Spenders vs. Savers

[lobster1022]

If you are the opposite of your H/BF/partner, how do you deal with the difference in financial mentality in your marriage?

I am a saver and my H is a spender. His inability to stick to a budget is driving me crazy!

Anybody else deal with this?

[dawnyp]

We have a joint account and personal accounts. 50% of our salaries go into each. We can do whatever we want with the money in our personal accounts. The money in the joint account is allocated for household bills, savings, joint entertainment etc. I spend some of my personal money and save some of it.

[bunch]

I am the saver and I control the budget. I say, "hey, h! We're poor! You can't buy anything!" And he doesn't. Because he's scared because he has zero clue (as in couldn't guess with in 10k) how much money we have.


and then he steals my ipad mid post and writes you guys messages - "I have a secret. I have a penis!"

Yay H.

[lobster1022]

Did you ever have any trouble getting your H to agree to separate accounts and a joint account for bills?

My H has been burned by letting his partner take control of the money before, so he is still very uneasy in letting me handle the money.

[bunch]

No, but I've always done it. I've been in charge of our finances since he moved out of his college dorm room at 19 :/

[rex]

Maybe think of it less as having control and more as managing.

With my H, I just manage the money because I'm good at it and he isn't. If he was good at it and I wasn't, then he would manage it.

No one is controlling anything. He still is a part of the discussion of what we do with our money. I do reign him in on spending by saying "We can't buy that because…" but he also can see everything (I have it all in google docs) so he knows what's going on.

[lobster1022]

"Managing" instead of "controlling".
That might work. It's the point I'm trying to get across, but so far it hasn't worked.

Thanks!

[dawnyp]

We both have access to the joint account and we jointly manage it. We know what bills are due, when they get paid, etc. We manage our personal money however we want. We determined how much needed to go into the joint account each month to pay the mortgage, groceries, bills, entertainment plus how much we wanted to save each month. As h isn't a saver we wrote down a list of everything we want to do in the next 2 years in terms of travel, home repairs, emergency fund etc to determine how much should be saved. If no money was saved that meant no travel, etc.

[chessie]

Oct 10, 2012 19:58:28 GMT -5 bunch said:

I am the saver and I control the budget. I say, "hey, h! We're poor! You can't buy anything!" And he doesn't. Because he's scared because he has zero clue (as in couldn't guess with in 10k) how much money we have.

Pretty much how it works in my HH. Both of our incomes go into an account, DH has no clue about how we save, what we pay, etc..He asks what we have, or if he can get X if its a big ticket thing. Just the little comment, we are short, he is like nevermind..