Reply to Not sure if this is a money question or relationship question.

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Not sure if this is a money question or relationship question. "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here - first, we don’t take home 15K a month. The nature of his job means that he brings home a guaranteed $4k/month and I bring home a guaranteed $3845 per pp (so $8.3k/month). The rest is bonuses, which are not guaranteed (and because he isn’t working too hard at work, his bonuses are more iffy). Our mortgage is $4K. Also while we give $500 to his mother and bother, that will increase and we also pay for plane tickets and hotels for them to visit us 2-3x a year. Also again, we didn’t have these salaries most of our marriage. Historically we were probably right below $200k.

We have some fairly costly home maintenance project that we have to save for. We also need a new car.

The guys trips are long weeks, so plane ride, hotel, dinner and excursions. I think the last one was $1500.

I think a prior poster hit the nail on the head when she said one of my frustrations is that my H doesn’t see/understand our financial picture. He has Mint so he sees all our accounts, but he doesn’t get our in and out expenses. I have tried to show him everything and explain it but he just doesn’t get it. He literally told me if he won $1M he could retire tomorrow.

I also think his focus on the boys weekends just makes part of me sad. The last time it came up, we were talking about him and I going away for a long weekend and things weren’t great at his job so we didn’t go.  But a month later he wanted to fly to Portland for a guys weekend.

But again, it’s this sudden idea that he get his $45k back that frustrates me. He is obsessed with what money is his in the marriage and what is mine, even though his retirements accounts are higher than mine because he started maxing before me. And he doesn’t count all my parents gifts to us in his calculations. [/quote]

OP, you're falling into a parent role and it's not doing either of you any good.  Reframe to be a team that works together with reality providing the constraints rather than you as the gatekeeper. Use his desire to go on a trip with the guys as a motivator to see where the money will come from.  Price out the home maintenance project and the planned new car and actually do the math together.  Put in things you want individually too--  independent of the shared family goals/trips together -- so it doesn't feel like you're the drudge and he gets all the fun.  If there's not much you individually want, maybe look into that?   If the 45k thing is important to him, maybe you really can set that aside and let the funds that pay his family's expenses --monthly payments plus flights etc. come from that rather than your household budget along with his trips.  I think you just need to be honest--do you want to give up working hard? Or do you just want to exert more control over the funds because you're working hard.  The former is okay, the latter is not consistent with a marriage.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics