just_married

I got tired of her griping about never having any money then broke down and pulled savings to pay off one of them.

EleGirl

Looking at the numbers in a way that is easier to compare...

You have $1095 a month is disposable cash
Your wife has $1,303 a month disposable cash

That's a difference of $208. So if the two of you split it, you would get $104 a month more than you get now..

Look in the Joint column. If you pooled all the money together, paid all the bills and then split what is left over you would each get $1,199.

On top of this, your are putting about $3,480 (2 pay periods) into a a savings ac**** that you control. That averages out to $290 a month.

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EleGirl

She has $208 a month more than you do. So split that in half and you get take your $104 monthly and now you two are even... except of course for the money you put in a savings account that you control ... to the tune of an average $290 a month.

I will bet that she see it that you are keeping 2 paychecks a year all for yourself. I know that it's a saving that is for both of your needs but I can see it from her perspective as well.

My take is that you are both wrong and you are both right.
She has not learned how to manage money. Her behavior of crying and carrying on makes her sounds like a bratty teenager. Perhaps she feels that she is being treated like a teenager, or a lessor member of the marriage. This might have more to do with that she preserves as a power imbalance in the marriage and less about money. Finances is just the field it get played out in.

I don't think you have learned yes that marriage means "we", "us". If my husband told me that I’m lucky to have him to pay the bills I’d be pretty upset. That’s not a ‘we’ comment at all. (I’m the bread winner of my family by the way.)
You say that you pay for all dates. Well the dates are paid for by community income so legally she’s paying for them too. Do you see why it does not work well to have separate accounts. The two of you should have an activities budget that you do joint activities out of. The entire setup as it is reinforces “me” vs “you”.

Do the two of you sit down each pay period and look over your income and your bills? She has to be brought into the loop even if she has to be dragged into it kicking and screaming.

What are the chances of you convincing her to come here and talk to us about this? Maybe we could help the two of you?

If that does not work the two of you would benefit from a counselor, and even a financial advisor who can help you two negotiate a way to handle your finances responsibly and together.

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DTO

I suspected this before you confirmed it. I see two red flags here. One, there is a huge income discrepancy; I expect to see this where a spouse downplays career in favor of something like family. The question seems to be what she is doing to improve her income given her spending habits.

The second red flag regards what your wife does with her time. My take is you put more time into work than does she. I'm guessing you work longer hours, have to commute further, etc. If I'm correct, then how does your wife equalize the effort?

It seems your marriage has a lot of you working hard to earn the money with her doing her thing. Are you worried about just her spending habits? Or, are you thinking the money split needs to be different? IMO you should recognize that a marriage is a partnerhship but there's nothing wrong with taking effort into account when deciding on a split.

Understand the whole picture before talking with your wife. She is overlooking the inequality and looking to get more and take advantage of you. IME getting her to make do will be a difficult task - doubly so if you decide to push for a little more equality.

IMO there are two options. The first is, as noted earlier, she is out of touch with the financial realities of your family. The second is that she has a "what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours" mentality. Either way, IMO the best way to approach this is by stating your concept of how things should be and then move on to how they current are.

For example, you could say "I sense you are consistently short on money, you see I DO have money, and why you ask for more. I take your concern seriously, so I dug into the budget. My goal is that we have a situation where the benefits of our labor are equally distributed (or distributed according to effort or any other system you feel is appropriate)."

And then, after laying out your philosophy, you hit the details. You make X, pay bills Y that are for both of you, and have Z left over. She makes A, pays only B, so her leftover C is much higher. Then you say you feel that she needs to make do with what she has (or even pick up another bill, as the case may be).

If she is just ignorant about the money situation, she should be fine with your explanation. If not, she may feel entitled to more than you. Steer her back to your philosophy about equality and ask her to defend her position. Does she feel entitled to premium treatment? Does she think you waste money or are underemployed? The point is to take a difficult talk and keep it focused on issues that can be identified and potentially solved.

DTO

Hmmm,

My first thought is that the discrepancy is larger than $208. The OP's numbers say $425 but you are assuming she pays $217 a month more than he in groceries and household misc., even though nothing supports that number, and making your analysis from that. Even if he were spending those extra paychecks on himself, he still takes back less than she.

The other thought is that the OP is subsidizing his wife's income tax liability as well. This budget is all net income. Even at a budget of two checks per month, the OP's monthly gross is $5,385 vs. her $2,500 (215% difference). The net incomes are only 183% different. Given that marital income is taxed as a whole at one rate, she is claiming too many deductions and he is covering that.

I will reiterate my position that this might not be just about the numbers. I personally would be offended at the prospect of my spouse having a tantrum after knowing that she already got more than me and I was putting that much more effort into making the money to begin with (that size discrepancy in income does not just happen).

EleGirl

He says that he expects her to buy groceries (keep food in the house). He does say that she only buys food for herself. Does this mean that they each cook different meals? While he does mention groceries he does not put in the budget anything for necessary things such as cleaning supplies, toiletries, TP, etc etc. He does not even put in it the monthly grocery amount. Generally if a person leaves these out of the budget it means that they are not the person buying them.

I have a sideline of forensic accounting for similar disputes whether it’s for a couple trying to figure out what’s going on with their finances or a for a divorce. I always talk to both parties separately. It seldom sounds like they are talking about the same financial situation. Money and emotions get so intertwined it can be very hard for a person to be objective.

Under normal circumstances I would be able to find out exactly how much is spend at places like grocery stores, home depot, etc. I would want a couple to keep all of their receipts for as long as possible. None of that is available here.
We have zero insight into how she is spending the money she has. She’s not here to speak for herself. They need to go to see marriage counselors and financial advisors who can speak to both of them and look at the records. Surely she should have the right to bring in he receipts and show how she’s spending the money.

I’ve seen a lot of cases where one spouse pushes off all groceries, cleaning supplies and other essentials for running a household on the other spouse. Then they go on about how that spouse is irresponsible with money. This happens all the time.

I really do not think that we have enough knowledge of their situation to judge his wife. We help him and her more if we advise them to get help from someone who can hear both sides and who can actually look at their records.
And she is in a higher tax bracket because of his higher income. We are talking about a marriage here right? Or is this some kind of a business deal?

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EleGirl

I agree which is why I suggested a book on marital finance, marriage counseling and financial counseling.

How do you know that he is putting more effort into earning income? I know people who work long, hard hours for $30K a year. Higher income does not always equal more effort.

Sometimes the difference in pay has to do with the kind of work a person does. I have a sister whose income disparity is about the same. He is an air traffic controller. She works with disabled people, finding companies who will hire them, training them to do their job and to handle their special issues and helping them become self-sufficient so that they can get off of government disability. She works every bit as hard as he does. But she earns 1/3 of what he does. Thank goodness he’s a good person and does not have an attitude towards her hard work.

I agree if he works longer hours than she, if she does get to keep more money to spend on herself, her attitude is ridiculous. But again she’s not here to defend herself and they need to see a MC and a financial counselor and work this out.

But if he’s putting off a lot of the grocery expenses and household expenses on her then she might be at a breaking point.

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Surviving An Affair - What Are Plan A and Plan B? 180 for Betrayed Spouses


To Create A Passionate Marriage - Five Steps to Romantic Love His Needs, Her Needs Love Busters

MEM11363

ThatGirl,
Usually i like your posts. Not this one. No matter how you slice it, she has a lot of discretionary spending money.

WAY too much to need more. They should be saving now in case later they want kids. This will end badly if the OP doesn't step up and have a firm talk with his wife about how coin works.



UOTE=that_girl;944586]Well, maybe she just wants some money? Without seeing her account, I don't knwo what she's spending it on.

You make more than double what she makes.

You still talk like it's separate money. It's both y'alls money. I work, my husband works. We do not have the same accounts. But it's our money. We take care of our crap, but if one of us needs more, we give it...and it balances out nicely.

Maybe sit down and completely write out the budget, include fun money, savings, etc...[/QUOTE]
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ItMatters

I'm with the husband on this one. He's carrying all the responsibility for the financial viability of the household- his wife gets to live like a teenager with near NO responsibilities and treats him like a dad asking for more pocket money. YUCK.

I feel for the guy and he's right to feel that this is not a good situation.

Chelhxi

Does she let you look at her bank statements at all? I'm all for separate money if that's what works (what DH and I do) but only with full disclosure. We know or can find out, exactly what the other person has spent money on and how much money we each have. There's zero secrecy.

If you keep doing separate accounts, you need to know what she is doing. I'm the financial person in our relationship and I track all the money I spend. So when I got married I eased into the subject of tracking my husband's money as well. I was really casual and said that tracking and spreadsheets are my hobby and made it clear I wasn't checking up on him at all. He was a little reluctant as he'd always managed his own money, but he let me look at the statements and now he barely glances at his own statements. I track all of our accounts and only give him retirement account advice.

So you need to take some control of knowing where her money is. The first thing to do is just track what she is spending on. Very important NO judging. Don't say anything about her choices. Just record them. Then once you have a few months of data, do up some charts - most financially unsavvy people are better with charts than numbers to show where her and your money is going. Have it like a family meeting, not an accusation session.

In this way you might be able to slowly get a handle on improving her spending and at least treat your finances as if you're part of a team. Ideally she'd be contributing about 1/3 of your joint requirements, including savings. But baby steps first.

MEM11363

Elegirl,
Two questions/
- what responsibility should she have for paying off some of the remaining maxes out credit card from her discretionary funds?
- If he puts the amount he is "saving" in the shared pool - what makes you think it won't just get spent
- I didn't notice any recalc in your numbers - against her income - to reflect the very well defined savings model you posted earlier: 401k plus 5-10 pct more in savings




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golfergirl

My take is discretionary spending is proportionate to income earned. It isn't fair if they both have same amount of fun money - they make and pay different amounts. Its not like the wife is saddled down with bills here. And considering the husband is in charge of the mortgage, why shouldn't he be in control of the emergency money? I don't understand people who fail to contribute have hard feelings over having no control. The H might have hard feelings over her having control over money he earned. They have no kids, her contribution to to family isn't raising the kids. Her benefit is living in a home and living a lifestyle she could not afford on her own. This isn't forensic accounting, it's a man trying to save the family from his wife's proven poor spending habits. She would ruin them with more control.
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bribrius

cant help you here. i gave up on mine and finances years ago.
Even when she worked she didnt pay her own bills. After bailing out creditcards, a car repo, student loans.
i finally just took her paycheck and paid her bills for her. Then put them in a joint account and paid all the bills out of the joint and gave her a allowance.
At some point you have no choice. she was not only hurting her credit but also bringing mine down. I was always signing on things for her trying to boost her credit back up and establish her financially. Never worked she didnt follow through so i paid. And she didnt really work much, so would ring up debt then not work and leave me paying her debt back. At the moment my wife isnt on any of the accounts, and hasnt worked in years. And we actually have more money without her working or ringing up debts.
just take her check, and pay her bills for her. Give her a allowance. some people just cant handle money. just how it is. you can love her just as much with less headache doing it for her.

DTO

Hey Elegirl, I am also a really good numbers guy and am considering building a similar sideline (seriously). So it's good we speak the same language. My ex tried to manipulate money to make it look like she deserved more, so I have insight there too.

Regarding the groceries, I think you've made my point. He does say she buys her own food, which implies he does the same. It's more appropriate to assume they spend the same for groceries (since they are both buying for one) and thus the free cash discrepancy remains at $425.

How she spends her own money is not relevant here beyond the distinction between necessities and free money. Personally, I tend to view this division strictly. Either partner may claim that a hobby or lunch out is essential to personal well-being and thus an expense. My ex used to do this, and of course it's B.S. It seems like he has hit the majority of the types of essential expenses. He of course could have the amounts wrong, but if we doubted every person that came here little would get done.

On the tax issue, yes it certainly is a marriage. My point was merely to demonstrate that she is not paying her share here, either. It is another support for my argument that she already gets much more than him, and still selfishly wants more. I'm suspicious that she is really that obtuse - these are simple concepts that most adults would readily grasp.

Another thing to note is that if she were to file separately, she would likely pay more than she does now.

golfergirl

ETA I see husband spending 69% of his income and wife spending 20% of her income on bills.
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