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birb_cromble  11hr ago (text post)   144 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-06-13

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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How do you balance FIRE with not wanting to be a miserable tightwad? Most specifically interested in if anyone has thoughts on that in context of marriage + children + income gap (let's say 4 me:1 her). A particular potential (pun intended) Mrs. Lagrangian likes travel and activities more than I do and I have trouble thinking about that, especially in context of the income asymmetry.

My plan is to aim for 85% of my income. In an "expensive" year, I usually spend about 50%, so it seems like a decent aim. If I don't use it all, I'll leave it to my partner.

We didn't have an income gap but that would have been irrelevant because it was all our money.

We were mostly on the same page with child costs. I am the cheap one but I wasn't going to deny my kid art or music lessons when she wanted them even though my husband could have covered the art and I could have covered the music. My husband would have let her redo her wardrobe at every whim through teenage years but was fine when I said no, she needed to make do and augment. Or get a job.

We were not on the same page with saving until we had several years of marriage under our belts. My husband would joke when we got married we both thought we were broke. Me because I only had a few thousand in savings (had sped run through paying off student loans) and him because he couldn't get the last few cents from his bank acct through the ATM (anything he could get out he spent on Magic cards or computer games). So for every "frivolous" thing he wanted we would save an equal amount. Did that until he realized saving was beneficial, and there was enough stashed to feel like "real money" to him. It helped that we held off on kids for the first decade of marriage, so even though I am a tightwad the dink life is pretty sweet.

Why are you thinking about income asymmetry? Do you keep separate finances?

You are supposed to pick a standard of living and develop your long-term budget accordingly. The subreddit's standard terms are "leanFIRE" for being a "miserable tightwad" and "fatFIRE" or "chubbyFIRE" for living large.

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