What’s she gonna do? Sue him cause she can’t buy tarot cards?
As soon as she understands that they can’t/shouldn’t afford that item then things could change.
Clear thinking is needed here.
Hey, I love good energy and positive vibes just like the next person. But how can that be if he’s worried about retirement and emergency funds. That’s not good energy. No one will benefit.
Come on?!
A crystal ball?
I’d like to buy lots of stuff that would make me ‘happy’, but I like to have electricity and food too.
What would he do if she were taking money out to buy meth? Or anything else untoward?
Take the card away. Put ‘her’ money in her own account.
There are lots of ways to do this without a big fuss.
She is obviously not making good choices.
For the good of the family finances.
Another thing the OP can do is tell her there are spending limits for all non-essential goods & services, e.g. restaurants, movies, jewelry. Woo should be no different.
Holy fuck. This is ridiculous. The money belongs to both of them. She can walk into the bank and get a new card and all of the money. Why doesn’t she put ‘his’ money in a separate account? Where are you getting this absurd notion that one of them is in charge and can exert total control?
I wouldn’t worry too much about the New Age aspect. The problem would be just as bad if she blew the money on cosmetics or unneeded clothes.
Perhaps she wants you to control the budget since she is in denial about not making money, and that lets her overspend. Perhaps the first thing to do is to sit down with the monthly expenses and let her figure out how much she can spend on this stuff. (Obviously a lot less than she is spending.) If that doesn’t work more extreme measures might be called for, like opening your own account and taking money out of the joint one.
I seem to have read that money issues are the #1 cause of divorce, so you are not being overly worried about this.
She sees it as investing in future success and not wanting to kill her dreams. To her it would be like starting a business and needing web hosting or educational certification.
This happened with my BIL and SIL, though not (we think) on purpose, when she picked up his ipad and found the search window “Is my wife a hypochondriac?” It did not go well.
SIL is similar to the OP, though it is not woo stuff, but all kinds of stuff, much of it related to crafts that she says she will turn in money-making enterprises (she gets bored and hoards the equipment) and kitchen appliances that she does not use because she does not cook. In her case, there is something going on that she will not address despite urging from family and friends. Her daughter, a psych major, has underlined all sorts of things in her textbooks and leaves the pages open for her mother to see but, again, not helpful.
Wish I had something helpful for the OP, but this can be really hard and nigh on intractable, in our limited experience.
Well, I don’t want to sound like a Dick, but that’s where its going. Just a matter of when and how much you stand to lose between then and now. The ship is going down. Get on The First Lifeboat.
I also had a spendaholic girlfriend. I told her that we would never get married if she didn’t learn to control it. She didn’t. We’re still good friends though.
I’m with framing this in language she can understand. Feeling like you’re going broke gives you bad vibes. “It’s so wonderful how you can be supportive to so many people, so I know you can show me support. What would be a reasonable budget for your discretionary spending?” I use YNAB so I’d just make a budget category for her business or whatever she thinks she’s doing, and that’s her budget.
My spouse and I share accounts and all money but we each get a dollar amount in discretionary spending every month to do whatever we please with. Major expenses say greater than $200 should be discussed prior to spending (unless discretionary). One of the most helpful things for me to get my spending under control was when I took responsibility for the household budget. Now I know down to the dime what I’m sacrificing for the next gadget. Now the onus is on me to figure out where the money’s coming from. So rather than taking away her control, which is frankly terrifying, I’d consider giving her more control - and by that I mean more responsibility.
How involved is she with the finances right now? Do you have regular budget meetings, or does she more or less do whatever she wants until you tell her to stop spending money? Gotta get her on the same page as you. Gotta make this concrete for her. This too you can frame in her language - you want to be closer to her and that means the two of you deciding together what will be spent. You want to feel like you’re planning your future together. Be as romantic as possible.
I agree, and in fact I’d go one step further. Encourage her to take classes in small business management, marketing, sales techniques - whatever else you can find through the Small Business Administration or your local community college. Encourage her to set up a bank account just for the business. In short, if she believes she’s going to make money doing this, feed that belief while (gently) steering her to think of it as a business.
Many see a gift like that as not to be used for money. I also realized in my post I implied your wife had those medical problems; I was talking about my mom. And the most New-Ageist person I knew (by a wide margin, like not even a second or third place) suffered from hereditary craziness.
Is your wife bad at math? Mrs. Cad is and is shows in her inability to budget. I did some independent research on this issue and it turns out that budgeting and more complicated personal finance takes a basic conceptual understanding of algebra. As an example, Mrs Cad doesn’t understand if we split this set of bills and that set of bills then add it, it is the same as adding both sets then splitting. She thinks it’s not the same yet in my head I’m like, “It’s the distributive rule.”
Doesn’t seem ridiculous to me. He starts a new account, probsbly at another bank. He deposits his checks there. Each month he deposits a set amount in their existing account. She probably continues depositing her 10% of the household income in the joint account, but if not that’s okay.
If she demands an explanation, he says he needs the security of funding the retirement account and other things that are important to him.
If he puts in an absurdly low amount that would seem abusive, but there’s probably an amount that would seem fair to two rational partners.