When your partner is crap with money….
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Welcome to Group Therapy where someone gets to tap into the collective wisdom of the genius Mamamia community. Today, it’s a question about love, marriage and cash and what happens when you clash…
Anon writes….
What do you do when, in a marriage or relationship, the person who is the “breadwinner” is awful with money, and the person who earns nothing is excellent at money management and budgeting?
We have been together for 6 years and my husband has never been good with money. He has never saved. And he has the attitude of “If you want something just buy it”. He was brought up with parents who didn’t so much spoil him as help him out when he needed it. Unfortunately, that has bred someone who has no financial responsibility. I was brought up with parents who said “if you want something you work for it, we aren’t giving you anything” and for that I am totally grateful. But as you can imagine, these two clashing attitudes create huge problems, especially when it’s the one that’s good with money that isn’t earning any!
Apparently we share a goal of owning a house, but I don’t see how that can happen when the one that earns the money can’t save, and the one that can has no money. We have a shared bank account, and I put it to my husband that I was better at managing finances than he was, and that, as a trial, he let me pay the bills for 6 months, just to see how I go. Well, in that 6 months I saved much more than he ever has, proving the fact that he has no control when it comes to spending. But now, thanks to gigantic dental bills of his (not his fault, fair enough) we now have no savings left.
The fact that I am married to someone who is so bad with money actually makes me want to cry. I don’t want to live in this tiny little weatherboard house with 2 adults, 2 kids and a dog for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live in this pokey suburb with absolutely NOTHING for me to do around here, for the rest of my life. And the idea that this looks like it won’t happen, at least not until we are both working full time, makes me miserable.
I originally never wanted to own a house, preferring to rent and save that money to travel, and quite happy to do that for the rest of my life (please no one lecture me about stability etc for children, because I had every intention of providing stability for them), but I put that dream aside to share the home-owning one with my husband. Only now it looks like neither of them will happen.
How does one deal with this? We tried counseling briefly before we married, because I knew this was going to be one of our major issues, but nothing was really resolved.
And before anyone lectures me about knowing this before we got married, and still marrying him, money has never been a reason for me to marry/not marry someone. I can think of far worse things that could happen. I guess I just hoped that his money attitude would mature along with the increase in financial responsibilities of having two kids etc. But it just hasn’t. It puts a huge strain on our relationship, and I just don’t know how to deal with it any more.
I should add, as an aside, that I love my husband with all my heart, and in every other way he is wonderful, and we have a great relationship. I’m not bitching about him, I just want some advice on how others in my position have handled it.
Over to you guys…..
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Oh my goodness, didn’t this hit a chord with me! I am going through a similar dilemma at the moment, but just a bit worse
I was previously married and my husband was terrible with money. Because I am a budgeting queen, we sat down together and worked out a really good budget with our pooled income, making sure we budgeted in enough to have a weekend away every now and then and a dinner out – and also some “play” money each week. If we went through our play money, there was no more until next week, and that way we had to lay-by or save for things we wanted, but it was fun.
Even on fairly low incomes we bought a house and then investemet properties and had overseas holidays. Knowing where we stood each week was the key. Unfortunately that marriage eventually did end…
The man I am with now, I knew was on a very high executive income, and having children was important to us both (or so I thought) and with him on a high income, it appeared that I would have the opportunity to not have to work full time and could have a family.
However, it has not turned out that way, and my new partner is deeply in debt from chasing untold “get rich quick” schemes, something I didn’t find out about until well into the relationship.
So now I am left in a situation where I have to work to pay the bills and have absolutely no support whatsoever financially, and cannot see a future where I can have a family.
I have offered many a time to do a budget that worked so well in my first relationship, and get him out of his mess, but he will not even discuss that option.
It’s devestating when two people have such widely different skills and attitudes when it comes to money. It is wonderful that your husband is so good in so many other ways – I think with the right approach, counseling, etc, you may be able to find a way to come to an agreement on the money situation.
Good luck, you’ve got something great there to work with and I hope you can work it out.
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Where do i start, it may sound altruistic but underlying the rhetoric is a one sided goal, so they can achieve what they want, not what both want.
I am now in my 27th year of marriage, we saved and yes she had a strangle hold on the purse, then she wanted to go overseas, never saw that before we got married, budgeting was tight and though supposed to be the weaker sex are very dominating when they get into a relationship, just read the comments below.
Then children came and saving went out the window she bought whatever and whenever. Woman say they have it hard looking after children, doing housework, etc, try working from when your 18 with no respite till you are 65, with the constant pressure of always having to provide for the family, a family that is driven by the woman and also having to be the sensitive new age guy with the pressure of what society expects us to be.
In my line of work what I see is the constant need to have a better house, more yard for the children to play in, better school, the budgeting is only a means to get what they want without having to do,it themselves.
If money was unlimited would you still budget, hell no.
Before you hit the alert moderator button, try standing in his shoes, do you think we wouldn’t prefer to stay at home and be with our children, would you be prepared to go to work and do what is necessary to make ends meet. Then when we state we need a holiday as we are too stressed and need a break, or let us adopt another child, but we need a bigger house, I hope you see the other side.
Finally remember back to the start of a relationship and you were wined and dined, who payed, you like to be pampered and we like to be pampered in return, but somewhere along the way the dynamics alter, when was the last time he felt you wanted to have sex with him.
try to see it from the other persons view point, and that goes for males as well.
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I have the opposite problem. My husband is a saver, and i am a spender. I have been put on a budget, which is very hard to keep to! I dont have any play money at all. We are both full-time workers (he earns much more than I do though). We dont generally argue about money, but I am less happy because of the strict budget. I cant remember the last time we went out for dinner, or to the movies, or out in general!
I do think that it is great that he wants to save and that he is so committed to it, but at what cost? We are sacrificing our social life and cannot enjoy the money we earn, and cannot go out and enjoy each other!
Any suggestions of how I can approach the subjest of loosening up the purse strings a little while still acheiving our savings goal?
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Hi everyone – well I have bee on both sides of the equation, so far as even declaring bankruptcy to my joint financial decisions. If I had my time over again before declaring – I would follow these principles:
1) for every pay, there is rewarding and saving. If you are renting then you save the exact weekly rent amount that you would use to pay a house payment PLUS 8-10% interest rate buffer;
2) If I wanted a bag/shoes or a reward for work, I would laybuy rather than put the cost on a credit card. We are too much into consumerism and instant gratification;
3) I would seek alternative products – we do not always have to have the ‘it brand;’
4) I would see how I could bring in more money if I had something to save for in a shorter amount of time. This might mean seeking a second job or simply selling your good cooking at stalls by way of jams/marmalades…anything. If you have kids get them to help depending on their age, this will teach them hard work equals choice and rewards;
5) Share the costs, if you are having a dinner party then get the gusts to bring a dessert, it is bad manners to turn up empty handed these days anyway.
6) If you want to spend money at a nice restaurant, then save up for it so it does not feel so painful to pay $300, on your debit card, not a credit card;
7) Don’t be duped into the buy now pay later deals with their “free for 12 months” deal for a new piece of furniture. Scope out second hand stores, ebay, trading post.
When saving money and working towards your goals, patience is a virtue. It is a rarity these days but as long as you tell your spendthrift partners that their reward will come, just not straight away, this will help to ease tensions.
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I immediately identified with so much of your story, I too am the low income earner who knows how to budget and my wonderful husband is the money earner who knows how to spend it!
This was never a huge problem for me as we have a beautiful home that’s furnished very well courtesy of being able to save a little and furniture that we could pay off slowly.
However, then I became pregnant! All of a sudden my husband saw me transform into the super saver as I wanted to make sure we could afford for me to take time off work when our little bub arrived AND that we could afford everything we needed for her.
All of a sudden, I placed him on a very tight budget that he fought for months! But I was so persistent and wouldn’t fight with him, I was happy to discuss finances with him and listen to alternative solutions (which he knew there weren’t) but I would never raise my voice or use tone, I was very firm and very understanding of his anger about not being able to do what he wanted with his money – but I WOULD NOT back down!
Eventually he stopped fighting me and months later I rewarded him with the new laptop I knew he really wanted but didn’t want to suggest because he saw how great we were doing and how well prepared we were going to be for the future.
Bubs is due in a little over 2 months and you’d swear it was his idea to have such a strict budget! He is super proud of all of the money we have saved. Now I face the next argument… he wants me to stay at home and I want to go back to work after a few months!
My advice is this – You can be persistent and understanding of his feelings at the same time. Come up with a budget that allows for him to have some of the little luxuries but not all of them – make it together if that helps (getting him to agree to it is easier if he has input) and then be the enforcer! Don’t let him talk you into things he ‘needs’ which are really just things he wants. Give him an allowance if it helps! Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind.
Good Luck!
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Heya. My partner is very much the same. Money just slips through his fingers. So we made an arrangement where he now transfers the majority of his income to a joint account, and I manage all the bills & savings. It was hard at first, but we’ve now bought a house together and paid for a wedding (within the space of four years). My partner is very happy with the arrangement, but had to put his ego aside in the beginning. He still has ‘play money’ that is his to spend as he wishes, and access to a joint credit card for emergencies only. If your husband is open to the idea, it’s definitely worth trying for the longer term.
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my husband is like that. needless to say i dont know how to fix it but it does raise some interesting parenting issues because to this day his mother still trys to help not so much with money but sorting out his crap. i feel this is a big part of the problem. he expects someone else to do it for him, hell maybe he is kind of forcing/demanding. i too have started savings accounts for him with childcare rebate refunds only to find he cannot get it together to put modest contribution from his own wage. did i mention the house is mine from years before we got together and we have always agreed on that, i pay entire mortgage including when i went on maternity leave from savings although during that period he paid living expenses food bills etc. like you hes lovely in every other way he’s the “nice guy” everyone loves and I am the hard ass. something psychological going on there we have chosen each other ?
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