Money Matters

It kills me when Mr. P and I argue about money. I hate it. Mostly becauase so money matters lead to the demise of so many marriages and because we have such different views on money, we NEVER get anywhere. So here's what happened today. Back story - last August my cell phone stopped working. After I had my car accident in December Mr. P and I decided that I needed to get a new phone.
Last night Mr. P and I were going over our finances. We have recently had an increase in our monthly bills that we really weren't expecting. Mr. P's grace period on his student loans ran out so his payment went up from $28 a month, to $412! I NEVER thought it would go up that much, but I guess this is one that we should have been expecting. My co-pays for physical therapy are running us $280 a month, my co-pays for my RE and my ortho dr. is running us around $150 a month. Because we hadn't really planned for these expenses I determined that we needed to cut some areas on our budget like eating out and our month "free spend" money for a while. This didn't go over so well with Mr. P since he acts like eating out is his life!!
Fast forward to tonight. I was online when I noticed that verizon is about to release the new iphone 4. So in my excitement I scream for Mr. P to come in the room. I simply asked him to guess who was getting a new phone, and he replied "i'm not going to ruin your excitement by saying anything". I already knew what he was referring to, but I asked him to explain anyway. Of course, he doesn't see how me needing a phone and spending money on that is different from spending money on eating out. I get his point, I don't need an iphone, I just need a phone. But, it's time for our upgrade so we won't be paying full price, and we both determinded that I needed a phone prior to hearing that verizon was getting the iphone.

Honestly, I don't really care about the phone. If that's how he feels and if with our upgrade the iphone is still really expensive, I won't get it. This is what pissed me off.  Every time that Mr. P talks about my spendoing, he brings up the fact that I bought a LV dog carrier 4 years ago! He goes on and on about how it was living beyond my means and tonight he used the term "reckless"! Really?? I don't understand that at all. When I bought it, I had just returned from a year long deployment to Iraq. I had $0 credit card debt. My car was paid off, and I could have paid off my student loans but wanted to keep paying on them for a longer credit history. Making the payment didn't put me behind on any of my monthly bills, I still put the same amount in my savings account that month as I always did, and I still paid my rent.

It really pisses me off that he brings it up. Especially when he says dumb shit like "think of where we could have been" when he hasn't contributed to our savings account at all in the last 4 years!! What the fuck gives him the right to say anything? I have built our savings account up from the ground and he hasn't contributed at all, yet he feels like he can talk shit about a purchase I made four years ago?? Really!!