If we agreed on personal spending money, should I question my partner's $220 headphones?
Money"They came out of my own pot," my partner said when I asked whether we really needed new headphones.
We each keep $150 a month for personal spending after our agreed household contributions. Unspent money rolls over. He'd saved for two months before buying the $220 pair, and the household account has received everything we agreed to put in it.
I'm saving my allowance for a camera, so I haven't bought much lately. Seeing the headphone box made me ask whether the money would have been better kept for something we both use. He replied that the point of separate spending money was not having to defend a choice I wouldn't make.
I think he's right about our agreement. I also realised I'd quietly begun to view my unspent allowance as evidence that I was contributing more restraint to the household. We haven't actually agreed on a shared goal that either of us is neglecting.
Would you apologise and leave the purchase alone, or use this to revisit the allowance arrangement? I want to raise any real concern without converting his saved personal money into ours whenever he spends it.