigger things,' you mean used for things for somebody else and not just for you. YTA. You've been deceptive about this with him for years. You should also sit down and revisit his rigid budgeting numbers. I appreciate his frugality and his long-term planning, but nine years without a vacation? Yeah, no.

acacia988 writes:

I'm not saying she's not an asshole, because she absolutely is an asshole for lying, I'm saying even without her lying 150k for 4 kids, unless they live in San Francisco, is enough money to go on a camping trip for the weekend lol or a short weekend away at like...a local winery...while the grandparents look after the kids.

Even if they did live in San Francisco one weekend trip to Napa over a nine year period should absolutely be doable! Same with camping...you can camp for like $250 max, even with four kids, in many places in the US.

That sounds like an incredibly dull life to never have a break, never have a tiny vacation. The point is leaving aside the 'rewards money,' he sounds incredibly, incredibly uptight.

Yes, saving money for the kids education is important, but he can't rework the budget and say subtract a small percentage from the fun money and education for them to go on a camping trip (which can be a couple hundred bucks, at most, in many places) or a winery trip once or twice over the period of nearly a decade.

Later OP came back with these edits:

I wanted to clarify some things before I get to the actual update. Yes, married young. It is a common practice in my religion. We have known each other and have gone to the same church since we were 10. We "dated" while we were teenagers but always knew we wanted to marry each other.

He proposed to me the second he saw me after coming home from his mission and we got married 6 months later. This was exactly what I wanted.

My husband is not a^%&ve. While he does dictate how much we spend and on what, he doesn't even look at the accounts, except for maybe once every 3 months. Almost everything is automated. I know more about what goes on in that account than he does. He does not hold the money over me.

He is also one of the sweetest, most caring, loving individuals I have ever met. He regularly volunteers for the community and our church, helps out regularly around the house, makes sure to spend time with each of our children and makes sure I feel loved and wanted.

Me being a Stay at home mom is not "free childcare". I am taking the time to watch over my own children. They are as much mine as they are his. Saying it is "free childcare" would be like calling my husband a "free gardener" every time he mows the lawns or calling me a "free maid" every time I clean the house.

I agreed to the budget early on. It seemed like a good plan and we agree that it would change and grow as our family does and he moves on in his career.

Then OP added this update:

If I filtered all the "he is a^%$ve" posts out of the rating, it is clear that I am the jerk. I honestly don't know why I lied about it in the beginning, but I know I carried on the lie because of the shame and fear of disappointing or hurting him. When I found a way to go on these Girl's trips, I was proud of the fact that I was able to do it my own way. Which is why I got selfish with the points. This wasn't fair.

Last night I made my husband a cup of tea after the kids and we sat down and talked it out. I talked about my desire to see the world as he has (He went to Italy for his mission) and how I have only ever been to Utah and my own province before going on the Girl's trips (Most of which were a week in Mexico or on a Cruise).

He told me that he wishes that I included him in his plan as he includes me in his. He was hurt that I felt I had to hide the cards or how I am paying for these vacations. He also told me that next year his boss is planning to retire and he is the next in line for succession. The position would give him more vacation, a larger bonus and a 50,000/year pay increase.

They have just been talking about it this week and he was waiting for the weekend to tell me. He is happy with our budget the way it is, and with this pay increase, we could use the entirety of it for family vacations. With the addition of the points that he will now help me get, we could probably go on two big trips a year. This made me feel a lot better about the future

So this weekend (thanks to someone who posted that I could be doing better), we are modifying my points gathering, applying for some new cards for him and planning our first real vacation as a family for next year.

I cried when I read a lot of the posts, I felt a lot of shame for how I behaved but I also felt very sad that anyone could think my husband was ab*$%ve. Please ask for more clarification before jumping straight to the "He's ab#*&ve" "Leave him" or "Prepare for him to leave you". Not everyone is like that.