I must admit, I feel kind of sheepish being so new to MMM and the community, and for my second post ever waltzing my mouse over to the Badassity forum, but I really wasn't sure where else to post it and am very excited to tell someone. Especially my dad, but I haven't had the chance yet. :)
So I have always been the thrifty saver and my long-term, live-in boyfriend has always been the lofty consumer. I have more debt and bills than him (car payment and student loans), he makes slightly more money than me, and yet somehow I always have money left over at the end of the month and he doesn't. This in itself causes issues because he owes me money as well.
After my dad introduced me to MMM, I was completely hooked, and making the transition was pretty easy for me, but I knew (or I thought) that getting SO to convert was going to be an uphill battle. Boy, was I wrong. Maybe he really had it in him all along, or maybe I really worked some MMM magic, but here's the basic rundown of what I did:
I got him to print out 3 months of debit card history, about 200 line items, I entered them into a spreadsheet, categorized them by entity, entity type (gas station, entertainment provider, restaurant, etc.), purchase detail and most importantly category (Fixed Expenses, Contracted Expenses, Variable Necessities and Non Necessities). I sorted by months, variables, totals, etc. and found the averages for all his different spending types over the course of three months. There are a LOT of detail and figures I was able to show him from this, but won't break it all down in the first post. Note this didn't include his credit card because he wasn't using it during this time. Here's a short run down of what I found:
25% of his take home pay went to fixed expenses - rent, electricity (flat rate for him).
25% went to variable necessities - gas, groceries, etc.
17% to contracted expenses - gym membership, cable & internet (yes he's in a contract), credit card, etc.
and a whopping 33% on non necessities - eating out, entertainment, gas station food & drinks, etc.
After this reality check, things started to finally hit home for him. It's been over 2 weeks and the only non necessity he's bought is a barbecue sandwich at the fireworks show. In fact, several times I have caved and asked if he wanted to go out for lunch together and he's turned me down because he wants to save the money. :) After the first week he came to me in humble amazement and said, "Wow, you were right, I still have money left in my bank account - a lot of it!"
Step 2 came yesterday when I took his debts and interest rates and showed him how quickly he could pay them off with different amounts of monthly payments (and subsequent interest paid). The bottom line was that he could pay off all ~$3,000 of his debt (including his debt to me) and save a $1,000 emergency fund in his bank account in one year and still have $240 left over each month to do with as he pleased. If he sells his motorcycle (which he's said he wants to do), he could have all that done in less than 6 months.
I am so excited for him... and me! He's told me that it's been a lot easier than he thought it would be to not spend the money and that it feels really good to have a plan to pay off his debts so quickly and still have money left over to feel like he's not depriving himself. His biggest trap was buying food and drinks from gas stations and eating out, but keeping the fridge stocked has eliminated that temptation.
Now step 3, way, way down the road, will be convincing him that squirreling away all of that extra cash and investing it will make him much happier in the long run than saving it up to buy bigger and better toys - like a new motorcycle. Admittedly that was my tactic at first - trying to convince the lofty consumer to stop spending money on things that make them happy in the immediate to save all that money for a happiness way, way off in the future is a huge leap to take at one time. So, in baby steps, I told him to think about how he could save for a house (we rent) and eventually get a new motorcycle. :) Baby steps... he'll get there.
One final thought here is that I know this won't work for everyone - everyone is different and everyone's consumer SO is different, but I just thought I share what worked for me. There's a really good chance it will work for someone else too. SO had a general idea where his money was going every month, but until it was tangible figures in front of him, he had no idea how much he could be saving. Most of the money he spent every month was spent less that $10 at a time, so he thought nothing of these small purchases. But when they added up to almost 25% of that 33% of his money spent on non necessities, he finally started to realize what a big deal those little purchases were. I'm so proud of him :)
P.S. Feel free to ask me for any of the nitty-gritty on my 6 spreadsheet workbook I created to do this! Or anything else, really :)