What financial abuse looks like in real life—and why I couldn’t see it for 20 years
“That’s not a thing.”
Those were my exact words when my friend told me my husband was financially abusive. We were eight years into my marriage, and I laughed at her. Not because I disagreed with her assessment of my situation, but because I genuinely didn’t believe financial abuse existed.
I had no framework or concept of what financial abuse was. I thought my husband was just unlucky or bad with money. I had no idea that what was happening in my own home—the chaos, the shame, the constant scrambling—was a textbook case of financial terrorism.
It would take me twelve more years to understand what my friend saw so clearly.
Here’s what financial abuse actually looked like in my marriage, and why it took me so long to recognize it.
The Grocery Store Humiliation
Picture this: You check your bank account before going to the store. You have money. You fill your cart with groceries your family needs. You get to the checkout counter, and your card is declined.
This happened to me repeatedly during the months before my husband’s first deployment. I would check our account, see we had money, do the shopping, and by the time I reached the register—sometimes just 30 minutes later—the money was gone.
Where did it go? Stormtrooper outfits. Star Wars collectibles. Video games. Things he bought on impulse while I was buying groceries for our children.
I started carrying cash and checking the account multiple times during shopping trips. I felt paranoid and embarrassed. I’m certain the checkout clerks started recognizing me as “that woman whose card gets declined.”
This wasn’t an accident. This wasn’t poor money management. This was financial abuse.
The Bill Catastrophe
When my husband deployed to Iraq, I discovered he had simply stopped paying bills three months earlier. Car insurance, utilities, credit cards—just stopped. Without telling me.
While I was on a budget so tight I was taking our family to food pantries, while our children needed shoes we couldn’t afford, while I stopped purchasing basic necessities for myself to make sure they had enough—he was spending our bill money on his hobbies.
I had to get an emergency loan just to avoid losing our car insurance. I scrambled to catch up on payments I didn’t even know were overdue. I absorbed the consequences of his financial irresponsibility while he was gone, and when he came back, I handed him control of the finances again.
Because that’s what good wives do, right? They fix the problems and trust their husbands to do better.
The Pattern That Took Years to See
What I couldn’t recognize then was the systematic nature of financial abuse:
The Sabotage: He would create financial crises through secret spending, unpaid bills, or payday loans—then leave me to manage the aftermath.
The Isolation: The shame of our financial chaos made me stop talking to friends about money. When two older Army wives I highly respected tried to tell me this wasn’t normal, I got uncomfortable and changed the subject.
The Control: Every major decision was made unilaterally. New truck purchased without discussion. Expensive scuba gear bought while our children needed shoes.
The Gaslighting: When I discovered unknown bills in my name, I was told to “fight it” because someone must have stolen my identity. (It was him.) I was made to believe I was forgetful, paranoid, or “bad with money.”
The Compensation: Big expensive gifts on holidays and birthdays. These weren’t expressions of love—they were payments to keep me from leaving.
The Credit Card Revelation
Twelve years after my friend tried to warn me, I discovered my husband had opened a credit card in my name and maxed it out. When the company sued me, he told me to fight it because someone had clearly stolen my identity.
I figured out it was him five days before court—right before our 20th wedding anniversary.
When I confronted him, something shifted in his face. A mask fell away. In that moment, I realized he knew exactly what he had been doing all along. Every “accident,” every “mistake,” every financial crisis—it was all deliberate.
That’s when I finally understood what my friend had tried to tell me twelve years earlier.
What Financial Abuse Really Looks Like
Financial abuse isn’t always dramatic. It’s often subtle, systemic, and designed to make you feel crazy. Did you know that financial abuse affects nearly 99% of domestic violence cases?
Here are the signs I wish I had recognized:
- Secret spending while you live on a restricted budget
- Bills going unpaid without your knowledge, leaving you to manage the consequences
- Major purchases made without discussion or consent
- Your money disappearing from accounts you both access
- Credit opened in your name without permission
- Being blamed for financial problems you didn’t create
- Feeling ashamed to discuss money with friends or family
- Constant financial crises that somehow always become your responsibility to solve
- Having to ask permission for basic purchases while your spouse spends freely
- Your career being sabotaged to increase your financial dependence
- Running up large amounts of debt on joint accounts
- Refusing to work or contribute to the family income
- Withholding funds for you or children to obtain basic needs such as food and medicine
- Hiding assets from you
The Military Wife Factor
Military spouses face unique vulnerabilities. Deployments create perfect opportunities for financial abuse—your spouse controls the finances from thousands of miles away while you manage the household consequences.
The military community’s emphasis on loyalty and supporting your spouse can make it harder to recognize abuse. When your husband is serving his country, questioning his decisions feels unsupportive and unpatriotic.
The constant moving also isolates you from support systems and makes it harder to establish your own career or financial independence.
Why I Couldn’t See It
Financial abuse is designed to be invisible. The abuser maintains plausible deniability (“I forgot to pay that bill”), creates chaos that looks like poor money management, and makes the victim feel responsible for fixing the problems.
I couldn’t see it because:
- I had no framework for understanding that financial abuse was real
- I never imagined my husband wasn’t my partner—that we weren’t in this together
- I believed wives should trust their husbands with money
- I thought “abuse” only meant physical violence
- I felt ashamed of our financial struggles and hid them from friends
- He was the military member—he convinced me he knew better about finances
- I kept hoping each crisis was the last one
- I blamed myself for not being better at budgeting
The Cost of Not Recognizing It
Financial abuse isn’t just about money. It’s about power and control. It destroys your sense of reality, isolates you from support systems, and keeps you trapped in an abusive relationship.
The longer it continues, the more damage it does to your credit, your career prospects, your mental health, and your ability to leave. I spent years repairing the financial damage from his decisions—damage that made it harder for me to support myself and my children when I finally did leave. The fear of financial instability can keep you trapped long after you recognize the abuse, but finding peace with difficult decisions sometimes means choosing safety over financial security (and let’s be honest, the situation you are in isn’t offering you financial security anyway).
What I Want You to Know
If any of this sounds familiar, please know: This is not normal marital conflict about money. This is abuse.
You are not crazy. You are not bad with money. You are not paranoid for checking accounts multiple times.
Your spouse’s financial irresponsibility is not your responsibility to fix.
A marriage should feel like a partnership, not a hostage situation where you’re constantly cleaning up someone else’s messes while being blamed for the chaos.
For the Women Reading This
Trust your instincts. If your finances feel chaotic and you can’t figure out why, if you’re constantly surprised by money problems, if you feel ashamed to talk about money with friends—start documenting. Take screenshots of account balances. Keep records of bills and payments.
And please, please listen to friends like mine. Sometimes the people who love us can see what we cannot.
Financial abuse is real. It’s devastating. And it’s more common than we want to admit.
But here’s what I learned: Recognizing it is the first step to reclaiming your life. Taking action requires courage, and sometimes we need to choose faith over the fear of what might happen if we speak up or leave.
If you’re experiencing financial abuse, you’re not alone. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) has resources specifically for financial abuse. For comprehensive tools and information, visit the NNEDV Financial Abuse Toolkit. Your safety—financial and otherwise—matters.