So it’s not clear to me whether @Akaj’s objection is that his wife is currently spending, or could end up spending, more than they can afford, or whether he objects to her spending anything at all of the money he earns in ways he disapproves of.
Either way, a solution might be to budget a certain amount per month that the wife can spend any way she wants, without @Akaj having to approve. But the wife might not like that solution, because it sounds like she’s resistent to paying attention to how much things cost, how much she spends, etc.
It’s important that your wife understand that your concerns about your financial future as a couple are as important to you as her “energy” is to her. Respect is a two way street, you make the effort to respect her interest in spiritual pursuits, she needs to return that respect for the things you find important.
This is not really negotiable. She may not accept the “you can’t buy anything” ultimatum, but the compromise could be that she agrees to a modest amount of spending until such time as this endeavor is income positive. Maybe she agrees to reasonable boundaries around the spiritual stuff, boundaries you can live with and let her feel supported even if it’s something you think is complete nonsense.
I think the situation for the OP is different, in that there is only one income. If they were to split everything out and each have their own accounts, cards, and payments, we’re back to the whole allowance thing, since it’s one income supporting both people.
Yeah, like LSLGuy and Ann Hedonia said, this problem can only be addressed at the root level. You got to find a way to dig down to the bottom of it and find out what the base motives are.
Especially because this may only be the first of many phases. If you successfully curtail her spending on crystals and woo, she may simply switch to the next erratic behavior. There is some sort of powerful unmet need or desire here and she’s finding things that scratch that itch.
My aunt went through a torrent of weird phases - from insisting on buying a horse (“he spoke to me and said he wants me to buy him”), to insisting on starting a farm with no farming experience, to extreme environmentalism, to belief in aliens coming to redistribute the world’s wealth, to 9/11 and Flat-Earth conspiracies - a bunch of seemingly unrelated behaviors - but there was a common root cause underneath it all.
I wonder if this is where you focus, something like, “Hey, I was looking at our emergency fund, and I’m a little worried about it. I’m reading experts saying we should have 3 to 6 months income in the account, but we only have a little more than 2 months. What do you think about us trying to get it up to 4 or 5 months, over the next year?” From there, have a clear conversation about what y’all can do to reach this goal.
It makes sense to treat expenses as falling into one of three categories:
Needs (like mortgage payment, retirement spending, and groceries)
Luxuries (like eating out)
Business (like work clothes or commute expenses)
Part of the difficulty here might be that she’s categorizing a crystal ball as a business expense, and you’re classifying it as a luxury. Clarifying that might be helpful. If she genuinely sees it as a business expense, that’s legit–if she’s going to have a business. It’s worth talking about whether your family can afford a business venture at this point, with its associated expenses.
If it’s a luxury, it’s not worth judging the luxury IMO: it’s like if you bought tickets to a play, or a new gaming laptop, or a nice bottle of bourbon, or whatever luxuries make you happy. It is worth making sure you both are happy with the amount you get to spend on luxuries and are not taking away from needs.
Almost all of the responses are about money. That isn’t going to be very helpful to your marriage, because that only how YOU think about the issue, and your wife finds your way of thinking narrow, dull, and fearful. Just guessing. She isn’t going to become more like you.
Try thinking about more core needs, if you want to find common ground. My guess is the needs coming to the fore for you are safety, stability, and also a sense of reciprocal understanding with your wife, things like that. Money represents those needs for you, but it isn’t synonymous with them.
Your wife might be trying to get different needs met – autonomy, adventure, connection with ‘higher things’, a sense of giving back to the community, and probably surprising other stuff.
My point is, you can both get your core needs met in your relationship if you talk about what they are, and are willing to listen deeply to the other person.
A core need is never “my partner has to change” by the way.
Exactly. Me and Mrs. Cad have issues because I tend to be a saver and she is more carpe diem. Her attitude is what use is money if you don’t use it but the big problem is when she unilaterally makes huge purchases OR refuses to listen to me and then her only $1000 purchase grows to $3K after everything is done … and heaven help me if I say, “I told you so.”
These kinda things always remind me of my old auntie who sent all, at first, her egg money to a TV preacher.
Then she started skimming from the household money.
That turned into using bill money. Bills went unpaid. But she assured everyone riches were coming her way any day now. The prayer cloth came the same day the publishers clearing house envelope showed up. “See, I told you so! I’m gonna win!”
She bought scads of subscriptions. My Granny telling her she was being stupid didn’t help.
She ended up borrowing more money on the house. That debt was not paid and the house was foreclosed on. Then she lived with Granny til she she died in a nursing home of dubious reputation.
My husband is the saver in the family. But we have a longstanding agreement that we do not ever make decisions about big purchases singlehandedly. When we were first married, that was about $100. It’s more like $1000 now (or as my husband likes to put it, a 'horse unit"). This has worked for forty years, but the first years were rocky ones.
Overall excellent post but I think it’s somewhat about money to her too. She believes that this still will lead her to wealth so not allowing this spending of doodads and seminars is thwarting that and any failure will be his fault if he curtails any if it. As I mentioned upthread. The thinking is akin to people into MLMs.
In my experience, you are better off wasting the money on Crystals. At least you can use them as paperweights, or to throw at howling Tomcats out by the fence.
I had to take a break for a few hours and may not be able to catch up until tomorrow. I truly appreciate all your answers and insight.
But I will say, in response to many, that I’m not going to deposit my paychecks in a separate account, take away Mrs. A’s credit card or otherwise take steps to limit her access to our money. She’s my 57-year-old wife, not my 17-year-old daughter.