Dear Eric: My husband and I, both happily retired with good pensions and Social Security, make our weekly grocery trips together. We take turns paying with our flight-points credit cards. Once the bill arrives, we split the cost of our groceries down the middle, sharing the expenses equally for everything we purchase at our preferred grocery store.
Our grocery shopping typically includes a few low-cost personal favorites that not both of us enjoy eating, but for the sake of simplicity, we have agreed to split the grocery costs evenly, 50/50.
My husband sometimes indulges in a piece of costly, extra-smoked pork he orders online from a specialty shop. I dislike it (the smell alone is off-putting to me), so I don’t eat it. He insists that I should also share the cost of this, based on our agreement to split the cost of groceries. However, since it’s a special order for himself, I don’t believe I should be responsible for half the cost, which he thinks is unfair and disloyal to our agreement. I find it unreasonable to pay for something that’s ordered outside our normal grocery purchases, that is pricier than our usual groceries and that I won’t consume. Who is being unreasonable here?
—Grocery Grousing
Dear Grocery: Probably both of you, and the shop that is pricing the pork. I think your husband is being more unreasonable than you, frankly, because you made an agreement. But this is so needlessly complicated, it’s amazing that it didn’t become an issue earlier.
Is all food groceries or is only food purchased inside the grocery store groceries? What if you buy Girl Scout cookies on the curb outside the store?
Most importantly, what is this really about?
Do you feel that you’re being more fiscally responsible and don’t have the same opportunity for indulgences? If so, it’s wise to carve out two separate lines in the budget for indulgences—one for you, one for him. If he blows all his budget on one or two pork purchases and you still have yours to do with whatever you want, thems the breaks.
But, again, think and talk about what is really going on here. Is this about feeling financial insecurity? Is this about an unequal share of household responsibilities? Is the pork a reflection of a pattern of cavalier behavior? All of these can be worked on and discussed. But to do so you have to get to the meat of the problem.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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