A stay at home mother said she is urgently trying to figure out whether her marriage has crossed into financial abuse after her husband, who earns what she described as an above average salary, reportedly controls nearly all of the family’s money while pressuring her to cut spending even further. What seems to have pushed her to the edge was a recent conversation in which he questioned how she was using the small amount of cash she has access to, even though she says she spends virtually nothing on herself.
According to the mother, she has been home with the couple’s two young children, one 21 months old and one 6 months old, while her husband works. She said he puts 50 percent of his salary into stocks each month, while the rest goes toward bills and savings. On top of that, the family reportedly receives around 600 euros in cash each month from her father in law, and that cash is what she uses for groceries and everyday costs. She described it as the only money she personally has access to.
She said she does technically have a Visa card from her husband, but explained that she almost never uses it for herself and only uses it for the children when necessary. Her own personal spending, by her account, is almost nonexistent. She said she buys only basic hygiene items for herself, while using the cash for groceries, baby needs, and household basics. Meanwhile, she noted that her husband does spend on his own habits, including about 200 euros a month on cigarettes, along with additional money for drinking at home several nights a week.
The situation came to a head when her husband asked whether she had taken some of the cash money. She said she told him yes, for groceries, and was then caught off guard when he said they needed to start saving some of that cash for fun weekend trips and events. That response left her confused, especially because she already felt she was stretching the money as far as possible and denying herself almost everything. She said she could not figure out whether what was happening counted as financial abuse or whether she somehow needed to cut back even more.
As she shared more details, the situation appeared even more troubling. When someone asked whether she avoided spending because she wanted to or because he made her feel guilty, she admitted it was “a bit of both.” She said he has sometimes accused her of seeing him as “an ATM,” despite the fact that she says she does not spend large amounts on herself at all. That comment seemed to deepen her confusion, making her question her own judgment even while she was already living on a razor-thin budget.
She also revealed that she is living in Japan, her husband’s home country, while she is originally from Belgium. Between pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum recovery, limited Japanese language ability, and not having built a career there beforehand, she said she felt effectively forced into becoming a stay at home mother. More alarming still, she said she does not have access to her husband’s bank account and that he even took away her own Japanese bank card because government child benefit money was being paid into it.
That detail appeared to shift the story from a budgeting disagreement into something much more serious. She said she has no real resources of her own and feels urgency to work as soon as possible, but also believes childcare would cost more than she could currently earn given her limited language skills. In other words, she seems to be trapped in the exact kind of dependence that makes financial control so dangerous: isolated in a foreign country, caring for two very young children, without independent income, without full access to the family’s accounts, and without a clear way to quickly support herself if things worsen.
Even then, she seemed hesitant to label her husband entirely in harsh terms. She said he is a good dad and a good husband overall, but admitted that the financial situation worries her because he appears to be becoming “more and more” controlling about money while she remains at home with the children. That tension is part of what makes stories like this so unsettling. Financial abuse does not always arrive with one dramatic moment. Sometimes it grows slowly through restricted access, guilt, dependence, and one partner holding all the power while the other is left asking whether basic needs are somehow too much to ask for.
What stands out most is that this mother was not asking how to spend more. She was asking how to spend even less, despite already saying she buys nothing for herself beyond hygiene products and uses the limited cash mainly for food and baby supplies. That alone says a lot about how narrow her margin has become. When a person with no independent access to family money feels pressured to save grocery cash while the wage-earning spouse controls the accounts, decides where the money goes, and removes access to a bank card tied to child benefits, it is easy to see why alarm bells were going off.
For now, the biggest issue may be that she no longer seems to have financial visibility, financial freedom, or financial safety. And once those begin to disappear, what looks like “budgeting” from the outside can feel very different inside the marriage.
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