Dealing with compulsive spending

I think my wife is a compulsive spending. Here we are, 8 days from payday, and I’m concerned that we will run out of money before the end of week - and this is my large paycheck, the one that the mortgage does not come out of. I’ve transferred the remainders of our savings to cover anticipated debits against my checking account and am not confident it’s enough. I’m the only money-maker in the family with my wife being a stay-at-home mom to our three kids. It’s an arrangement that we’re both happy with although being a single-income family is at times worrisome. The single-income I make is a good one though, not six-figures good, but still pretty nice.

My wife has always been the type to go into the store for one item and come out with six. A week ago or so, she said she had to go to Target to buy my son a pair of sweatpants. Mentally my eyes rolled back because it’s never “one thing” with her. $116 dollars later she’s bought sweatpants, socks for everybody, jeans, etc. Only the sweatpants were necessary.

I recently constructed & hung shelves to allow us to organize our one room where her hobby table, my computer, etc. are located. We talked at that time, heads nodding together in agreement, that now that the mess is cleaned up and organized, there was no need to rush out to purchase more stuff to fill the new clean space. She went to the local hobby store this past week and spent $150 on stuff that we just agreed (together) she didn’t need (although guilt made her later take back about $40 of it).

We both agreed that this paycheck was used up and we needed to conserve until the next payday, then I discover these $150 & $116 bombshells - both (and perhaps more) spent after our talk about the remaining paycheck. I feel that I’m talking to thin air - ineffective and ignored.

I’ve cashed in a week of vacation to try to put some reserve back in our savings account. Now this is a week of vacation gone from me and I have to work more.

I’ve gotten resentful.

I’m afraid to spend money, having buyer’s remorse over a semi-monthly treat of a professional latte, since I know that that $5 spent on the Latte might be needed in the checking account at the end of the week. I have one pair of blue jeans right now because I feel I can’t afford a second pair (I usually keep two in rotation). I’ve put off a new pair of glasses, despite having insurance, because I know that I’ll shell out $60 for the “extras” on the glasses that aren’t covered by insurance.

My wife has concealed purchases from me. She consistently understates what she spends when I ask. I think she took the checkbook with her on her last trip so I couldn’t see the purchases. I come home to a new collection of kids-meals’ toys half the days of the week because she hit the fast-food joint for lunch rather than feed the kids at home. Meanwhile I’m eating a succession of Costco burritos daily for lunch because they’re cheap.

I don’t want to treat my wife like a child - I love her and this would hurt her. She’s an adult and I want to treat her as an adult. I want her, though, to be more responsible with our money. I can’t pull rank, as it were, as the primary earner in the house and dictate from on high how it’s going to be. Besides, despite our agreements this past week to not spend, she blew $300 on unneeded junk. “Pulling rank” probably wouldn’t work in this age of electronically available cash.

This past week, because of these problems, I decided to do something about it. We have some friends that divide their money into three parts, his, hers, & ours. The “his” and “hers” money they call MOMO, for “Money of my own”. Each person can spend their MOMO as they wish without negative commentary from the other. If my wife wants to blow hers on a massage and manicure then I can’t fault her for it. If I want to spend mine on a new hard drive and a bunch of shoot-em-up software, it’s my business. All expenses not related to running the house or feeding us is supposed to be from the MOMO money: clothing, haircare, eating out, etc.

We have the complication with the children. 50 hours a week, they’re with her exclusively. If she wants to buy lunch, then they need it to. We’ve talked about it in the past and decided the she needs more MOMO to cover their expenses.

So, here’s what I did. I created a pretty realistic budget, detailing Grocery money, mortgage, etc. but also remembering savings, home maint. and a small reserve for emergencies. What’s left over, around $1200 a month, I divided 80/20 between she (and the kids) and I as MOMO money.

Her roughly $960 and my $240 per month is supposed to be for all our personal expenses, automobile gas, credit cards (we each have our own), hobbies, clothing, etc. The kid expenses come out of her money, too. For eating out as a couple, rather than go Dutch or taking turns, I included a monthly “date” for us in the non-MOMO budget. I think this will also act as a reminder that we need time by ourselves, too, as husband and wife rather than always Mom and Dad.

I’ve yet to present this plan to her in detail although I’ve talked with her in general about it.

I’m nervous that she’s going to thing that $960 in “disposable” income isn’t sufficient. To me, my $240/month seems like more than I’ll ever use. I send about $75/month to my credit card and live like a monk most of the rest of the time. It’ll be a little less like it since I’m going to start picking up my own clothing but that’s maybe $300/year the way I do things.

I’m also worried that when she runs out of money before her next MOMO infusion that she’ll sob story me to try to get more money. I have a hard time not trying to please her (she is my wife after all) and having the kids needs as leverage might gather some powerful guilt.

So my question to the Doper community: What do you think? Do you think it’ll work?

Do you, or your spouse/SO have spending problems and how do you deal with it?

Unless you are physically hiding the extra money, she will get at it and spend it.

They’ll end up doing the same when they become adults.

Getting her some help will help her. She’s acting like a spoiled child who gets whatever she wants. Wasting money on useless or unneeded items doesn’t sound like the behavior of a mature adult.

When you get married, the MOMO stops. It’s okay to splurge every now again, but make sure the living expenses are covered first.

Get some help before it’s too late and good luck to you.

BTW, I AM speaking from experience. When I got married, Mrs. Blue Sky’s finances were in a shambles - multiple store credit cards, many instances of second, third, and sometimes fourth notices. Bills constantly being paid late. One day I got sick of seeing our paychecks vaporize on payday.

I grabbed the “bill basket” and cleaned it out. I paid on everything every week until I got rid of the unnecessary expenses. I cut up the credit cards (except for two for use in emergencies) and sent them back to whence they came.

In the past three years, we’ve only had a couple of instances where we got overwhelmed, but we quickly recovered. I pay the bills now and they are rarely, if ever, late.

I’m divorced, one of the reasons being that my ex-husband had a spending problem.

Anyhow, it sounds as though your wife recognizes that she has a spending problem, and/or that her spending is something that bothers you. So you’ve already gone through step #1, making sure she’s aware that you feel distressed by this.

Your 80/20 plan sounds good to me. $960 per month for food, clothing, etc. for herself and the kids (I assume you don’t have 10 of them!) sounds reasonable to me.

In my experience, it’s VERY important to separate your finances in situations like this. You can’t go around being worried that you haven’t enough to pay your mandatory expenses! You should have a separate account where the mortgage, auto insurance, etc. is paid from, where you are the only one who has access. And the personal money should be in each of your separate names.

I know it’s hard to save up money (it’s hard for me!), but if you can, try to also put some money away for vacations, big expenses, job trouble, etc.

My ex was reasonably agreeable to this kind of arrangement, but he also got into a lot of credit card debt (he’d use cash advances from one to pay off the other, etc.). I hope that’s not also a problem with her. If it is, that might be harder to control, as it’s so easy to get credit cards, and to hide the bills, etc. Jut make sure you don’t co-sign for anything. If you think she’s hiding credit card debt, you can go online to the big agencies and pretend you’re her, and get her credit history. (Obviously I’m not a lawyer, you’re probably not supposed to do this.)

Good luck, I sure wish you two can work it out. Normally I’m against one person being in control of the finances, but in the case of a spouse who can’t control him/herself, it’s really important to put a lid on it, because it can seriously damage both of you.

If she wants to work on this issue herself, there are organizations devoted to self-improvement in this area. I can’t remember the names, but they were something like Overspenders Anonymous.

Good luck! Obviously you will have to very diplomatic in your discussions with your wife, but financially your plan sounds good and reasonable to me.

My first thought is that maybe you’ve got a case of having different definitions of what’s “unneeded junk” and “essential stuff.” The things you list her buying - socks, jeans, a fast-food lunch for the kids - certainly aren’t luxury items, nor can they be defined as unneeded. Clothing is needed, lunch is needed. Now, if she was buying Armani and spending $500/week on “kid’s lunches” that would be one thing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.

The other thing that makes me suspect this is you saying you can live on $240/month (minus $75, so really $165). IMO, that’s an extremely low amount of money for “walking around” cash. $300/year for clothing is extremely low as well, even for someone not into clothing.

Sounds to me like the two of you need to have a talk about what each of you define as essential as opposed to junk. You said you make a decent living - given that, stocking up on, say, socks at Target because there’s a good sale is smart shopping, not throwing away cash. $960/month as spending money for a woman and at least two kids (I don’t think you mentioned how many or their ages) is not that high, if you’re lumping in fast food lunches, clothing, hair care, gas (running kids around costs money!), hobbies for wife AND kids (are they in sports? go to classes? go to movies?), and who knows what else.

Another thing - are you truly living above your means? IE:

  • are you having trouble paying off credit card debt? Do you or your wife constantly run up MORE debt on the cards every month?
  • do you have problems paying for essentials - ie, mortgage/rent, food, utilities?

I think both you and and you wife might have problems. I have to admit that your personal, monthly 240 MOMO budget and fretting that you can't afford another pair of jeans or more than two lattes a month, or 60 pair of glasses, for an adult, professional man making 50K- 75K per year, sounds like you are possibly parimonious to the point of absurdity. Being careful with money within reason is an admirable trait, but it sounds like you are on the other far end of the spendthrift-tightwad spectrum, and quite frankly tighfistedness to the point of irrationality has destroyed as many marriages as over spending.

“unneeded junk” is paper, stickers, and other scrapbooking supplies from the hobby store and socks bought when there’s sufficient others around if the laundry is done, sorted, and delivered.

Nothing was needed except a pair of sweats. When the account is basically empty, shopping for things that are a simply good deal when the account is empty is not “smart shopping”. Those items can wait a couple of weeks.

I know I can live on $240/month. I live on about $100 a month now (including the $75 for the credit card) so it this amount seems like boundless luxury. I don’t eat out, I don’t go to coffee. My lunches, breakfast, & dinner are all eaten at home or from food brought from home. I can keep a $20 bill in my wallet for two weeks without breaking it. Astro, I feel I have to live this way because if I don’t we’ll be in more financial trouble than we are already.

Her MOMO money is just for lunches that are eaten out. Groceries, and therefore lunches at home are covered by our family budget. Feeding her and the kids for a McDonald’s minimum of $15/visit is a lot of bologna & peanut butter.

I agree, gas for a family (three kids by the way, aged 1 through 6) is expensive. However two tanks of gas a week is $40/week or about $160 a month and I know she doesn’t buy that much. Her credit cards (two clothing stores, two MC, one gas card) have total payments of around $120/month). Kids sports/dance expenses have totaled around $150 this fall over the past three months. Regular school expenses (tuition/lunch tickets) are paid out of the family budget. Entertainment like movies (& DVD purchases) are supposed to be MOMO.

A little quick math from the above is about $600/month leftover after gas & credit cards (which is mostly deferred clothing and other personal expenses anyway).

I’m trying to force choices on her, if she want’s the $100 shopping spree, she has to give up McDonalds for two weeks. I can’t make that choice for her so limiting the resources seems a way to do it.

Besides, the only argument is how to manage the $1200 that’s left from the budgeted expenses. Using the MOMO method, if I give her more than $960/month there’s less than $240/month for me. This is the fundemental fact that seems to elude her to this date, and why the savings account is empty and I have to cancel a week of vacation. What is spent in one place is unavailable to be spent elsewhere.

The implementation idea, by the way, is three accounts. One for family cash, one each for our MOMO accounts. I do worry that having the family checkbook in her purse, though, will lead to her having “Oops” moments when it’s time to pay for something that should come from her account.

Yes, we are living above our means. If is wasn’t for a company bonus in June, we’d have emptied the savings months ago. My point is that I believe it’s my wife’s overspending that’s causing us to live beyond our means. The bills are covered, it’s the extras that are killing us. She has a hard time “delaying gratification” to use my father’s term.

There’s also the problem of what to do when one buying trip needs to be split between family & MOMO money. If we’re at Costco buying groceries (family money) and I want to pick up a DVD (MOMO) money, do I do a checkout separately or checkout at the same time and just payback the family money from my MOMO money? Some logistics need to be worked out, yet.

This should be a big red flag.

Some friends of mine use the MOMO method and it seems to work well for them. In their case it is the husband who wants to buy the toys without thinking about where the money is coming from.

I can identify somewhat as money often seems to burn a hole in my pocket too. I’m self-employed and so I get paid in large irregular chunks rather than regular paydays. That big pile of cash can make me feel richer than I am. However, since Mr. S got downsized in 2001, I have been the big breadwinner and paying all the bills. They get paid on time, too, and we have a cushion for emergencies. I often force myself to put the “extra” money in savings and forget about it until we need it for bills that arrive between then and the next check from a client.

So to avoid that “Ooh, I’m rich” feeling after the MOMO infusion, I’d suggest making it weekly rather than monthly.

I would suggest that you both go to some financial counseling sessions. Both because it’s your joint family finances, and because (as people have suggested) there appear to be some differences between how the two of you define “necessary” expenses. You don’t need to have exactly the same views on this, but you need to gain enough understanding of each other’s views that you can seriously talk about spending. And it’s easier to get started on this with an experienced, neutral person in on the discussion.

You think your wife may be a compulsive spender, others here think that you may be overly parsiminous. I don’t think we have enough info to decide (and we don’t need to decide). But you and your wife DO need to decide on spending in your family.

Several of your comments seem to indicate that you are feeling quite stressed about this, and also frustrated that you and your wife don’t seem to be communicating on this issue. Financial issues are one of the biggest causes of divorce. You should deal with this before it blows your marriage & family apart!

And there is no need to deal with it alone! I’m sure there are lots of family financial counselors in the Denver area, and many of them are available at low cost. And if they can help prevent a few more incidents of hundreds of dollars in “unneeded” spending, it will be worth it.

You’ve taken the first step, and identified a problem. Now go on to the next step, and get your family some help – go to an expert for joint counseling.

With all due respect Belrix, as a divorced, male professional with 2 kids and paying hefty CS, and in roughly your same income cohort, your level of thriftiness based on the examples you provided seems almost absurd, and you seem to take perverse pride in living like a starving grad student even though you are a reasonably well paid professional. It really makes me wonder how much of a spending problem your wife has, vs your paranoia about running out of money. She may well have a problem controlling unecessary purchases which need to be addressed, but it sounds (quite frankly) like you’ve got a problem too that could be equally destructive in the long run if taken to extremes.

While it may appeal to some women, a lot of women I know would give you a pass as a potential SO if they knew how tightfisted you would be based on the examples you provided about your personal expenditures.

After reading your response, Belrix, I would very much recommend that the two of you go to some financial counseling sessions. I agree with astro and others - it sounds like the problem is not that your wife is a compulsive spender, but that the two of you have vastly different ideas about what is essential and what is fluff. You have yet to mention anything that raises red flags in my book. $100 is not a “shopping spree” for someone who makes a comfortable living. Paper and stickers sounds like an inexpensive way to keep a couple kids occupied for a couple hours, not a ridiculous expense. Unless one of you have a sock fetish, buying socks is NOT compulsive spending.

Have you yourself ever spent a significant amount of time taking care of the kids one on one? I mean 2-3 weeks where you’re the primary caregiver. That might make you change your thinking on what’s essential and what’s not. Stopping at McDonald’s for lunch while spending the day lugging 3 kids to the grocery store and on other errands is probably very much worth $15 in my book - it makes the kids happy and is a time saver. You’ll also probably see the need to purchase things to keep the kids occupied for an hour or so every day while you do other stuff around the house - cook, clean, etc. You can’t really do that if the 1 year old is crying, the 3 year old is bored and tugging on your shirt, and the 6 year old is giving himself a haircut in the bathroom!

I’m not saying that she’s not spending more money than maybe you can afford, but what you describe is not compulsive spending. And conversely, living on as little money as you describe is a odd as well. You guys need to have some frank money discussions, probably with a professional to give you some guidance.

A big red flag should be the fact that she’s hiding purchases from you and not letting you see the checkbook. Also, I think you do need to get a little firm with her and tell her that you’d like her to cut down on her spending and not buy so impulsively.

Try to get her to do the grocery shopping on the weekends when you’re able to stay home with the kids. You can spend more time with the kids and she can spend some time without the kids… even if it is just grocery shopping. Less distraction for her as well.

Meal planning could be done too so she could buy stuff for lunch instead of feeding them fast food during the week. Fast food is alright on occasion but it is expensive and unhealthy when eaten on a regular basis. You have to get her to see what purchases are important and what purchases are not important. $150 at a craft store doesn’t seem very important… especially if you’d already discussed it and decided you didn’t need to buy anything new for that space!! She’s obviously not listening to what you’re trying to tell her.

I understand that you don’t want to come off like and asshole and say, “I’m the one that makes the money so I’m the one that can tell you how to spend it.” but maybe you should try it. You’ve already tried to discuss the situation with her and she’s even agreed with you but she hasn’t tried to hold up the agreement not to spend so much. Spending becomes a habit over time and will just get worse as time goes on.

Your MOMO budget sounds like a good idea except for a couple of things. I would include the kids’ expenses like clothing and gas money in with the household expenses… not with her MOMO. I would allot half of her MOMO for the kids expenses (clothes, sports/dance fees, etc.,) her credit card payments, gas, etc., and give your wife a weekly allowance of $100-120 to spend on whatever she wants… including eating at McDonalds! That’s more than enough IMO. If she has $960 a month for MOMO… she’s going to spend $960 a month and not necessarily on stuff that’s needed! Eventually the $960 won’t be enough and you’ll feel the need to increase her MOMO.

I would try to talk the situation over with your wife again and let her know how concerned you are with the money situation. Make up a breakdown of all the monthly bills… right down to gas money, kids clothes, kids sports/dance fees, credit card payments, etc., and tell her you’d like to stick to a budget and each of you have a weekly allowance. Try it for 3 months and see how it goes. If it’s not working… make some adjustments. Sounds like something needs to be done though. Good luck.

Also, FWIW, I don’t think you’re paranoid about money or tightfisted. You just want to make sure your family is taken care of and has everything they need but you’d also like a little money in savings to fall back on in case it’s needed. Nothing wrong with being frugal. Just because you’ve got the money doesn’t mean you have to spend it!!

Nothing is wrong with being frugal if both partners in the marriage agree to it. If one does and one doesn’t, well, there’s problems. As others have pointed out, differences of opinions on money matters is a leading cause of marital discord.

Another question for Belrix - do you and your wife come from different economic backgrounds? I’ve seen that cause major problems before. If you grew up thinking that Target jeans were a treat because you were used to getting jeans from the secondhand store and your wife grew up thinking that Target jeans were for poor people because her parents shopped at Macy’s, that’s an issue to look at.

Yup, Athena we do come from differing economic backgrounds. Her father was a VP of a large company. During her high school years she had her own credit card with a $500/month allowance. A child of divorce, her dad compensated with money and her mom was emotionally abusive - playing “Let’s make Dad look like and asshole” games (among other things)

I grew up as one of four kids in a single-income family. It wasn’t one of those “we were poor but didn’t know we were poor things.” It was more like, “We were middle class and we knew it.” My family never bought new cars. We shopped for clothes at K-Mart instead of the mall. McDonalds, less ubiquitous in that rural region, was still a rare treat. A couple times a month we may stop at the Dairy Queen for a cone after dinner and that was about it for eating out of the house. We took yearly vacations where we camped and traveled from place to place making sandwiches out of a cooler. My wife’s family took yearly trips to New York and stayed at the Waldorf.

So yes, she married down economically.

I’d agree that I’m frugal but I feel I have to be. If I was trying to be excessively controlling in my frugalness (frugality?) then we’d have this large pile of savings right now. The truth is that we have $18 in the savings account right now, at maybe $100 in the checking account to last until next week. Basic needs: eggs, milk, bread, etc. over a week may use that up. I’m scrounging my desk drawer today looking for an old lost savings bond because the $50 trade-in value may be represent an 50% increase in my current net worth.

I, frankly, bring home a single-income that would make most dual-income families happy. I want to pay the bills, pay my mortgate, sock something away in savings for just in case and have enough left over for some occasional nice things. Right now if the water heater blew up or the car through a shoe, we’d be taking cold showers and walking to the bus station.

We talked about the “hiding spending” last night. She claims she took the checkbook with her because there was only a few checks left and she might want them. She left me the new, unused, check pad because I might want more checks than the two left in the one she took.

To present both sides of the argument, she claims I contribute to the problem by paying bills late. I’ve been trying to get better at this but when money is tight, I start avoiding all things to do with it. I avoid the mailbox for fear of seeing a bill.

About 10 days ago, I paid an overdue phone bill. Rather than a $80 bill, I wrote a check for around $200, including a $25 late fee. A big hit from the checking account like this is more noticable than a regular, smaller disbursement. I recognize this and I’m trying to be better about the bills. About half the bills are now paid via the bank’s automated checking thing. Bills that aren’t for fixed prices, like phone & water, have to be manually initiated monthly. Last month I missed the phone bill. I’ve been trying to get in the habit that on the second paycheck of the month, I pay everybody right away, calling the utility companies phone inquiry systems to get the current balance and then “cutting” the electronic checks. I missed the phone bill.

My wife claims that I’m as much at fault as she is since that $25 late fee was unnecessary and that $200 is a big hit from the monthly income rather than the $80 it should’ve been. My point I’m trying to make is that if we had spending under control, the $80 that wasn’t sent out the previous month should’ve still been in the account and the $200 hit wouldn’t have been that big a deal - we would’ve had it. The only unecessary thing would’ve been the $25 late fee.

She’s right - I missed a bill. It happens - especially with me. I’m easily distracted by bright shiny objects.

Having the kids expenses tied to the family money is something that I was thinking about. The problem, though, is when my wife is out shopping with the kids (which is the situation 90% of the time), she’s making purchases for both she and the kids. When she gets to the checkout, how should that be handled?

Same problem for the, now familiar, McDonalds example. If she’s at McDonalds, dividing the bill between two accounts is functionally impracticle. She asked me last night what happens if I take the kids out on a weekend. Their money isn’t in my account so what to do there? We could do a daily tracking of all expenses, moving the money around between the accounts but the idea of MOMO money is that there’s no tracking required. You get a pile of it and when it’s gone you stop spending.