First off.....marriage is a total commitment & a total combining of the money, not yours & his......what you need to do is pool your money into one account & it gets mixed together so there is none of this yours & mine.....THEN.....

You both sit down at the beginning of each month & budget out ALL your expenses including savings.....YOU BOTH SIT DOWN TOGETHER & DO THIS. His input & yours on setting up the budget. The bills get paid out of the joint account that is ALL YOUR COMBINED MONEY. That way you don't make him feel like there is a separation of money to start with.....there are good budgeting programs on the internet if you aren't familiar with doing something like that. I know my monthly income, I know my expenses & I have savings that I put away each month for annual expenses & for projects (like your house). Your monthly income is all the money that both of you bring in & the budget & the payments come out of that, not this you pay one month, he pays the next.

Next, if you really want him to give his opinion, then what you have to do is have a meeting together when there is something that needs to be discussed.....sort of a round table meeting & since he jumps at letting you have your opinion....you can refuse to have an opinion until he states his thoughts.....once he states his thoughts then you can state yours if they are different & then if there is a difference you can sit there & work through the pro's & con's of each different opinion to come up with the best solution....sometimes it's not even a his or yours, it's a combination that ends up being a compromise.

I know at the end of my marriage, my H who was horrible at financial issues in the first place, wouldn't tell me what money we had to work with when I was no longer at a place where I could deal with it....I had bailed us out of the mess he first got us into & at the end, it would have just been him resetting the budget to not have my income but to have my much lower amount of disability....but he was afraid to say no to things.....maybe he thought it would make my depression worse....but in reality, it was a test to whether he had what it took to really take care of the family when I wasn't able for those years....& he failed miserably....even though I had worked with him on every step of what I did to get us out of the mess he made....but after I left him I came to the realization that there really is a reason for his poor behavior in the marriage & the lack of communication & the lack of emotional connection.....but that's a different book.

To be honest, we fought constantly in our marriage because of serious personality issues I had with him & the inabilities he had that I thought he was just being irritating about. He would say he would do something then never do it. I thought passive aggressive but in reality later on I came to realize that he didn't even understand what he was asked to do (& it wasn't a foreign language issue either even though it felt like it most of the time).

It sounds like you have a very kind & loving H who seriously wants to please you.....but you have to let him know that what pleases you the most is for both of you to work together & plan together & pool thoughts so that the marriage is a complete PARTNERSHIP on all sides. Tell him what you have told us here.....& make sure you don't say it subtly....spell it out specifically just like you did here & tell him how it makes you feel when you don't get his input on planning the future for both of you together....& what pressure it puts on you to be the one that makes all the decisions without his input & thoughts that might actually be better than what you have come up with. Each of us has limited ways of looking at things based on our own past experiences & learning.....so that's what's wonderful about a marriage, it's the pooling of both people's ideas so that the best solution can be planned.