A woman has sparked outrage after revealing that her ex-boyfriend used an Excel sheet to keep track of everything that she owed him money for, including a banana that she ate at his mother’s house.
In a video posted to TikTok last month, Maddy, @maddyblythe, recalled how her ex-boyfriend used an Excel sheet to track their finances. She told her followers about an incident where she and her boyfriend bought his mother dinner, as they were staying at her house at the time. She also noted how she ate breakfast one morning at the home.
She explained that even though her and her ex-boyfriend had used Excel sheets to document their spending, there was one thing on it, after their trip to his mother’s, that didn’t make sense to her.
“A few days later I got an email from my boyfriend that had an Excel in it,” she said. “The Excel document was all our shared expenses from the trip, which is fine. That’s how we normally did things. But I did notice there was one line in the Excel document that I was kind of confused about. And the line just said: ‘breakfast for $3.23.’”
Maddy said that when she asked her ex-boyfriend about this charge, he looked at her “deadpan” and said it was “for the banana and piece of toast that [she] ate” at his mother’s house.
She noted that she was confused by this charge, before recalling how her ex had told her that she “ate that,” so she owed him and his mother money.
The TikTok user emphasised how shocked she was by this experience, adding: “This man was deada** trying to charge me for a banana and a piece of Wonder Bread. And I paid it. I gave him the $3.23”
In a follow-up video, Maddy clarified that she would “not stand” for this behaviour when dating now and shared what “one of the month Excel sheets” from her ex would look like.
She went on to showcase the sheet, where a majority of the text in it was highlighted yellow. Some of the charges were for Ubers, groceries, dinners, and pastries, with listed prices ranging from five to 35 dollars.
Maddy went on to share more details about the sheet, explaining: “As you can see, he was nice enough to colour code it. That was great. And at the bottom of this, I think it got cut out, would be like the totals of everything that I owed.”
She then shared screenshots of the emails she sent to her ex-boyfriend regarding how much money they owed each other.
“And then we had some very corporate sounding emails back and forth,” she continued. “He said: ‘Let me know if there are adjustments, see notes beside expenses.”
She also acknowledged that the highlighted yellow expenses were to be split by the two of them.
Maddy then recited her response to her ex’s email by explaining some of the maths she did to determine how much she owed him, after she already covered him for other expenses.
As of 15 December, Maddy’s two videos have more than 4m views, with TikTok users in the comments criticising her ex and expressing their shock over his Excel sheets.
“For anyone who does not know, this is all a huge red flag,” one wrote.
“Splitting major (bills, groceries, vacations, etc) expenses while living together is completely reasonable for two working adults,” another added. “But asking you to pay for a banana & a toast at his mom’s is super weird.”
A third person said: “This is CRAZY. I would hate to live like this. I can barely remember my expenses each day, much less to do this.”
Other viewers said that they’ve also been in relationships where their ex-partners used Excel sheets.
“My ex who made 5x my salary also made Excel sheets like this,” another wrote. I was a [clown].”
“Lmao girl stop, my ex had these spreadsheets too,” another added. “Not to make me pay him back, just to let me know how much money he was spending on me.”
In a third video, Maddy responded to a viewer who asked her how her ex-boyfriend even brought these Excel sheets up. Although she said that there was “never a big discussion” about it, he did ask her if they could start splitting the price of things.
“If he were to bring over a bottle of wine on date night, he would ask me for six dollars for that, which I know that’s weird,” she said. “It just got to the point where there were so many expenses juggling our both of our heads that he was like: ‘Oh this is easier if I write it down.’”
She said that since they were both working a lot, he decided to send their expenses to her over “an email,” which “gradually turned into” an Excel sheet document.
Maddy emphasised that the Excel sheets happened over “a course of a couple years”, throughout their relationship, so it “wasn’t that shocking”.
The Independent has contacted Maddy for comment.
