When you don’t agree on where to spend money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys sound like perfect candidates for a his/hers/ours system, which gets a lot of shade on DCUM but works really well in my marriage (better than other parts of my marriage!). My husband and I happen to have very different attitudes toward minor/daily spending, and we can avoid any fights about those issues. We mostly agree on bigger spending (mortgage, savings, childcare, etc.).

Anyway, he makes 2x as much as me, so he puts $2 into our shared account for every $1 I put in. We use that account for mortgage, utilities, childcare, college savings, groceries, and only a few other incidentals. Beyond that, everything comes out of our individual accounts--lunches and dinners out (unless we're together), hobby gear, hair cuts, personal travel, etc. With two kids and a third on the way, we don't have a ton of discretionary money anymore, but it's nice to know I have total control over what little I have.

In your case, because the desired purchase would clearly benefit us both, but only one of us really cared about it, I suspect that we'd put some nominal amount of shared money toward it, and then the remainder would come from the interested party. Or maybe the interested party would buy the fixtures, but we'd pay the electrician with joint money. Of course, because we never argue about money, we're pretty flexible about these occasional things because we don't have any financial resentments.

This makes no sense. You are a partnership. Why be so petty with money?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys sound like perfect candidates for a his/hers/ours system, which gets a lot of shade on DCUM but works really well in my marriage (better than other parts of my marriage!). My husband and I happen to have very different attitudes toward minor/daily spending, and we can avoid any fights about those issues. We mostly agree on bigger spending (mortgage, savings, childcare, etc.).

Anyway, he makes 2x as much as me, so he puts $2 into our shared account for every $1 I put in. We use that account for mortgage, utilities, childcare, college savings, groceries, and only a few other incidentals. Beyond that, everything comes out of our individual accounts--lunches and dinners out (unless we're together), hobby gear, hair cuts, personal travel, etc. With two kids and a third on the way, we don't have a ton of discretionary money anymore, but it's nice to know I have total control over what little I have.

In your case, because the desired purchase would clearly benefit us both, but only one of us really cared about it, I suspect that we'd put some nominal amount of shared money toward it, and then the remainder would come from the interested party. Or maybe the interested party would buy the fixtures, but we'd pay the electrician with joint money. Of course, because we never argue about money, we're pretty flexible about these occasional things because we don't have any financial resentments.

This makes no sense. You are a partnership. Why be so petty with money?

+1 Exactly. DH & I are a partnership-every penny, one joint acct. Then we spend reasonably. If either of us wants to spend over $500, we discuss, so there are no big, surprise bills.We never fight over money.

[Anonymous]

I am sorry to hear of your situation. It may be a great idea to share your feelings regarding this issue with your husband and come up with a suitable budget/ plan for both of you to spend money. So in this way both of you have a budget and you get to spend the money in a way that pleasing to you. Hope this helps.