Wife and I don't see eye-to-eye on money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, what are your regular monthly expenses? How much above that did she spend? Our monthly expenses are about 15K per month so that doesn't seem crazy to me.

Same here, and my mortgage hips much smaller than his.
Seems normal to me.

[Anonymous]

Yep. Too much info is missing (a/k/a "bills"). Our expenses run about $30K a month, but a chunk of that is self-employment tax.

[Anonymous]

She's bored so she shops.

How is this shocking news to you?

You act like saying you have a stay at home mommy for a wife like some hallmark of "I have arrived." Yes, you have and this it.

[Anonymous]

OP, please stop encouraging your wife to stay home with the kids. That sounds like a disaster in the making. You already have poor communication and collaboration on joint spending. That will only get worse if the only income coming into the household is yours.

Also, I find it interesting that you threw out in the beginning that she spent $15k in one month, but later explained that over 1/3 of that was attributable to normal household expenses (mortgage, food, insurance, etc). Your OP made it sound like these purchases were all pure self indulgence. Granted, it sounds like some of them might be. But just note that you are exaggerating the severity of the situation,

[Anonymous]

OP, your monthly income is on par with our HHI; however both my husband and I work. I think you need to look at your regular monthly spendings, not accounting for the holidays and then discuss with your wife what is a reasonable budget for the holidays. Our monthly budget is 7700, including 5000 for mortgage (15 year loan for million dollar home) and 2200 for living expenses. For the holidays we would budget an extra 300 because we don't have kids or many family members to give gifts to, but I would think 1000 is reasonable otherwise.

[Anonymous]

I can see how it can happen. You are comparing the day after the monthly deposit to the day before the next month. in your accounting, I see $7500. $1500 was left, so that is 9K. You talked about 2K on line that is 11K. And I bet the misc. bills are more than 2K, so you are missing 2K.

Put it another way:

you make a lot, and you spend a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My wife and I are very different when it comes to money. My parents worked very hard and were very tough on me and my siblings. My wife's parents worked hard also but they weren't hard on her or her siblings. They were, to much a degree, spoiled.

Today, I work and my wife stays home with our baby. I'm okay with this. In fact I pushed her to stay at home instead of work because I make way more than enough money for the entire family. But, often times I feel she takes for granted the money we have. She doesn't appreciate how hard it is to make a lot of money.

This morning I woke up to an alert email from our joint bank account saying we had $1,500 left. 30 days ago the balance was over $16,000 (no, that's not a typo). I was frustrated. How did we burn through $15,000 in 30 days??? I told my wife what the balance was before I left for work and she didn't bat an eye... While I understand she has never felt pressure or stress for money...it really annoys me when she just don't get it or care.

Sorry for the rant...just very upset over this and how hard it is to make as much as I do.

$15,000 in 30 days in insanely unreasonable. You can almost sort out the gold-diggers in this thread by the replies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was raised with really bad money habits and was poor. DH and I had a lot of fights about money until we had a come to Jesus talk.

Here's what works for us now:

- I pay all our bills.
- I give myself a monthly budget that's solely for me (gifts for friends, lunches, pedicures, buying flowers for the house, extra clothes, etc.)
- DH and I have a set amount we spend on Family Needs (clothes for the kids, groceries, clothes for us) and Family Wants (vacations, sports tickets, pool membership, etc.)
- Neither of us buy anything over $200 without talking to the other one
- Neither of us spend more than $200 in one day without talking to each other
- We have a Finance Committee Meeting every three months to review our spending habits, our future spending plans, etc.

Finance Committee Meetings take about an hour and about one bottle of wine. No yelling is permitted.

In other words, he gave in to your ridiculous demands. Sorry, but if we're trying to budget and stay on track, "gifts for friends" would not be in the equation. My friends would understand. This sounds like someone who needs to show off by buying gifts from friends with borrowed money (read: credit cards) rather than be perceived as cheap during trying to fix finances.

"Honey, no blowjob unless I can buy gifts for my friends."
"Ok......"

There. I just summarized your "coming to jesus" meeting for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Just to clarify our joint account is just our spend account. I have savings elsewhere. But, our joint account was set up for all our spending (bills, food, etc). We have plenty in savings.

Wow, that's a really sad problem to have.

Check out my post about my student loans and me buying food at the food bank because I have so many student loans, I might as well not have ever gone to school.

Not to be stuck up, a bitch, or sound better than thou - but please, put your situation into perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Just to clarify our joint account is just our spend account. I have savings elsewhere. But, our joint account was set up for all our spending (bills, food, etc). We have plenty in savings.

Wow, that's a really sad problem to have.

Check out my post about my student loans and me buying food at the food bank because I have so many student loans, I might as well not have ever gone to school.

Not to be stuck up, a bitch, or sound better than thou - but please, put your situation into perspective.

. This has ZERO relevance. None.

[Anonymous]

Crazy. Shopping and gifts should have been $1000 max. Tell her, no more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, please stop encouraging your wife to stay home with the kids. That sounds like a disaster in the making. You already have poor communication and collaboration on joint spending. That will only get worse if the only income coming into the household is yours.

Also, I find it interesting that you threw out in the beginning that she spent $15k in one month, but later explained that over 1/3 of that was attributable to normal household expenses (mortgage, food, insurance, etc). Your OP made it sound like these purchases were all pure self indulgence. Granted, it sounds like some of them might be. But just note that you are exaggerating the severity of the situation,

+1
So your DW spent about $2000 during the holidays. It's a lot more than I'd spend on gifts, but I can see how a well-off person with a large family can get to that amount. Like a PP said, Amazon is shopping for necessities for most people, it's not like she spent it at the mall.

[Anonymous]

Op, why don't you jut sit down with your wife and come up with a budget? You need a Budget (YNAB) software is great for this. DH and I each have a small "fun Money" budget for each if us each month (for which we are not accountable to each other) and everything else falls within the budget - clothing, groceries, gifts, etc. if most of that 2K at Amazin and Zulily was gifts, it would need to have been part of the gift budget.

It should make no difference who is earning the income - wen if both of you are working you should agree on a budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My wife and I are very different when it comes to money. My parents worked very hard and were very tough on me and my siblings. My wife's parents worked hard also but they weren't hard on her or her siblings. They were, to much a degree, spoiled.

Today, I work and my wife stays home with our baby. I'm okay with this. In fact I pushed her to stay at home instead of work because I make way more than enough money for the entire family. But, often times I feel she takes for granted the money we have. She doesn't appreciate how hard it is to make a lot of money.

This morning I woke up to an alert email from our joint bank account saying we had $1,500 left. 30 days ago the balance was over $16,000 (no, that's not a typo). I was frustrated. How did we burn through $15,000 in 30 days??? I told my wife what the balance was before I left for work and she didn't bat an eye... While I understand she has never felt pressure or stress for money...it really annoys me when she just don't get it or care.

Sorry for the rant...just very upset over this and how hard it is to make as much as I do.

$15,000 in 30 days in insanely unreasonable. You can almost sort out the gold-diggers in this thread by the replies.

Really does depend on HHI. We spend $3,000 on mortgage, $4,000 on nanny, maybe another $3,000 on food, gas, insurance, internet, phones, heating, property taxes, tv, gas, etc. Its not $15k but it's not that far from it. Throw in a Christmas and maybe an unexpected ezpense or two (say your life insurance policy coming due, or your home owners insurance bill) and you'd be there.

[Anonymous]

Why do you pay 1000 in insurance? Is that a month or yearly debt? Is that health insurance too?