The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm having marriage financial woes.
I come from a family of misers, my wife comes from a family which is nearing the bottom of the stairs with their silken slippers. Before we merged our finances, I was always wondering why she was never able to save, and introducing budgeting soon told me why. Our budgeting is virtual, which is to say we assign transactions to categories and there's nothing technically preventing one of us from overspending on a category. We still have our separate bank accounts.
Out combined income is about 175k (65% me). We each get a "personal" category which is funded by $1000 per month. This funds clothes, going out without the other person, gadgets, sports gear, whatever we want. To me, $1000 is overkill. I read other couples' budgets online and $250 is more typical. I save most of mine.
She managed to get into the negatives pretty quickly with hers. We kept on making exceptions for why we could recategorise her purchases, but soon she was -$1500. Eventually I agreed we would reset the balance, as long as she didn't overspend again. At half-way through July she was at $800 spent.
It's really having an impact on our marriage. She feels really bad about it, but can't seem to keep it under control. It's building resentment in me. We've still got a decent savings rate, but we're trying for kids at the moment, and we would go backwards financially if we had a child now. It's not just the personal fund, she consistently buys more expensive stuff in other categories. Even assuming perpetual DINK status, I'm pretty sure I would save more money being single.
She thinks she's doing well, and points out that her family would consider her a miser. I think even I'm doing poorly, and my family would consider me to be wasteful with my money.
I see frugality as a virtue, she sees it as a preference. She feels massive social pressure to not look poor. I'm quite happy to tell my colleagues that I can't afford to go to lunch with them.
She's not a feminist by any means, but does have a strong aversion to feeling controlled in any way, so I'm hesitant to suggest I have greater control over her finances.
Any ideas?
It sounds like, while doing quite well yourselves financially, she's surrounded by even wealthier family and friends. She feels a bit self conscious about this.
Do you as a couple have any less wealthy friends you could spend more time with? Or at least friends and relatives who aren't exerting social pressure on her to overspend?
This is especially important when/if you have kids. Are these friends/family going to be making her feel bad about only putting her kids in an ordinary charter or private or decent public school when theirs are in boarding schools where they each have their own horse or something?
Personally, I have two little kids, and am a working mom. Several of my friends are stay at home moms who like to organize activities on weekday mornings, and like to talk about aesthetic mothering and homeschooling and "morning baskets" or things like that. This is not something I can participate in very often, or I'll feel angry and jealous. Why are they making aesthetically pleasing morning baskets with their friends on Wednesday mornings, and I'm working a regular job?
The solution is, honestly, to focus on different friends, or at least in different contexts. In my case, it's important to me to talk with different people, who are not all raising goats and looking orderly. In your wife's case, if she's serious about her family, it might look like emphasizing some friendships with people who wear clothing from chain stores, pack their own lunches, and send their kids to public school. Does she have any friends like that?
We moved here relatively recently and are both struggling to fit in socially. I'm less affected because I just go and do my hobbies; she has suggested that the isolation is contributing to her spending. We have a few friends now who also don't seem to be spending large, and that helps. However, she spends time with some girls in the city occasionally. A lot of these are single and waiting for a man with a house and a car to sweep them off their feet, and in the meantime not too concerned about saving money.
But on the whole it's her family and upbringing. She comes from old money that is on its last legs.
I take your point on the whole though. I think it's something we/I can focus on, finding friends who are also more future-focused and frugal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link