Are your spouses on board?

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-28-2005
Are your spouses on board?
7
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 3:04pm

In theory, both H and I want to get rid of our debt (not only "want"-alot of it is taxes and legal stuff), start a savings (retirement, adoption, college, 2nd car), and pay down our mortgage.

Neither of us are good at budgeting. Have been working on that, but it is hard...changing your way of thinking. We have been better consumers.

However, we're not on the same page alot. Part of it is H has a good job, and feels "entitled" to certain things. Part of it could be that he feels I'm imposing my values on him (I believe that as a consumer, how I spend my dollar makes a political statement), which I try to identify and NOT do.

Okay, I do waste my share of money. But in recent years, have tried very hard to reign it in, successful much of the time. H will, for example, buy coffee every day. And probably a few coffees a day. For awhile our coffeemaker was broken, maybe we're broke and don't have a can of coffee, maybe he's running late and didn't get to turn the pot on (he got a programable pot for christmas), or (finally) maybe he's carpooling with someone who's LDS and doesn't want to bring coffee with him in the car.

Another thing is food. We BOTH like good food! I think a few times a week we can have grilled cheese, soup, tuna. H does not like that. H wants dinner- with some kind of meat as the base. I know that we spend more on groceries than alot of our neighbors. However, we don't order pizza as often as they do-or as often as we used to, maybe 1 or 2x a month.

Writing this out, it sounds kinda petty, but it all adds up. Wondering if this is a source of conflict for others?

Avatar for cl_phocid
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 3:36pm

HI there - I wanted to tell you that this is not petty at all.

All my best,
Danni

Avatar for endomagazine
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-09-2004
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 5:00pm

Hello,

I understand the need to eat "real food". My husband likes to have some meat for dinner but will accept veggies on the side. He will eat salads if turkey or ham is diced and spread on top. I've found that Dream Dinners has helped our budget immensely. You purchase 12 meals for roughly $200, then head to the store to assemble all 12 dinners in a few hours. All of the ingredients are purchased and ready for you there. You fill up a cooler with ziplock baggies / aluminum containers that are ready to pop in the freezer until you need them. Since each dinner includes 4-6 servings, sometimes we have leftovers I can bring for lunch the next day. I can pull 3 dinners from the freezer each week, which helps me plan our food budget.

Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke

Got Dot? Why Not? It PAYS!
http://www.website.ws/runsamok/show

Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke

Geeks on Tap: Mission Accomplished

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 7:18pm

I think it would be very unusual NOT to have at least some of this sort of conflict. No matter how compatible two people are, they nearly always conflict on priorities one place or another. I don't know ANYONE personally who doesn't sometimes complain about disagreements over money. And statistics show that financial disagreements are the number one cause, by far, of divorce.

In our family, it has historically been the case that I am better (and tighter) with money, and dh is worse with it. But there are some things that he's better about and I'm worse. For instance, I love to splurge on birthdays and Christmas. He is better at reigning it in and saying, "Hey, he has a bucket full of dinosaurs--does he really need one more bag of them??" LOL

I'm also bad about fast food on the run. I don't do it terribly often, but more than dh, who will just suffer until we get home (unless I'm in the car and suggest fast food, in which case he usually acquiesces! LOL). Oh, I'm also bad about overspending at the grocery store. I see that a favorite fruit is on sale (love Asian persimmons, also called sharon fruit; and mangos; and papaya; expensive stuff), and I have to stock up. It's good for us, right? Never mind that I could buy bananas for 79 cents a pound (organic), and apples at the farmer's market for 69 cents a pound--I've got to have kiwi and pineapple! LOL

Dh is bad about electronics, and eating out with friends, and computer games and gadgets and what-not. With him, it's not so much impulse buying (as it is with me), as it is that he just doesn't keep track and ends up spending more than he thought he had. So, if he has $50 to spend, he plans it all out and spends $50--except he may have forgotten to account for taxes or shipping, and so he spends more than that amount and has to borrow money from elsewhere to cover the distance. Then he won't wait and "pay back" the borrowed money, but will do the same thing the next time.

So, anyway, these things have been a source of conflict on both ends, but mostly we try to just realize that we each have different priorities, and to forgive and try to get better.

It does help that we *both* realize our own weaknesses and are *both* working on it.

Gotta run finish dinner. Blessings,

Heather

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 8:11pm


Have you had an opportunity to show your husband what groceries cost? Or what your utilities cost each month? What is going in and going out?

The reason I ask is that my husband used to always splurge on big-ticket items and when I sat there baffled, looking at him like he was out of his mind, he'd say, "Hey, that's why they pay me the big bucks!". Well, sure, he earns a good salary....but we also have a mortgage and a car payment and credit and loans and also money being deducted for retirement funds that we can't put our fingers on to help reduce our debt.

What helped me was to take my husband grocery shopping a few times. When he saw the total at the register for all the things he just "had to have", his eyes nearly jumped out of his head. We got to the car and he looked over the receipt saying, "Did she ring something up twice??"

Over time, he learned that things cost a lot, and he know budgets well with me for the most part.

Pat

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-20-2005
Thu, 12-29-2005 - 10:25pm

Two things...

To the OP, I don't think anything you've pointed out is petty at all. DH and I have this conversation every 3 or 4 months it feels like! He, like your DH, makes a good salary and feels "entitled" to the little treats of eating out for lunch at work, or grabbing a Starbucks or whatever on the way in. I tried and tried, over and over again, to get him on board with trying to brown bag it at least a few days per week, but it would only last a week or two. Then, I started using Microsoft Money to manage the finances, and gave him a little wake up call. Once I got going on categorizing the spending and such, I was able to lay it out right in front of him, exactly what we were spending on eating out. It was sickening. In one month alone, the amount was over 400.00 on EATING OUT! Unreal. (Mind you, I did categorize coffee stops in with that, but still..) Since then, he's been better about it, at least more mindful if not 100% on board. He still goes out from time to time, but it isn't every day anymore, so it's a start. Maybe if you can lay it out, in black and white, what the spending is, he could start to make a more conscious effort.

To Lindsey, I am so glad you mentioned the "dream dinner" thing! My friend is having a private party in January and I was really on the fence about it, since the 200.00 seemed like a lot of money, but the more I thought about it, it did make sense to do it. DH was giving me an indifferent response when I asked him what he thought about it (at first he said it was a waste) but I guess it was nice to hear a little affirmation from an impartial party!!! :0)

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Avatar for siriele
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-15-2003
Fri, 12-30-2005 - 12:51am
No we are definately not. When we were engaged we went to DA meetings and paid down our debt. But while I openly vent and feel guilty about overspending ect. DH is sneky about it and gets packages shipped to his work, or thinks I dont notice new electronic junk around the house. And while to him my spending is wasteful, his spending is an "investment". His idea of saving money is cut out everything I want. Ugh!.... Iris
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2005
Fri, 12-30-2005 - 1:32am

I am with you!!!

I have my splurges.... but DH seems to spend a ton more on his splurges! (I totaled up nearly $300 in withdrawals from the ATM in October - and I NEVER use the ATM!!!!) He also goes to McDonald's a lot now that they accept credit cards (our check card). Five or six dollars at McDonald's a couple times a week, on top of occassional ATM withdrawals adds up FAST! Sometimes over $50/week!!!

And we have "date night" fairly regularly. I am SO HAPPY to go to a coffee shop with him for a few hours, chatting and playing Scrabble or whatever (about $10), but he has to go out to eat ($25-$40). Again, that adds up!!!

And as he is the breadwinner, I have a hard time telling him NO. Especially since I tend to benefit from a lot of his spending. It is hard to say NO to someone offering to take you out to eat! Or buy you chocolates to share! :-) Shoot, he is even talking about taking a vacation to Mexico this summer!!!!!!!!!! (Our FAVORITE place!)

I just keep plugging away at the debt as best I can, and occassionaly try to remind him that buying a portable DVD player is not important enough to spend the money on until we get more of the debt under control. hee hee

Good luck to you!! (P.S. Maybe you could buy him a gift card to the coffee shop he frequents for a set dollar amount each month, and ask him to use it wisely and not spend money on coffee once that amount is spent...?)

~Aravis~

 

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