One More Reason Not To Give Up Your Purse-strings
Like so many of you I’m here watching Grey’s Anatomy and it’s absolutely one of my favorite shows of the season. One scene that stood out to me was where a wife was faced with finding out why her health insurance would expire at midnight, but her husband was in need of emergency surgery. In addition to that, all the credit cards were canceled! Her response when Bailey told her she needed to call the insurance company?
Watch this:
What do you think? Should she have just let her husband only keep an eye on all the important paperwork or should she keep up with this information as well? It turns out that he’d lost his job, been having an affair with her best friend and she usually let’s him take care of all the important “stuff”. So she had no idea what was going on.
Lesson here?
Ladies, please make sure that you know what’s going on with your health insurance policies, life insurance, financial statements and retirement accounts. Oh and in her case, a good divorce lawyer, then again she forgave him, but Ginger, not so much. (Aside: Before you light up my inbox about the virtues of forgiveness, he was going to leave her high and dry with no health insurance or money if he hadnt been in that accident! hmmph!)
Anyhoo, what are your thoughts? Are you giving up the purse-strings in your relationship? I have no problem with a man managing the “important stuff” in a relationship, my issue is with the woman not knowing anything about the day to day issues that may come up. My thoughts are that if she had access and interest around this information she would have known way before this accident that her health insurance would expire and that the credit cards have been canceled.
I think that both parties should always be in the know.
One person always ends up more “in charge” of financial matters, but both should be fully aware of what you have, what you owe, and what insurance and protection you are afforded – and how to use it/access it!
But regarding the clip I find it hard to believe she had NO IDEA what kind of insurance they had or how to call them. Um, does she not have an insurance card? And does she never check the mail? Did she not notice the “past due” notices piling up and the creditors calling about the delinquint cards?
Anyway, I do have quite a few clients whose wives totally won’t even answer the phone or talk about their accounts (I’m a banker). I actually had a woman last week tell me “my husband handles all the finances” and instruct me to call him at work about their account. She didn’t even care that I was calling because they were 30 days past due on their mortgage! She sounded happy and content.
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I believe she would have been clueless. I remember an episode of Oprah where a woman’s husband killed himself. However it wasn’t until after the death that she learned that he canceled his life insurance three months prior and drained all their accounts. He made good and sure the she and their four children would be ruined emotionally and financially. Suze Orman was on the show trying to give her advice on how to financially recover from that. I wonder how she and her family are doing now.
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My husband would be the more clueless one in our case. He’s not quite as out of the loop as that woman, though! I strive to keep him up-to-date and informed about our money regularly.
Kristen@TheFrugalGirl’s last blog post..Happy sigh. I love mail days like this!
I pay the bills, check monthly statements and quarterly statements and maintain the files. He makes the money.