Financial 'gaslighting'?

[11JB68]

As we were doing our weekly bookkeeping (yes, with uOCPDh this is a weekly chore and has been for over30 years)....he's talking about taking some money from our equity line to pay ds last semester of college (I'm not opposed to this)...but it reminded me that I think the last car we bought we used equity line money. Again, I'm not opposed to that, I think the rate was lower than a car loan. But it reminded me that he gets so self righteous about giving other people financial advice...recently criticising our good friends for leasing their vehicles, stating that we always pay cash for our cars and only buy what we can afford. Not entirely true...last car used equity money, car before that his dad gave us much of the money...
Also, he's looking at his p&l for his biz so far this year and labeling it 'good' (he literally has a chart on thewall with $ amounts and rankings-ok, good, very good, etc (see ocpd traits:ranking and ordering)...despite the fact that the amount he's making is equal to just over min wage if he worked full time...
Ugh.
He convinces himself and for a long time managed to convince me that he is a financial genius.

[Poison Ivy]

My ex also thought he was a financial genius (I don't know if he still does).  Among the things he did during our marriage:  1) suggested we not pay taxes on his income; 2) suggested our daughters intentionally default on their student loans; 3) was ready to pay back thousands of dollars in unemployment benefits that the state and his former employer claimed he was not entitled to; 4) agreed to be paid in cash by his father so they could keep the transactions under the table.

Here's what I did: 1) took over filling out the tax returns and did report his income; 2) offered our daughters the gift of us paying back their student loans and then repaid them with money from the home equity line of credit, which had a very low interest rate compared to their student loans; 3) convinced H to hire a lawyer, who won his case, so that he owed only a few hundred dollars for the benefits and $1,000-$2,000 for the lawyer, versus $14,000 for the benefit repayment; 4) decided that the continued payments in cash were the last straw in our marriage, after I asked H more than once to be paid by check, and then I filed for divorce.

H hasn't filed a tax return in the three years since our divorce.  He probably would have owed only a few thousand dollars, if that, but now, because he didn't file at all, the state "guessed" what he owes and added a fee and interest onto that. THe amount is almost $9,000.  Genius!   

[11JB68]

Ugh, today at uOCPDfil's house the topic of leasing cars came up. Uocpdh of course went off on his tangent again about how much smarter 'we' (he) are than others because we don't lease, we buy what we can afford.
He brought up his conversation with his friend and said something that seemed like at the time his friend said, Oh well that's because you have money (1. We don't, 2. UPDh was going around telling people we had 'too much money'...because he hoards money and won't spend it -so I wonder if he made this comment to our friend, which really bothers me)...
I was not participating in this conversation, but uPDh kept bringing me into it, at one point I said that a large % of people do lease cars (I actually work in a business where I see this)... He kept going and eventually I had to medium chill and find a reason to leave the room as I was getting agitated and did not want to get in an argument with him over it.
Meanwhile, it was updfil who gave us most of the money for one of our recent cars...so either he didn't want to argue either, or uPDh is so convincing that he even convinced his dad that he's a financial genius.

[notrightinthehead]

Well done for MC and leaving the room instead of getting aggravated and giving him an opportunity to vent on you. I have so often been amazed how little people see through such boasts. But maybe they do and just mc naturally.