His life strategy when things didn't work out was pretend everything was fine. Then when everything failed, he would just blame someone else. He was incredibly intelligent, sadly he just didn't know how to properly use it. The dumbest genius I ever got the chance to meet.
He was 38yo when we broke off. Never had a lease to his name, never had a loan to his name (before the truck). Never lived alone once in his life (always with girlfriends, or his mom). He always drove old junkers he paid cash for, and once a year he went to his insurer office (his insurer was also his uncle) and paid his car insurance cash. The day his uncle retired, my ex was in a panic, not knowing how he could insure his car.
He got his first computer and email address at 34yo, when he tried to start a business. Ended up in bankruptcy 14 months later because he didn't believed in things called "sale taxes" and "income taxes", or even "registering a business". Nor did he believed in the importance of "balancing books" and "making regular payments to your suppliers". He was the kind of guy that said "The government cannot make me pay taxes if they don't know I have a business".
He got his first cellphone at 36yo, when I said fuck it after yet another time we spent hours playing telephone tag to find him to let him know his grandmother got taken to the ER. Bought him an brand new phone and put him on my plan because he never paid the plan I had registered him for in the first place.
He was paid once a week, on Friday. He would get off work early each Friday, drive all the way to the bank and cash out his check at the teller window. When his boss switched to automatic deposit, he didn't had choice to finally get an debit card, at the tender age of 37yo. The only thing he managed to do with his debit card was walk to the bank, go to the teller, and withdraw his paycheck. He would then gave the stack of cash to me and tell me to deal with it.
The whole concept of credit card was foreign to him. The first time he went bankrupt (before meeting me) was because someone talked him into getting a high limit credit card. He used that as free money, and never made a payment.