I never let my husband near the family money – and no woman should

“I need a new pair of shoes,” my husband says hesitantly, as we engage in our tender nightly ritual of watching 30 Rock reruns while doomscrolling on our phones at opposite ends of the sofa. “Mine have holes in.”

“Let me see,” I snap. He lifts his feet to show me. “Alright,” I sigh. “You can go to M&S tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“Just go gentler on them this time,” I reply.

And that, my friends, is how our family finances work. I’m about to write a monograph on it and send it to Nicola Sturgeon, though I appreciate it might be a tad too late.

The revelations about her recently (not to say carefully or expediently) estranged husband Peter Murrell are mind-boggling. He has pleaded guilty to embezzling (the fun word for “stealing”) £400,000 from the Scottish National Party over a 12-year period while he was chief executive.

The incomplete list of items he has admitted to buying with the stolen (very stolen) money include multiple games consoles, multiple luxury coffee machines, multiple luxury watches, multiple Berghaus jackets and Gant shirts, jewellery, cosmetics, a Dyson hairdryer (Murrell is bald, so this may be the ne plus ultra of luxury items), a luxury motorhome he stored on his mother’s driveway and a pair of Lalique salt and pepper grinders for around £2,600. And a £110 Caran d’Ache pencil sharpener but then, who hasn’t?

The whole mess only confirms my belief that men should not be allowed near – well, anything really, beginning with women and children, but definitely coming in a strong third place is money. And especially money that has anything to do with the family. They cannot control themselves, and they don’t really see why they should have to. And then the fallout hits everyone. I hesitate to say “including people usually far less deserving than Nicola Sturgeon” so I shall say, “including people who usually elicit far more sympathy far more naturally for their plight than Nicola Sturgeon does”.

Men, as a class, are selfish. I daresay women would be too if we were the group who had been raised since time immemorial to believe that we are the physical, spiritual and intellectual standard from which all other beings deviate, if we were the sex around whose assumed superiority entire cultures and religions have been built and served to shore up – but we’re not. Let the record show, however, that I am very willing to take part in any reality show that wants to give us our heads for a generation and see how corrupt and sybaritic we can get in the time allowed. That’s an experiment I’m up for.

Men’s innate selfishness – or inherent self-centredness created by a patriarchal society if you are feeling terribly generous, and good on you if you are – is, in essence, the reason independent MP Eleanor Rathbone campaigned for over 25 years to have child benefit (then the family allowance) paid directly to mothers. She knew that this was the best – not foolproof, but best – way to ensure that it helped the family as a whole and not just one member of it.

It is a conviction whose truth has been proved time and time again by charities. The generally accepted figure (aggregating various successful distribution schemes) is that in the developing world, women reinvest 90 per cent of their income back into their families and local communities compared to men’s 30 to 40 per cent of theirs. Women prioritise spending on household nutrition, clean water and preventative healthcare. In times of crisis, giving money and aid to women rather than men stabilises households much more quickly.

But the myth persists that money and control of family finances should be the province of men. It is still, in the year of our Lord 2026, considered their terrain – just because until a few short generations ago they were the only ones allowed to earn the stuff. Or rather, the only ones officially allowed to earn the stuff. Women, of course, have always worked in the grey economy, for cash, unprotected by laws or safety regulations. And when they did move into “proper” paid work, they were both paid less and expected to hand it straight over to their fathers or husbands. The former practice remains prevalent, the latter still exists here and more commonly in developing countries.

The ultimate truth is that you should never give entitled people more stuff to be entitled about. You should never hand powerful people more power. You should always seek to lessen it, and redress any immediate imbalances you can see. The distribution of money is the most tangible way of doing this, and it has the additional benefit of creating actual, measurable results. I’m not saying men should all be required to live in a way that demands they ask permission to buy a new pair of shoes. I’m just saying that if they were, we would all literally and figuratively be a lot better off.