hazy_reflection | "Money...has been on my mind..."

I seriously hate money. Yes, I realise it's necessary in this world to get certain things and I'm especially appreciative of it because it helped me get myself to where I am at this point in my life... But it's created this very unique problem between me and my husband.

He is always very adamant about me being able to have access to it. I have my own bank account and I have a bank card, but the financial system in Australia is a teeny tiny bit different than it is back home. Back in CA, you either had an ATM card or you had a debit/credit card attached to your bank account. An ATM only gave you access to your account to directly withdraw money from an ATM or the bank. A debit/credit card is essentially a credit card yadda yadda yadda. Here you get a cash card or a debit/credit card. A cash card works like an ATM card, but with a twist. You can swipe it anywhere that has EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point Of Sale...or something) access providing it's a place to buy things and not on-line. That's almost everywhere here. So anywhere we can go I can use my own earnings from my own card. But if I do anything on-line, I have to use John's card. He's fine with this as long as I'm not buying heaps of crap and not telling him and depleting his bank account. Which I don't do. I'm not a huge spender but there are certain things I really want sometimes and I always tell him if I want to do it. We generally do not have a problem with money. We're married. We understand that my money is his and his is mine and we're very open about things we want to buy. He wants xBox games. I want Wii games. We both want Diablo 3 and Halo 4. He tells me if he needs to spend $600 on something for the house. He keeps me updated on mortgage rates. These are things we understand.

He's also very generous with his money when it comes to his family, I've known this since before I even moved out to Australia. He's learned a bit...his older brother has borrowed close to $8k from him and he's not seen a penny of it back yet... And his younger sister has never borrowed money from him but she asked him to buy her things here and there, and he did. So he doesn't just give out money to his siblings anymore. His parents, however, are a completely different matter. They're not poor, but sometimes they get in a financial jam and John's usually the one who helps them out. No problem with this. I understand things happen and we know they're good to pay him back for it. That was me with my family. I was always the one living paycheck to paycheck and never had enough in the reserve if something big came up. I never borrowed more than $100 at a time though and I always paid it back as soon as I got my next paycheck in. John's sister just recently turned 21 which is a big deal here. It's when they're really looked upon as adults, among other things. His parents wanted to get her a car for her birthday and didn't have the cash to shell out for it. John pretty much offered to help them out by loaning them the money to buy it. It was pretty much EVERYTHING he had in his savings account.

The thing that really bothered me though is that he didn't even discuss it with me beforehand. No mention that maybe this was happening, no "Hey, what do you think about helping the family out?" And then the week after it happened he told me randomly in a conversation that he had loaned his parents $3.5k to buy his sister a car. I don't have a problem with this. It's a big deal and I know his parents are able and willing to pay it all off in time. If he had come to me at the beginning and said that he wanted to help them I would have been all kinds of happy to do it. It's the lack of conversation that bothered me. Nothing. So I told him that it bothered me. Kinda had to since I was apparently giving him the silent treatment after he said he'd done it. I do that sometimes. Not very mature, I know, but it will often happen when I'm not even trying to do it. You just go quiet, y'know? So I talk he listens and it's all ironed out apparently.

I've recently joined the hordes in getting an iPhone. I don't really know why. I think I just wanted to be able to say I had one. No one texts me. No one calls me. I have no friends here and most of my friends back home can't afford to keep up International text conversations with me. It was stupid to begin with, especially seeing as how my Facebook app infatuations are bad enough. So I've gotten hooked on two apps, Glee Karaoke (because I'm a gleek like that) and Magic Piano because I miss my piano like whoa. The apps themselves didn't cost anything, I made sure to only download free apps. It's the in-app purchases that get me. Buying all the songs, which in itself didn't even cost that much considering it was only like $40 between the two apps. And that's just barely telling myself that NO I DON'T NEED THEM! =( I miss my piano so much. But I totally forgot to tell John that I bought them even though I REMINDED myself not to forget and to give him the money for the purchases. And he got all pissy with me because I didn't tell him! He got all upset because apparently I think I'm allowed to just buy iPhone app things without talking to him but he's not allowed to lend out $3.5k to his family without talking to me...

I'm just really frustrated over this whole thing. Am I being that unreasonable?

I hate money.