And offered advice that’s very likely to precipitate that situation, namely, divorce.
And you’ve completely ignored the moral aspect. Unilaterally taking control of the family assets from your legally competent spouse is morally abhorrent. IMHO.
We’ve heard that she spent $350 of a crystal ball. We’ve also heard that they go out to eat a few times a week. That doesn’t sound like she is taking control of any significant fraction of the family assets.
Can relate. I’m definitely better than I used to be about impulse purchases. I created a “Wish Farm” in You Need a Budget where I create a separate category for anything I want, and then I have to fund it with extra funds once all the bills are paid for. This naturally lengthens the period of time I have to wait to buy something, and it turns out usually that I don’t really want it that badly.
I wonder if she’d be willing to do like a three-day wait for every discretionary purchase? You both would follow this rule. I just think it might help if she had something concrete.
Yeah, I should take that advice, too. I waited a couple hours to post, but perhaps I should have waited longer. Sorry about that.
No apology needed. You’re not coming across as employing rhetorical tricks to try to win the Internet. But if the thread is pissing you off–and I certainly can see why–stepping back might be good. Maybe I should, too.
I personally find that just budgeting for and planning for a purchase is nearly as satisfying as making the purchase. It’s possible that any mechanism that allows her to think about purchases longer before actually making them will help.
I feel that is a reasonable inference. Is there a reason your wife didn’t go back to massage? Speaking from a completely personal point of view, I know when Covid hit my photography business in 2020 that it left me completely rudderless and, well, feeling a bit purposeless. Plus the whole stress of the Covid situation. I wonder if your wife might be feeling a bit like that and her newfound hobby (or possibly business) is helping to fill that void.
She used to work (as a contractor) at a top area clinic, which naturally closed when Covid hit. But they re-opened in summer 2020, and she didn’t yet feel comfortable resuming such close contact work (or with what she viewed as the clinic’s aggressive approach). By mid-2021, when vaccines were widely available, she decided to resume business on her own, visiting clients in their homes. She still does so, but only performs 2-3 massages a week.
Her “plan” (such as it is) is to mix some of her new modalities (Reiki, sound, etc.) with massage as a new type of healing therapy. As I mentioned upthread, it sounds nutty to me but some people really like it.
Besides the woo factor, there are two perfectly valid reasons for her to explore this. It’s less physically taxing for her – not a trivial concern for a 57-year-old – and clients can remain dressed, so she can treat them in public spaces.
I think adding those modalities to her massage services may actually be a good idea, if there is a demand for it and if there is some business strategy behind it. I mean, hell, around here (well, maybe not in my neighborhood specifically), some people pay for reiki for dogs! In fact, that’s how I learned what reiki even was, when I saw it in an ad for dog services. Sound therapy doesn’t sound that weird and woo to me. Sure, the crystals start getting a bit afield. But I do understand your frustration, as the way I’m understanding it is that this is somewhere between a hobby and business for her, and you’d be more comfortable if she saw it more seriously as a business. But there are clearly people out there willing to pay money for this, and if there’s not a lot of people doing it, there is opportunity there. (Oh, wait, did you say you’re up in Highland Park or near it? There’s gotta be reasonable demand for all sorts of services there.)
Live by RationalWiki, die by RationalWiki. 
I previously suggested marriage counseling, and never suggested the OP should address matters by being “sneeringly contemptuous” of his wife’s beliefs.
I do not share your apparent belief in Healing Crystals, or that falling deeply for a branch of woo is a benign occurrence. It’s bad news when any person’s avocation gets so out of hand that it threaten’s their family’s financial security. A breakdown in critical thinking capacity on the part of the person with the obsession likely makes finding a solution tougher.
Demand, perhaps. Business strategy, not so much.
It’s a little closer to a hobby than a business, and I’m actually fine with that. While I do think she could generate steady revenue if she got serious about it – because this area has tons of discretionary income and plenty of people who buy into this stuff – she’s basically allergic to marketing herself.
We don’t need her to triple her income if she cuts back on the spending.
Look, I think Crystals and Reiki and all that stuff are absolute horseshit. But do you know what else is? About a million things men and women spend their money on. I don’t see how a $350 crystal globe is any different than a set of $350 audio cables or $350 spent on another guitar, or $350 spent for another watch, or any number of things spouses blow their money on that makes them happy but which has no other value.
I suspect that a thread about a depressed husband buying a guitar would not end in, “Divorce the idiot!” Or “Take all his money away and put him on a financial leash!”
The wife is depressed, and just went through a major life change when she lost her career. She’s trying to find new interests, new connections and a new job. The crystals may be a poor choice, but they are likely symptomatic of an underlying problem, not the problem itself, which is more likely to be about her depression and need to give herself something to feel good about and to find something she can do that gives her some purpose.
LOL, she actually did buy a cello, though it cost a lot less than the crystal, and she ran it by me first. Neither if us have any idea how to play it, but it’s kind of fun to mess around with.
100% agree. People are getting too caught up in the fact that this is woo. Yeah, we all hate woo, that’s probably something most of us have in common, but a lot of people believe in that crap and it’s not particularly remarkable on its face. Except in extreme cases I don’t think it qualifies as truly delusional or mental illness. Substitute any other interest - hell, I mentioned my writing attempts upthread, what if she was trying to be a writer or an editor and spending a bunch of money on that? Believe me it adds up fast.
The wife’s skills are 100% marketable, the only problem with her business venture is she lacks business skills. For a motivated entrepreneur this would definitely be a profitable venture.
This is my wife, too. The shoptherapy purchases add up, and that’s the problem I have with it. Any one purchase would be good. The items being bought are generally interesting and entertaining. The price of any individual one is well within budget, even the more expensive ones. In terms of this thread, I fully support the $350 palantír replica, it will look awesome on display! The problem is that it’s the fourth $100+ bauble purchase in the last two weeks, and we can’t sustain that rate of spending.
I think here, even disregarding the shoptherapy aspect, a big part of my wife’s spending is that she is only considering each purchase in isolation. “This is a cool thing, and well worth the price, therefore I’ll buy it,” and the same again tomorrow. I wonder if your wife does similar.
You gotta be kidding me.
Exactly right.
One aspect to this is that it’s fun and exciting to dive into a new business. There’s a lot of enthusiasm at first, the people around her are encouraging her to pursue her dream, she’s learning lots of new things, etc. Running a business is not really like that at all. Running a business can be fun (sometimes), but it’s really more about a lot of boring day-to-day stuff like marketing, tracking expenses, dealing with customers, etc. People can easily get sucked into starting business after business because that’s the fun part. Or getting degree after degree for the same reason. But if they can’t convert the initial investment into long term income, it’s just a waste of money. It’s like going on vacation after vacation. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s going to create problems if there’s not enough money to support that lifestyle.
The woo business is problematic on another layer since it’s not based on reality. There’s always more positive effect that can be had by just attending another class, buying another bobble, etc. The universe will reward all that hard work. Blah blah blah. At least with something like opening a deli, eventually reality hits and they realize that they need to stop spending money on the business.
One thing you can consider is to funnel money into time locked accounts like CDs, IRAs, and 401k’s. That will ensure the money will be around in the future since it can’t be spent on day-to-day expenses.
In this vein, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to auto-deduct the retirement money before it even hits your bank account. As the adage goes, “Pay yourself first.” The stakes go down considerably once you have that out of the way.
Your advice in this thread has been excellent, but I will push back just a little on this. If we believe the OP, then the woo is not entirely harmless, because it manifests in this:
That unwillingness to discuss the issue with her husband is, if not rooted in, at least manifesting itself in the woo beliefs. So I don’t quite think it’s the same as purchasing a Switch or a watch or splurging on dinner together. The woo is (at least somewhat) preventing her from discussing this with her husband in a productive manner.
I think some people find discussions about money stressful. Well, just about everyone who isn’t independently wealthy finds discussions about money stressful, because those discussions are about not having enough money, which is stressful.
Mrs A. may simply be translating her stress about finances into her woo belief system, rather than her belief system being the genesis of not wanting to have money discussions.
That was my interpretation. I think if she were into video games, her response would have been something like, “can you drop the topic already, you are stressing me out.”