My Husband Gets Stressed Talking About Money

[Anonymous]

The long and short is that money is tight. We have good incomes, but our expenses are high (childcare/school). I recognize and accept that we willingly made these choices knowing that money would be tight and that we would need to reign in any and all discretionary spending. The problem is that my husband finds the lack of discretionary income rather stressful. There is a direct correlation between his mood and our bank account. I took over paying the bills to alleviate his stress, and it helps until I need to discuss money with him. There are some expenses/decisions we need to make as a couple, and I value his input, but it seems to put him over the edge. Does anyone else experience this? Have any suggestions? Should I just assume all financial responsibilities and let my DH be blissfully ignorant?

[Anonymous]

Who makes more money, him or you? I'm a little like your DH and it's because I make less than half of my DH's income and I feel helpless and horrible and guilty when we talk about our budget.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I make substantially more (like 3x more).

[Anonymous]

That's why he hates to talk about it. He feels powerless and like he's being blamed, whether you are blaming him or not.

[Anonymous]

What school costs money, and where do you live and hhi

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What school costs money, and where do you live and hhi

(Not OP) Why is this relevant?

[Anonymous]

You make 3x? Ok so your HHI is what, $300k? $400k?

Cry me a river.

[Anonymous]

OP - I made 3x my DH when we got married. For the PP math whiz, that's because he was a post-doc making $40k. Now we both have different jobs and I still make 2x and likely always will. It doesn't seem to bother my DH since we knew what our career paths meant. I try to make sure he knows how much I value his contributions to our household - he does most of the cooking and errands because he works fewer hours. We also made a budget and we contribute from our salaried proportionally so that we both have spending money of our own. If he paid half our household expenses, he would never be able to go to lunch with his coworkers.

[Anonymous]

Have you told DH that his reaction to your talking about money is affecting you? It's not like you can ever shield him from it, you're married so you will have to talk about money.

ask him what will make the conversation easier. Is it having it regularly (the 1st and 15th of the month? Every tuesday night for 10 minutes? What?) Also, point out that you're in this together and that you want it to be a collaboration.

I am like your DH in that, whenever my spouse send me little reminders to watch the spending until the 15th or something, I get stressed and feel attacked. I know he's just more on top of it that me, and also, I feel accused of spending too much. I just need to realize that it's his way of keeping us both aware of our account balances and bills situation.

I would recommend switching up covering the checking account every few months, so it doesn't just become a dynamic of you nagging him--needs to be a two-way street.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks everyone. 10:05, your point is well taken, we need have a regular meeting time. And it's exactly like what you said -- If I tell him to watch his spending, he gets bent out of shape. We've been married a long time, and it's only been recently that this has occurred as money has become tight because of school tuition (and some family illnesses where we wanted to help out a sick family member). Before school, we had disposable income, and now our disposable income goes to school. I'm not complaining; it was our choice, and it was a choice that we made TOGETHER full knowing the consequences (private school is a stretch for us but one that we wanted to make) but he just seems so stressed now that the reality has hit him that we have to budget and that there is very little disposable income (actually, there really isn't any).

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you can't afford private school.

[Anonymous]

I saw an interesting segment on CNN which interviewed an author of a recent book called something like "Money and the Brain". Basically, it turns out that when people are threatened financially, the part of their brains that become active are the same as when there is an actual physical threat. A very primal feeling and response can be accordingly. The book addresses why people often dont make great decisions about money, among other things.

I have not read the book, but it sounds interesting!

In my case, DH earns ALL the money, and I pay all the bills/manage all the money. He gets way more freaked out about any conversation about money being tight than I do, to the extent that its often not possible to talk rationally about plans when he is in that state. And we dont spend ANY excess money on anything nor have arguments about each others spending. We are totally on the same page and on the same side. He just responds very differently.

I dont think your issue has an obvios answer. I think there may be something to several of the explanations provided by posters.

I think you should talk to him about this, sometime when nothing else is going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like you can't afford private school.

I agree.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Maybe private school is a stretch, but that's really not the point of my post. My issue is that my DH is shutting down when it comes time to talking about money. We carefully planned out private school and we knew how much it would cost and where that money was coming from. We also knew the sacrifices that we would need to make in order to send both of our kids to private school and we agreed that we would make changes. In practice, however, for the first time ever, we've had to budget and sometimes there isn't money in the budget to "play." We knew all of this going into it, and I think that we are very fortunate to be able to have this choice, albeit one that might stretch us a little thin at times. But all of that is somewhat irrelevant now. What is done is done. What I need to do is to figure out a way to get him comfortable with the way things are, and/or to discuss the issues so that if we want/need to make changes we can make those decisions as a family. And most importantly for him to have some piece of mind.

[Anonymous]

I meant "peace" of mind.