What kind of family did she come from? Did they always have money growing up? Did they always give her whatever she wanted?

Did they have money issues, and she always had to work to get what she wanted?

Somewhere in-between?

10/24/2011 2:12:37 PM

she is a debutante from a very well off southern family, and while she wasn't able to spend whatever she wanted, things like designer clothing and jewlery and things like that were always paid for.

my background is very different, grew up in the north from a family that started off very poor but worked their way to success. my mom started as a chemist at her company and has worked her way to the top and is currently interviewing for the CEO position.

we are fundamentally different in these respects, but were brought together by our love of similar music, food, travelling, political views, philosophies on life, etc. and i enjoy spending money at upscale restaurants and things like that just as she does, however i do so conscious of our budget. she is comfortable using credit cards for regular purchases and i am not.

on top of all this, she has some psychological issues she's been dealing with her whole life that make these habits even more challenging. that's as much as i'm going to say about that. to say the least, our cards are stacked against us.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 2:31 PM. Reason : s]

10/24/2011 2:31:09 PM

Really hoping it works out for you, man. I can't say I can relate, but we'd hate to see a marriage torn different directions because of money.

Just curious, have you ever approached this thing from the perspective of "Look, this thing could tear us apart. We both can splurge on things, so can we agree on a plan to limit both of our spending?" I guess I'm eluding to just trying to appeal to your relationship. Finances is usually the greatest cause of divorce, right? If that's the case, without "threatening" divorce, it might be useful to just state the reality of the situation and explain that you don't want that to happen. Even if you don't feel you spend unreasonably, it may be useful to sacrifice a little of your own spending in order to replenish your savings.

...maybe try setting a "benchmark" and agreeing to do something nice after you hit the benchmark.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 2:42 PM. Reason : added suggestion]

10/24/2011 2:39:45 PM

Quote :

"we'd hate to see a marriage torn different directions because of money."

And unfortunately, that's one of the top causes for divorce.

10/24/2011 2:42:50 PM

hope it works out for you.

i'm currently living with a girl with very different mindsets as well. she's always worked service industry and has no problem living week to week off of tips, saving nothing, and just going with the flow. i'm a conscious saver, full time job and benefit guy that tries to structure spending and buys himself very little other than a like to eat out.

and until she really decides she wants to change i'm scared to divulge exactly how much i make or how much i have saved. i'm scared she'll think that meeting her financial obligations to me (rent, utilities, food) aren't a big deal and i can just "cover it" until she gets around to paying. it's already slipped some and i've been forced to play landlord more than boyfriend at times.

10/24/2011 2:44:08 PM

If she's going to inherit, then no worries, man!

10/24/2011 3:01:47 PM

Most women have no sense of fiscal responsibility. Your only hope is to treat her like a child and dole out weekly stipends. Never let her forget, even for an instant, that you wear the pants.

10/24/2011 3:02:57 PM

I could spend money like crazy before I got down. Now I'm all: These shoes are okay, but they'll probably just hurt my feet.

10/24/2011 3:10:24 PM

if i may, let me just repeat what some other users have already stated that help my wife an i tremendously....GIVE EACH OTHER AN ALLOWANCE!!

now that i've stated that, there are still some sticky situations since our allowances are to be used for anything not deemed as "necessary". the problem is defining what is "necessary". originally my wife thought that $100 hair cuts with highlights, manicures and pedicures were necessary every month and should come from the joint account. i on the other hand told her that needed to come form her allowance. so now we have $15 each in the joint budget for hair cuts. if she wants to spend more it comes from her allowance. this is how we tackle other items...

clothes: we each get $400 in the spring and in the fall for clothes shopping. anything over that comes out of each spouses respective allowance.

eating out: we each other go dutch or sometimes we'll treat one another to dinner/lunch form our allowances. family outing with our son come from joint account.

financing: all items are to be bought with cash with exception to home and car. no credit cards!!

bills: all bills come form joint account

random expenses: random expenses like auto repairs, registration from, etc come from savings

everything else, and i mean everything, that isn't in the budget coming from the joint account or a random expense covered from savings comes out of one of our allowance accounts whether its a night out with the guys/girls or a snack and a soda from the convenience store. this has helped SOOOOOO much!! we used to fight over every little thing she wanted or i wanted. now with the allowance, we can't say shit about what the other spouse spends his or her allowance on.

(on a side note...now that my wife has her allowance she is stingy with it. since the hair cuts and manicures don't come form the joint account anymore she has started getting hair cuts at great clips, colors her own hair, does her own waxing, pedicure and manicures )

10/24/2011 5:16:41 PM

Quote :

"originally my wife thought that $100 hair cuts with highlights, manicures and pedicures were necessary every month and should come from the joint account."

10/24/2011 5:45:57 PM

Hahaha. I'd love to hear the reasoning behind a monthly salon treatment for one person coming out of the joint fund. And all these posts about having to go a joint account route for shared expenses and keeping separate spending allowance accounts just to keep someone within reason...

Quote :

"This thread makes me really appreciate my wife. "

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 7:00 PM. Reason : -]

10/24/2011 6:59:20 PM

Quote :

" which is massively untrue and I have the spreadsheets to prove it. But she won't listen to me which is why I was looking for a 3rd party."

I read to there and stopped. There is no hope for you now.

10/24/2011 7:02:01 PM

i'm just going to give my wife all my money and hope for the best

10/24/2011 7:24:23 PM

randomly i found a budgeting spreadsheet on a community forum at work after reading this

if anyone is interested i can email it to you just pm me your address

i dont personally use a spreadsheet, full disclosure

10/24/2011 7:45:14 PM

I feel you nchockey.

My fiancee actually has a bit of an inverse problem. She comes from a family of extreme penny pinchers, and constantly feels guilty that she can't contribute financially as much as I do in our relationship. So she will never buy anything new, or every buy what she really wants/needs. It's always half broken or worn out shit that she gets because it's cheap and she can "fix it up".

She also has a big compulsion with thrift shopping, and at times has had upward of 30-40 transactions a week at Goodwill (thank god they take returns here!).

Combine the two together, along with my own packrat nature, and we were starting to get overwhelmed with shitty stuff that didn't really work and neither of us ever used. It's been VERY frustrating, because her compulsion for buying stuff (like mine) is stress triggered and is also tied to her self-doubt / lack of self-confidence.

I tried everything to try and mediate/force/change her habits for the better, but ultimately what has started working has been getting to the root of the issue (self-doubt and guilt about not contributing financially). Whenever we talk about how much "stuff" we have and how the house is dirty, I just come back to "You say this stuff makes you happy, so why are we arguing about the mess?".

In the past week we have taken multiple carloads of stuff to Goodwill, and it's been good for me too, to really weed out the things I don't need. We've probably reduced our total possessions by close to 40%.

It has really been amazing to see her realizing that "stuff" doesn't make her happy, and that she is actually much more happy with the open space left behind. And that one NICE thing that she really wants is better than 20 crappy things that were a "good deal".

This change happened because she wanted to make it though. The more I pushed the more she pushed back. I'm super proud of her

10/24/2011 7:58:40 PM

My wife and I, for the past five years, have been spread-sheet budgeting.

We Dave Ramsey it:

------------Income (I)
Pmt--------Expense
Method----Description
Auto-------Giving - Navs
Auto-------Ins - Car/Home
Auto-------Ut - GoDaddy
Auto-------Cell Phone
Check------Rent
Auto--------Ut - Phone & Internet
Auto--------Ut - Electricity
Auto--------Ut - Water
Auto--------Retirement
Xfr----------Savings
-------------Food
-------------Toiletries
-------------Gas/Oil
-------------Eat Out F
-------------Eat Out A
-------------Entertainment
-------------Babysitting
-------------Boys Clothes
-------------Adam
-------------Deb
-------------Hair
-------------Cosmetics
-------------Miscellaneous
-------------Mail/Postage
-------------Expenses (E)
-------------I - E (left at EOM)

Figure out how much we need each week, and take that amount out and envelope it. We go to the bank and remove the money out in denominations so, for example, if we used $50/week for gas, we'd take out a $50 and stick in a GAS envelope.

The things that are "Auto" are budgeted, but they are e-paid.

Again, it's pretty simple, has worked for us, was difficult to get used to, but has been invaluable to us in figuring out where our money goes and how to spend it wisely.

10/24/2011 8:28:09 PM

Noen, it sounds like your fiancee is not familiar with the phrase, "Buy it nice, or buy it twice."

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 8:46 PM. Reason : ]

10/24/2011 8:45:48 PM

I would call my husband an EXTREME saver and me a splurge spender.

I graduated college with no debt, but I had a brand new car with no savings. (I have since changed my behavior).

Early in our marriage at the end of Dec. we set goals for the next year. (Maybe just out of reasonable reach)

Put x into our 401k
Save 8K for a Europe trip
Put x into savings
Pay x off our house
X upgrade to our house
Buy a new car...save X

There were maybe 8-10 large items.


We basically set the amount to one of our salaries (with no bonus). The first year we went through the check book, credit card, bank statement and wrote out the list of monthly spending......

gas
mortgages
insurance
HOAs
electric
water
etc.

Now we update the amount each year. Then we made a spreadsheet of our goals versus our bills. (How much we owe vs. Net worth) The killer is every Friday after work we go over it together to make sure we are on target and agree. In the beginning it sucked and took forever. Now it is 15 min and we end up paying the bills that come in. I don't feel like it "adjusted" my spending, but instead it totally excites me when we pay off one of the goals. I feel like we are in a team. I do splurge on getting my nails done, etc. My husband doesn't freak out if I spend money. We have talk before purchasing anything above $250.

I wish you and her luck.

I have known a lot of people that have split it up into multiple accounts and there have been serious hard feelings. I don't think there is a right way that will work for everyone and in our premarital counseling we learned that money was the number one reason for divorce. So it is really good you are trying to rectify this now.

10/24/2011 9:05:13 PM

Quote :

"That's basically because you're right, their job is to try and sell you something or have you invest through them, not set your budget up."

yes, that's what cpa's do... try to sell you something or invest through them...

10/24/2011 9:34:06 PM

you said earlier that she spent most of your savings in the last couple of months.


From someone who has seen this happened to older friends and much older couples, this would indicate that the wife is trying to hide something and her way of coping is to spend a lot of money. I would hire a private investigator since if you ask her straight up what she is hiding she is going to lie straight up.

Again, I'm not sure if this is normal behavior for her, but since you said that in the last couple of months she's spent a lot more than she usually does then I would be very suspicious.

[Edited on October 24, 2011 at 9:47 PM. Reason : x]

10/24/2011 9:46:48 PM

Quote :

"We had shared accounst and are now splitting up our finances in hopes that it'll help her get a better understanding of our finances."

Yep, I'd def maintain totally separate finances.

Also, screw budgeting in the sense most people are talking about. Determine what you need to save and invest, have it auto-drafted on payday, and treat the rest as fair game for spending.

10/25/2011 12:13:32 AM

^ lol that is exactly what i do

auto pay everything including my savings. i also do a massive contrib to my 401k so by about this time i'm maxed out and i start getting more of my paycheck since my savings goal has been met. that helps with holidays and vacations (which i tend to take more of at the end of the year)

and have fun with whatever is left. this sometimes leads to having < $20 in the checking account at the end of the month before i get paid (i get paid monthly not bi weekly or even weekly) but i know all my bills are paid and im meeting my savings goals. its good though because it makes me feel that "oh shit i have no money" crunch at the end of the month, even if it's superficial it still freaks me out

10/25/2011 12:39:52 AM

i still typically don't spend it all...but I like to know that if I do, it's all cool and I don't have to feel even slightly guilty.

I also have an account separate from retirement accounts (IRA and conventional brokerage acct) that is my "hookers & blow" or "money I just haven't gotten around to pissing away...yet" account. That's pretty much to force myself to have frivolous fun, guilt-free, without feeling like I'm impacting my retirement savings (as in, I essentially cap my long-term saving and refuse to put away any more). I'm always inclined to horde away money in that, too, but it's more of a mindset of "you never know when you might want to make a huge cash purchase on some ridiculous stuff"

that said, there's also an element of "in the next 2-3 years, I will leave the USMC and there's no guarantee of a job awaiting me on day 1", and an element of "I am going to get 50% custody of my daughter, no matter how many tens of thousands of dollars it takes in legal expenses."

[Edited on October 25, 2011 at 1:09 AM. Reason : ]

10/25/2011 1:08:51 AM

Quote :

""originally my wife thought that $100 hair cuts with highlights, manicures and pedicures were necessary every month and should come from the joint account.""

yeah...she was trying to convince me that this is considered "normal routine maintenance" and this is what most of her girlfriends do

i said...Great Clips...fifteen dolla!!

10/25/2011 2:13:45 PM

I do $50 every three-four months for hair. And $20 for a pedicure 4 times a year. These don't come out of my blow money, but are part of the "health and hygiene" budget. I think appearance upkeep is a necessity to a certain extent and within a certain budget.

10/25/2011 2:16:59 PM

I do high-and-tights for free.

10/25/2011 2:28:58 PM

Quote :

"These don't come out of my blow money"

10/25/2011 2:33:00 PM

I've been calling it that for YEARS (got it from Dave Ramsey), and not ONCE did it cross my mind that it'd be like calling it money for hookers and blow... I wonder if that's where Mr. Ramsey got it.

10/25/2011 2:34:38 PM

This should def be brought up in counseling. If you make the analogy of dog operating the dvr then there's no benefit from hiring someone to put together a financial plan. You could probably check a money message board for support/additional options. I used to frequent MSN's money board but most of the group has broken off to form

http://notmsnmoney.proboards.com/

GL!

10/25/2011 4:20:20 PM