Divorcing wife over her spending

[Anonymous]

OP, consider a "financial divorce." Start by determining how much each of you needs to contribute to a joint checking account to maintain a mutually agreed-upon standard of living, including funding 529 plans for education. It's important that both of you also contribute to retirement accounts directly out of your paycheck before money hits the joint checking account.

Agree to hold regular meetings to review the family budget and investments, as well as to discuss each other's credit reports (and do pull them on both of you). Any extra money that you earn, which isn't required for agreed-upon expenses in the joint checking account, can be invested in a brokerage account that you manage. You can designate her as the beneficiary of that account, but she won't have access to make withdrawals.

[Anonymous]

You need couples counseling — someone who specializes in financial counseling. Honestly, it’s not just the money, which is mind-boggling for sure, but it’s the expectations and pressure she will put on your kids to perform/achieve. What a way to set them up for mental/emotional/anxiety issues down the road.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The willingness of men to chuck it all rather than solve problems will never cease to amaze me. OP is stressing about wife’s spending as if, as the breadwinner, this is something entirely out of his control. This is no different than any other problem in marriage OP. If you haven’t gone to marriage counseling over this and you’re posting on a message board asking if you should leave, I feel really bad for your kids. As a poster upthread said, you’re not some helpless waif unless you decide to be one.

Although, I can’t really decide if this is real. A guy making 600K with a $2 million house and this kind of wife with twins clearly hasn’t done the math on the fact that a divorce would make him broker than he is right now, or he’s a troll.

Unfortunately yes, that's true. She will be entitled to support to sustain the standard of living she already has. They're not going to divide everything up 20/80, even if that's how their income is split now.

But he'll be in charge of whatever money he gets in the divorce, so he can be responsible with it. No matter how much money she has coming in, she will always want to spend more . . . that's the nature of the dopamine addiction. How much they make is really not relevant to this dynamic.

Where ever did you get that silly idea? It’s not true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, consider a "financial divorce." Start by determining how much each of you needs to contribute to a joint checking account to maintain a mutually agreed-upon standard of living, including funding 529 plans for education. It's important that both of you also contribute to retirement accounts directly out of your paycheck before money hits the joint checking account.

Agree to hold regular meetings to review the family budget and investments, as well as to discuss each other's credit reports (and do pull them on both of you). Any extra money that you earn, which isn't required for agreed-upon expenses in the joint checking account, can be invested in a brokerage account that you manage. You can designate her as the beneficiary of that account, but she won't have access to make withdrawals.

+1. I've always monitored our joint account carefully, and she wanted a way to spend money on certain things without me seeing it. So she created an account in her name only and a portion of her paycheck is direct-deposited to that account. Now that we've figured out what that budget would be, we discuss our finances less frequently and the discussions we do have are much easier.

[Anonymous]

Does your wife know how upset you are over this?

We know a couple who divorced but the kids were teens. The dad was always livid about his wife’s out of control spending and it was a huge contentious point during their whole marriage.

My husband earns a seven figure income so I see nothing wrong with your wife’s spending. At the same time, I can see why you don’t want to spend on the same. I never thought spending on the kids was my spending since it was for the kids.

I would do couples counseling if you are this upset and make sure she knows you do not want to do private school.

[Anonymous]

Wife needs a J-O-B outside of the home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The willingness of men to chuck it all rather than solve problems will never cease to amaze me. OP is stressing about wife’s spending as if, as the breadwinner, this is something entirely out of his control. This is no different than any other problem in marriage OP. If you haven’t gone to marriage counseling over this and you’re posting on a message board asking if you should leave, I feel really bad for your kids. As a poster upthread said, you’re not some helpless waif unless you decide to be one.

Although, I can’t really decide if this is real. A guy making 600K with a $2 million house and this kind of wife with twins clearly hasn’t done the math on the fact that a divorce would make him broker than he is right now, or he’s a troll.

Unfortunately yes, that's true. She will be entitled to support to sustain the standard of living she already has. They're not going to divide everything up 20/80, even if that's how their income is split now.

But he'll be in charge of whatever money he gets in the divorce, so he can be responsible with it. No matter how much money she has coming in, she will always want to spend more . . . that's the nature of the dopamine addiction. How much they make is really not relevant to this dynamic.

Where ever did you get that silly idea? It’s not true.

From my own divorce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Wife needs a J-O-B outside of the home.

Wife has one. And makes $150k or so. OP listed this before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are missing the point. OP makes close to 500 but that’s before taxes. They probably make like 350 after taxes. Op said they spend 300k a year. That’s not a lot of money to be saved and a huge amount of money to spend for a family of 4.

The Wife also has a job making $150k and likely keeps at least $100k. So that is $150k in savings at least. If their house appreciates they will have that plus all the years they've saved for retirement.

I think their house is too expensive to have on a mortgage. That is where the majority of their money is going. To a mortgage company.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry OP. This is a hard one.

Does your wife work and contribute meaningfully to HH income? What is she spending excessively on? (clothes, house, vacations, etc?)

Before leaping to divorce and breaking up your kids' home, what have you done to rein this in?

She does work but I make the bulk of our income.

We have 3.5 year old twins. We both want what’s best for their future but my wife goes overboard.

Excessive spending

- Most expensive daycare
- Most expensive preschool
- An expensive I caved and bought
- A new car
- expensive activities for the kids
- A tutor for the kids ( no joke)
- wasting hundreds each shopping trip
- always purchases random crap she sees online

This is just the tip of the iceberg. She didn’t use to be this way. Motherhood has made her very competitive.

Sounds like you need to agree on a budget for your kids. She's not spending on herself much with these expenses.

DH and I had this conversation around education - I wanted the BEST. He wanted more financial freedom. We thought long and hard about the long and short term views and what was available to us publicly. We also factored in the cost of moving and what that would look like. We landed on something we both agreed was the best. Luckily, when it comes to our kids both our heads and hearts are in the same place. Painting our differences to each other through conversations was super helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would divorce. You will end paying alimony and child support but it much be cheaper in the long run.

And the psychological impact of everyone (including OP) would not be worth the savings.

[Anonymous]

Men hate their own kids. Thus thread proves it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you have also lost all perspective. Your salary is enormous by American standards.

If you were living in flyover country, like me, your house would probably be cheaper and you'd be less stressed.

Your wife's expenses feel very "keeping up with the Joneses" for your income bracket. That doesn't make it a good decision to spend money that way. But it doesn't sound odd to me, based on what I've seen from the richer people I know.

If you get a divorce, your wife will probably continue to spend child support on things that you think are ridiculous. Best case for her, she somehow trades up to a guy who can afford more. How will you feel then, having given up your family because of money?

I think you need to evaluate your childcare arrangements holistically and try to reduce some fluff. With your nerves, I hope you are in a district with good public schools.

Maybe you can convince your wife to save if she's able to put it in a 529 college fund.

Keep an eye out for youth sports costs. Martial arts are actually pretty cheap compared to many sports. At the high school level, track is the best bargain.

If you're willing to divorce over this, I don't think it's too sexist or too harsh for you to set up a monthly budget transfer that covers the entirety of what you want her to spend from your salary on running the household.

My husband and I have our names on joint accounts but financially rarely cross paths. We've agreed on how to split payment responsibilities for various bills and that's how it's worked for 3 decades. I handle groceries, utilities, insurance, etc. He handles mortgage and phone, etc. His bills are stable. Mine fluctuate. That works with our styles and income flow patterns.

If you haven't tried an emptying account that goes to zero, I'd say you haven't exhausted all possibilities.

+1
DH and I have separate accounts that we both have access to. We also keep separate spending accounts - I think I have access to his and vice versa, but it's our "mad money" to do as we please, so I've never checked his. (I invest most of mine and it's huge now). Our income is a bit more than yours and we make about the same annually. We agreed on a budget and discuss it annually for a review and monthly to insure we are on track and about joint investments. I do over spend groceries occasionally by about $100 every couple months and my husband brings it up and I respond by saying we need to up the budget. We never uo the budget, but it's not a big deal. For us this is peanuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are missing the point. OP makes close to 500 but that’s before taxes. They probably make like 350 after taxes. Op said they spend 300k a year. That’s not a lot of money to be saved and a huge amount of money to spend for a family of 4.

Exactly... The wife thinks they are filthy rich the way she's spending.
Red Flag!

Mmmm, yellow flag.

My guess is that having money is new to both of them. Old money folks don't think the way either of them do. So the question is how to get them both into the "old money" way of thinking. Budget, agree, budget, agree, repeat until desired outcome is achieved. Post tax savings are part of a budget. Investing is part of a budget. Trust funds for kids are part of a budget. Charity donation is part of a budget. Education is part of a budget, including 529s, private school, tutoring, etc. Groceries, summer camp, clothing - everything has a category in a budget. They are high income, but probably not rich and not on their way to rich. What is their goal for rich? How do they get there together? These should not be emotional discussions, but pragmatic objective ones - strategic.

BTW, financial independence is easy to achieve with that income if that is your definition of "rich". You just need to agree on a suitable lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Try budgeting together. Use an app so she can do it on the go. Don’t be too rigid or condescending or controlling esp if she does all the buying for the kids.

Quick to hit the divorce button, hm?