How can I talk to my husband about my desire to spend money?

[mm1970]

Hello fellow enfj! 

I feel for you.  My DH for years and years would spend all the 'fun money' leaving me without for clothes or courses or activities too. He was ok to spend until the joint account was done each month.

What worked was a bit like the other descriptions, but we called it personal allowances. I set the amount and we agreed what we would use it for ( haircuts, lunches, activities, clothing, things ordered on line from China)

At first it was cash that we took out together from the atm, and put into envelopes with our names on it ( one each). After 6 months he decided separate bank accounts for this instead with auto load was easier.

Oh, the joy of finally having my own money. I had only had joint accounts before.

 For everyone that thinks is is abou relative income, it is not. He was Sahd and I was sole income for many of those years.

This spoke to me.  Not in my own marriage, but in my mother's.

When my parents were married, there was very little money.  Mom was expected to handle the money, but dad would get overbearing about it.  And he liked to go out with friends on the weekend.  And one day (after a couple of layoffs where his income dropped), she had to tell him "you can't go.  We don't have $35."  He got very mad.

After the divorce my mother remarried.  Money was not as tight, but my stepfather had been single for 43 years, and was accustomed to spending all the fun money.  He was also a big saver.  So he handed over the checkbook to mom, and there she was, forced to balance the money again.  He was spending money on the horse, and on stamps, and on coin collections.  But she was trying to buy food and pay the bills.  And she was a people pleaser, not very good at making her point known.  So much friction.  I told her to just give him the damn checkbook and let him pay the bills.  She was so excited to get Social Security (only ~$200 a month) because she had her OWN money.

Frugality is good and all, but still my stepdad (like when my mom was alive) is frugal and not willing to spend, but he's got SS and a pension and is sitting on $500,000.  He can afford to spend a bit more money.  I feel like the last few years of mom's life were unnecessarily tight.

[Apples]

We use fun money on credit cards, which are linked to Mint.  Twice a month I sit down and categorize expenses (we did it a lot more often in the beginning) and then the "budget" item on Mint lets each of us know how much we have left.  You can make the amount rollover from month to month so if you are over or under $20 it is reflected in the next month's spending limit.  It works great for us.

[lifejoy]

So how did it go?

Well, it's going. We had a really nice talk and got some new ideas going. We're going to do fun money in a new way. I'm going to use a separate account, but he doesn't want a separate account for himself. This annoys me because I don't see it as the most efficient: he plans to tally his expenses with spreadsheets and keep track and calculate how much fun money he has left each month. I consider it much easier to just have it sit in an account and not have to mess with keeping track. He also doesn't want to have a separate debit card. Sigh. So he's amenable to me making changes and having some fun money, but he's reluctant to change his behaviours in the way I want him to. I'm trying to stay open-minded and recognize that people have very emotional reactions to money, and it's not just about "what makes sense".

It's a process. I'm enjoying and re-reading this thread. I'm confident that my DH is not a controlling jerk. :) Not that anyone said he was, I'm just happy to have ruled that out! It's not easy to figure out what will work best for us, but we're both trying.

Also I may revisit this with him in more depth when his royal collage exam is over. It's only a week away, and I feel like this is not an ideal time for me to try and have deep conversation with him. His mind is elsewhere, and understandably so.

Thanks for contributing to this thread. It's very helpful.