Does anyone make a lot of money and not splurge?
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Anonymous
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Reading this board sometimes makes me realize how frugal my husband is. Together we make around 700-800k. Yet we still live in our starter house, still drive regular cars, do not send our kids to private school, do not have any household help, have never flown anything above coach, don’t eat out at fancy restaurants, etc. I feel guilty buying myself nice things (like a $200 sweater).
I admit that some of this is me (I have no interest in cars or restaurants) but I’d definitely like to travel more. He always wants to go to the same places though, which I find boring after a while. I would be interested in buying a vacation house depending on where it was but he says it is too much work to maintain. Even small things like time savers - I asked him if we could hire someone to paint the living room and he said he’d do it himself because otherwise it would be 1k to hire out. Another example is that our family skis. I’d like to hire a private instructor to take the kids so DH and I could do our own thing for the day and challenge ourselves/go fast instead of the constant start/stop of skiing with kids. It would be about $1k though and looks at me like I’m nuts. Is this normal behavior and this board is just spendy? I feel like I don’t know what is a lot of money anymore. He thinks $1k is a lot of money to spend on painting a room or giving ourselves a fun day on our own on vacation. Whereas I feel like we can afford it? |
Anonymous
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Yes, your anecdotal stories sound especially frugal, but without actual numbers, there's no way to know for sure.
I mean I would not hesitate to spend $1k on painting in our house if we made 700-800k, which is twice what we make. We also drive nice cars and live in a very nice home. We order wine from napa/sonoma on the regular and used to regularly eat at michelin-starred restaurants pre-pandemic. I'm not sure what you're looking for from us. |
Anonymous
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If he pushed back on hiring it out and then never actually followed through on the project I'd see your point, but if he actually gets the work done what's the issue?
I wouldn't spend $200 on a sweater nor would I spend $1000 to paint a single room or for 1-day ski lessons. |
Anonymous
Idk 🤷♀️ guess I feel like, what is the point of saving all this money? What are we actually going to do with it? Besides give it to our kids when we die. It’s nice that they’ll receive an inheritance but it’s not my motivating goal in life. I’d like to enjoy my own life too! These are all just examples of when I’d like to spend money but don’t. Another is a weekend away for our anniversary. I’d like to go to a nice hotel (500-1000 a night). He thinks it’s too much money. |
Anonymous
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Maybe if you were making a little more money he would be more comfortable with spending?
Could you rent out a room, or earn some extra money in the evenings driving an Uber? Knit little hats for pets to sell on Etsy? |
Anonymous
| What's your net worth? |
Anonymous
| Your husband sounds very cheap. Most people making $700k a year don’t want to spend a day off painting a room when you can pay someone $600 to do it in a few hours. |
Anonymous
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Normal. I would say that is a “lot” of money. It’s a healthy income but def not to the point where you should be flying private and dropping 1k per day on private instructors!
That’s probably why he’s so frugal - he knows you’d be out of control with your spending habits if he didn’t have a tight hold on the reigns! |
Anonymous
NOT a lot of money, sorry It’s UMC for DC, not splash out with no concern money |
Anonymous
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I thought this would be about someone in the 200-300k range of income.
LOL sorry OP your husband is just cheap. Like Scrooge McDuck. |
Anonymous
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Me, me and me.
Grew up poor. The only splurge is those private ski instructors for the kids. No fancy restaurants, not even for celebrations. No interest. No expensive clothing. Cars we keep them. House nothing fancy, we do own more than one. For investments. Fly coach always. |
Anonymous
| No one can really make a judgment about your discretionary budget without knowing your net worth, monthly expenses, and long term goals. The cost of this or that is irrelevant, as is any notion of “splurge” or “extravagance.” |
Anonymous
| We make about what you make, but have only been at that level for a couple of years. We have a lot of catching up to do in terms of net worth, so spend about the same that we did when we made $200K |
Anonymous
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OP, I think you would have the most success focusing on the areas where the frugalness (frugality?) affects you personally. If you are busy with work and don't want to clean the house on the weekend, hire cleaners. If you want time to yourself to ski without the kids, then do it.
If your DH would prefer to take it upon himself to do the cleaning, painting, teaching, then that's his choice, and make sure he understands that. No whining about how he does everything. If you want to go on vacation somewhere new, you show how it fits into the budget easily and do all the planning and then if he throws a fit and refuses to go, then you go alone (or with kids). |
Anonymous
| Do you both have demanding/exhausting jobs or does one of you have a crazy job and the other has a pretty low key job? I think some of the splurging often comes from two crazy jobs leaving couples exhausted with minimal free time. Also as a skier, there are a lot of non-splurgy places to ski where you can get private lessons for less than $1K/day. We pay about $450 for a half day private for our kids in Colorado. It works out well for us. |