Fiance' Spending Habits!
 

I hate asking for advice on here, but you guys give excellent advice! :)

I've almost had it to my wits end. My fiance' gets paid every week and I have to rush to pay the bills before the money is gone. I contantly worry about our financial situation!

Anyway, he'll take $100 out of the bank before consulting me, I don't realize it's taken out until we get stuck with a $40 bank charge!
I can't keep up with the checkbook because he's always spending $5-10 here and there and doesn't tell me about it. (It doesn't sound like much..but when the budget is as tight + late fees, it adds up fast)!

I've asked him to give me his debit card and he can take out $10 for the week to keep in his pocket, but he refuses. (Like the debit card is a "classy" thing to have or is impressive).

Thank God he doesn't have a credit card!!!!! Does anyone have any advice, I almost want to take the card out of his wallet and let him think he lost it!

He and I both want for me to be able to stay with the baby. He gets upset if I even bring up me getting a job. So, what can I do without making him angry? He works hard, so it makes me feel bad to tell him he can't buy anything for himself. He doesn't buy "Toys" or big ticket items, it's just that our budget is so strapped right now-we can't afford it. I've tried talking to him, but it's like talking to a wall.

I'd appreciate any advice!

I would suggest getting two bank accounts. Figure out what the monthly bills are and put that amount into the family account. Then, he can keep his allowance in his own account and he will need to be responsible for making sure he doesn't overspend his own money. When money is tight the last thing you need is late/bounce fees!

Yup two banking accounts sounds like the answer to me.

My fiancee and I are still working out the details on how we will manage our finances but what we are doing so far is that he has his own checking account and each week a certain amount is deposited into that checking account. The bulk of his paycheck and my entire paycheck go into my checking account. I pay all the bills and transfer money to savings from my checking account. It works quite well and he hardly spends any money from his own checking account but I like that he has his own money if he wants to do something with it.

Maybe you could approach him a different way, like... "Honey, I need your help with something. How can we fix it so that our checkbook stays balanced and you get a little extra $ to spend.? Is there a way that we can pay our bills and not have overcharges? Maybe we can agree on an amount of money for you to play with after the bills are paid?"

I would suggest getting him involved and letting him see in black & white what he's doing. Show him. Let him know you're stressed and need help. I wouldn't suggest taking his card away. That might make him feel like he doesn't have a say. I know he's causing your stress, but let him feel like he's part of the solution. Make it a we thing and not a Him thing.

My hubby and I have been there. I wanted to introduce his head to my frying pan many times. :D I stay at home with our 2 little ones and we can't afford to have any overcharges. He does the checkbook now. ;)

hope this helps a little. lots of luck to you both.
carafre

I had the exact opposite problem when I got married to my dh. I was the one always spending money and using the atm to take money out. We were college students, not making much money and I was blowing it left and right with credit cards also. I had already realized my problem and had gotten into consumer credit counseling before marriage. after marriage, my dh took money from his (before marriage) savings and paid off all my bills and put me on a very strick budget. It was hard at first and we were both working. I had to keep a record of all my spending. Which was treating me like a child and it annoyed me at first but I learned how to spend more responsibly over the years. At the end of the week he'd ask, "How much cash do you have left?" After awhile it got to be too much of a hassle to explain every purchase so I stopped spending my cash on junk and now he's not a tyrant about money because he trusts my money handling abilties.

One of the things my dh did with me was take each purchase that I regularly made and spelled it out in yearly spending-one soda from the vending machine costs .75, 5x a week, roughly 3.5 weeks a month (factoring in vacations/holidays), 12 months a year- over the course of a year that could be $160 dollars. A $5.00 lunch 2 times a week would be $420 a year. a $5.00 lunch 5x a week would be closer to $1050 a year. He helped me to see how taking care of the "pennies" as he calls small change would help us in the long run.

You have a child, you have to make him understand a budget. It can't be something that he can take $100 and blow it. You have to be thinking about the future.

And then what about you? Do you get to take a $100 out and blow it (which it sounds like you wouldn't) would he be upset if you did that?

Are there any stay at home type jobs you could do? My ds did child care when her son was young, she took in several other kids. That was 30 years ago. I think doing child-care is much more involved now.

Good luck on this, I know it's a difficult problem to overcome.

Sarah

I can definitely feel your stress. My DH and I have been married for 9 yrs. We have had trouble with finances the whole time. At first we had a joint checking account. That didn't work at all. He'd write a check for $100.00 and write in the check book as $20.00. I wisened up and got a separate account from him. This didn't work either. I was constantly having to take unforeseen money from my account to put in his due to his bad checks. We closed out his account and now I have an account for me only. I pay all the household bills and give him an allowance each week. He works full-time and a lot of overtime. It is hard to have to treat him like a child, but nothing else works. He gets a weekly allowance. (I do not work outside the home due to my health conditions). I have also paid off and destroyed every credit card. This is very harsh reality but at least my bills are all paid on time. No late fees, no over charges at the bank, no creditors calling my house. Unbeknowst to me, he and his EX had lived that way for yrs. About a yr. after we got married I found out from the IRS that he owed $12,000 in back taxes because him and the EX hadn't paid any taxes in 5 yrs. (Didn't even bother to file). They have kept every refund due to us now our whole marriage and we finally broke even. Please try to resolve these issues NOW because the road is a long and horrible one.

BTW, this carefree spending attitude can easily be passed on to the children. My DH's oldest daughter has a horrible time with it. She has warrants out for her in 3 different counties for hot checks. Her husband got paid on Friday and deposited $1200 and on Saturday morning he tried to withdraw money to go to a shooting match. (He's a firearms instructor). He couldn't get any money because even with the deposit , they were already $500.00 overdrawn. They have credit card bills that the minimum monthly payment is over $600.00 per month. He has thrown her out at least 5 times in their 3 yr. marriage. I hold my DH and his EX partly responsible for teaching her that it's OK to live this way.

He doesn't buy frivilous (sp) things. He's offered to keep the checkbook quite a few times but it never works out! He forgets to put down the $2.00 he spend on a coke at the conveinience store, etc.. That money adds up and can be the difference between late fees or breaking even. He understands the problem, he's just not willing to work with me.
I almost feel like I need to be his "mother" about this-and I don't like that.
He "talks a big talk" about working more hours, budgeting, and whatnot, but doesn't "walk to walk" and actually DO it.
*sigh*
Thanks to you guys for your help! All of my friends are young (as I am) but they are all knee high in debt themselves...so I don't feel comfortable asking them what they would do. :)

If he isn't willing to work with you on this dear you have serious problems.

As far as knowing what is in the account, I do my business with a credit union, I check my balance every day on line to make sure all is OK ~ Angie and I have had fraud on our credit, twice, so I try to keep right on top of it.

Good luck.

Since my husband and I are on a tight budget and he is also terrible at keeping the check book balanced we have came up with this solution. (We have been married 5 years, so this didn't happen overnight!) We have one checking account that I manage, I pay the bills and keep it balanced. Once one of our checks are deposited I pay any and all bills that need to be paid first. Then I tell my husband what we have left to last us so many days or weeks. He finally has figured out we need so much money to manage gas, food, ect.... for the week. So if he buys something he keeps the receipt and he puts it on the counter for me to put in checkbook, or I ask him evertime he comes home. He has gotten really good about big purchases, anything over $20, he says "hey honey I need this, do we have enough?" It works for us and I know some guys would find it controlling but we are rarely over our limit. I would have you hubby sit down with you to pay bills and let him see where all the money is going so he has a better idea of how that $2 at the convience store adds up quick when you can buy a 12 pack of pop for $3 and just take one from home to work.

Sometimes the best thing to do is sit down with him every month and make out a budget. Money in ~ Money out ~ Any leftover. Sometimes what we will do after that is decide what to pay with each check, pay all the bills and to whatever it was alotted to and just have the cash left over that is extra in our wallet. That way we don't touch the bank and we know when we open our wallet what we have left to spend. Or maybe you can also make up envelopes.

In one, have "gas money" , in another you can have "lunch money", you know so that way it stays separated and if your extra money envelope is empty then you know there is no more to spend! :D

I don't know if this can help you or not.

I'm actually the one that has a "spending" problem where I forget about that 5 dollars here and there. I'm TERRIBLE about keeping the balance on check books by manual register so I manage online. My fiance and I keep track of our account through online banking. ATM/Debit transactions show up immediately as a pending transaction that deduct from our actual balance so there is no miscalculations that could lead to the dreaded over draft.

Also, what also works is taking up a tally of your monthly expenses, dividing it by 4 (weeks) which leaves a sum of cash. What is left over, you and your finance can withdrawl the monies out of an ATM and all he has is the cash to carry him through the week for lunch, cokes, what ever. When the cash is gone, then that's it. No mas moola.

Heh. Then ask him if that 6 pack was worth 40 bucks...

<3
Ally

My husband had SO MUCH trouble with this when we first got married that I decided the only way to deal with it was to force him to take charge of the situation. Our budget was at a breaking point and there were weeks we couldn't buy groceries for the house and had to beg family members for stuff from their pantries because of his little this and that purchases on the debit card that he didn't think about.

I got my own bank account that my pay would be deposited in, and I got all the bills switched over to his name only so only his credit would be ruined if he screwed up LOL. My credit cards that I had for a clothing store and housewares store I kept in my name only.

I then told him all the bills were now his responsibility; that I would give him a portion of my paycheck every two weeks only if he was taking care of the bills. I laid out how much everything was and I made sure he understood that I'd only hand over my pay to him if it was going to the bills and not to sodas, snacks, lunches out (especially since I packed him a lunch every day!) etc.

Before we were married, whenever he got in financial trouble he'd been bailed out by his family so he really never learned what it was like to keep to a budget and when we were first married our budget was TIGHT! But he learned!! And managed to learn without ruining his credit hehe. We didn't have a mortgage then or I probably would have paid the mortgage out of my own money to ensure we didn't lose the house; we were renting though and I did have to bail him out by paying the rent once, but as a result when my next payday came I took the amount of the rent out of what I normally would have given him which was a real shock to him!

Now it's almost five years later and he's *great* with the bills and pays much more attention to where little things go. I'm not sure if this approach would work for everyone but it helped when he had to go through the statement and see where all the money went. I made sure to keep back money from my check for my bills, my savings account, and my spending money and it would drive him crazy when I could do things like go to the movies and he had no money left - he learned well :D

Here's how we handle it in our household: We have separate checkbooks entirely. He manages his money and I manage mine. The bills are split down the middle. It's worked really well for 12 years. I usually write checks for the bills, just because I keep up on the due dates for the bills, then at the end of the month, he writes me a check for 1/2 of the amount. Then any "fun money" he or I have left over, we spend as we see fit. Credit cards? I have a few "retail" cards, but I pay those off at the end of each month (and have those only for the discounts). We do have one joint credit card that we use for major purchases, and vacations, but we are now at a point where that gets paid off at the end of the month too.

I tell you, I wouldn't have it any other way!

I'm almost to the point of breaking off the relationship. I can't marry someone that cannot manage money. I've worked hard to keep my finances on track. He doesn't have ANY credit-so he doesn't have much to lose. I've tried talking to him. I told him that we have $7 in the bank to last until payday and I noticed a few minutes ago he went to a restaurant for lunch today and spent almost $8.. SO, that's a late charge right there. His $8 lunch actually has cost $38! It's irresponsible.
Like I said, I feel bad that he can't have the things he wants (even though they aren't that expensive). But without me working, and staying home with the baby, every luxury we used to have no longer exists. It's not like it's new and he's just learning. The baby is almost a year old!
When it comes to my livelihood-I'm very serious about it. He's not. They say money is one of the top reasons for divorce, but in my case it may be the end of our relationship.
He knows the problem, acknowledges it, but isn't willing to do anything about it. I don't EVER get to do ANYTHING. I stay at home all day because I don't have the gas money to get anywhere..much less BUY something. Maybe I'm a bit jealous. I don't know. I'm just really getting upset....