But at no point in the proceeding years did he ever refuse to make progress - to BECOME financially responsible. He has always been willing to work towards it.
And once, he really only made a big mistake once. Because after that once we figured out how to keep from making the mistakes - which is that he has an amount he can spend without bringing me into the discussion (it isn’t an allowance, its more like he has corporate signing authority at a certain level), beyond that, he needs to talk to me before the purchase is made. If money seems tight for some reason, I let him know and he lowers that amount. I’m the household CFO.
Compare that to my former sister in law - my husband’s brother’s wife. She married him with debt, and he bailed her out to the best of his capacity. She overspent again, and trouble was on the horizon, He got an inheritance, bailed them out, had some left - she spent it. He was never able to get her to control her spending - or get her to participate fully in earning what she spent. Eventually, they divorced - but he had nothing left but bills - and we bailed him out - because he wouldn’t let go fast enough. Six years he spent hoping she’d change, but there were never any signs that she was changing (to her credit, my brother in law was never one for confrontation, he may have sat around hoping, rather than setting expectations). In six years, he went through $100,000 in net worth he’d gotten before he married her (mostly a rapidly appreciating house in a bubble market that they sold to pay her bills), a six figure inheritance, and every penny from an above median household income - without kids.
I disagree. Deciding to work at 70 because you want to is one thing. Having to work at 70 or losing your house is quite another. The probability of being forced out of work due to health issues is much greater at that age, and the chance of getting another job is much less. Planning ahead is the very crux of responsibility, and “I’ll work until I die” is not a plan.
i wonder how much this is from trying to impress other people and how much it comes from feeling good about oneself. It appears that the act of buying stuff gives people a rush. I know people who bought multiple DVD players and kept them in the garage.
I’ve never much cared what other people think, but I get this rush from buying stuff. Luckily the stuff is used sf books and jigsaw puzzles from the thrift store, so my retirement money is hardly at risk. My desire is moderated by huge backlogs of both. But I suppose stuff like clothes don’t get backlogged, and some people might be in to overspending on that. Or redecorating, or expensive restaurant meals, etc., etc.
Some people will never learn for the same reasons that some people will never stop being bigots or never accept homosexuality. They learned at a very young age, before they had the benefit of reason, that being constantly in a state of fiscal trouble was OK. After all, his parents did it and struggled, but came out ok, right?
But a lot of other people realize they need to start learning sometime around 25 and most of them spend years doing so. Someone smart with their money at 40 is so because they were likely reckless with their money before 30 and learned their lessons. Then you also have people who get “Bailed out” by being in a job that gives them decent raises, so when they are in a pickle, they can count on only having to endure it for short time.
That’s a different situation, though, and is the extreme “irresponsible” side. By enabling their habits, you don’t help someone. No one has ever been helped by having all of their bills magically paid. Lotto winners that blow through their winnings are a common story. In your sister-in-law’s situation, keeping the finances divided probably would have helped (assuming that the sister-in-law wasn’t out to maliciously or manipulatively get money) that person progress more than just repeatedly paying off the bills that she racked up.
My SO learned a hard lesson, but when she decided to do it herself, she didn’t automatically retard progress. She thought that she was doing fine. She had to have a harsh lesson. Some people do. But I don’t think it’s fair to automatically shove them off the nearest curb simply because they are hard headed.
The “show off” items tend to be mobile (cars, boats), party-centric (new deck, 213-foot television), or business-centric (armani suits, rolexes). They are trying to show off to people in general, friends, or coworkers/bosses roughly corresponding to those sections listed above. (There is always crossover.) A lot of what is “show-off-able” is also largely reflective on the local culture you’re in. In Las Vegas, having a tricked out muscle car from the 70’s = king. In Seattle, having a Leaf = king.
Buying stuff and getting a rush is fairly common. It’s why the impulse section at most stores exists. I haven’t heard “OH! I CAN GET GUM! WOOOOO!” but I do see those sections get ransacked at busy times in the market.
But I do think it is fair to treat dramatic or persistent financial mismanagement as a serious betrayal of trust. Your spouse has sex with a stranger and you leave him, everyone approves. But a spouse quitting a job with no plan for the next one, or even putting another 5% of household monthly income on the credit card each month is not seen as the same type of betrayal. But it certainly can be: worse, in some ways.
I’m not sure how often in this thread we need to say that location matters. Of course you can get a nice house in your city for $300K. And your employers probably know that and pay a salary that’s commensurate with the local cost of living.
To be fair, my parents engineered things such that any money I earned as a child, teenager and college student was mine, and mine alone, and they were pretty stingy with allowances. They also had a disciplinary system involving fines and/or chores.
Basically this was a crash-course of sorts in how to be disciplined about spending- I did blow a lot early on, and learned that it sucked to not be able to buy what I wanted/do what I wanted, or that if I fucked up in a minor way, I had to do whatever onerous chore instead of just paying them $10 and going to my friends’ houses.
…Did you just meet your SO or something? I’m sorry for being facetious, but it kind of boggles my mind that it would be considered betrayal. Sleeping with someone else, yeah. I can see that. An overt act as a specific event (or events) that is contradictory to the premise of the relationship. But harboring the financial behavior of a coin sack with a hole in it should have been readily apparent pre-union. It’s not like you woke up one day and realized that all of your money is gone…right?
I kind of equate it to being completely annoyed that your SO has brown hair…and then one day leaving them for it. If it was that much of an issue, why didn’t you drop them when you first saw the offensive side of them?
I applaud your parents torturing you before you had to torture yourself. You were luckier than a lot of other people.
But the root cause of this is insecurity. (Really rich people who buy lots of cars may do it for the rush.) Someone with lots of money might think the luxury features of a Lexus is worth it. I’m thinking about those for whom buying fancy cars, boats, etc is a stretch.
I guess there are people who think that being seen in a cheap car demeans them in some way.
I totally agree with this. I’d guess that a sexual betrayal can be short lived. A financial betrayal would affect everything you do. The trust problems would be about equal in both. But a financial betrayal is more like an SO sleeping around and bringing home a hard to eradicate disease.
I am not talking about my husband. We see very eye-to-eye on money matters.
In general, I have seen many couples that got together when they were young, and there wasn’t much money, and so there wasn’t much to discuss or form an opinion about. Then, as they began to earn more, and added more financial obligations, the issue became much more complicated. Children can really change things: when you are childless, it doesn’t matter much if the other person blows through all their money and has nothing saved. But once there are kids, you suddenly care about the economic stability of the household and are much more invested in long-term thinking.
It isn’t hard to hide spending from someone you aren’t married to. It isn’t that hard to hide it for several months from someone you are, if you can get to the mailbox first. But when you aren’t, if you aren’t living together, you probably don’t get together and talk about paying bills, how much you have left, that you are only paying the minimum, that you dropped $200 at the bar last night, that you have subscriptions to video games you never play, think premium cable is a necessity, that the cute scarf your significant other thinks was probably $20 was $300. You don’t even need to hide it, you just don’t bother to mention how close to the edge you life. And if this is normal for you and you don’t stress about it, why would you?
Few people propose with “and we will set a date after we review each other’s net worth and the last twelve months of bank and credit card statements.” More people probably should, I’m a prenup fan even if you have no assets because I think that they force these conversations.
How they spend or save their money is always apparent, though. I’ve had multiple relationships in my life, and it’s quite apparent without having to do something dumb like…I don’t know. Steal their credit card statements? Are they constantly spending money at bars or movies or such and then having to squeeze at the last minute to afford things like rent? Do they plan in advance and don’t seem to worry when rent is due?
I’m viewing this like the child and death issues that I see couples get into: If one does not know whether their SO wants kids, how they want their death to work (pull the plug?), and how they handle themselves (both emotionally and financially) should be old hat by the time they get hitched.
Is it apparent? When my husband goes to dinner with friends, I don’t know what the bill was, or even where he went, until I pay off the credit card. When he comes home with a new shirt, I don’t know how much it cost - again, until I pay the bill. And I get and pay the bills. If he were my boyfriend and we lived in different places, I would be clueless as to how much he spends on lunches at work, shoes (he has expensive taste in shoes - I know that after twenty years), or dinner with friends.
And I’ve met plenty of people that as long as they can pay the minimums on their credit card aren’t at all squeezing at the last minute and make rent without a blink of guilt.
I agree people SHOULD have these conversations, I just doubt most of them DO. I think most people are blindsided post commitment (and by commitment, whatever point you start combining bills - living together would do it) by their partners level or debt or commitment to savings.
The frequency matters more than the amount. To steal your examples, does your husband go out every night to a restaurant or bars? Does he buy an inordinate number of shirts at a time (or over a time frame, like 1 shirt a day every day for two months). Even a single stiff cost is usually not enough to break most single people.
Habits in this case matter more than amounts. As a simplistic example, if you have a habit of buying a shirt a day, or whatever, you are probably disciplined enough to buy cheap shirts. As you increase your income level, though, you increase your shirt cost, which might completely eat your extra income.
And while in the past you could potentially hide behind credit cards, the last 15 years or so has actually been better for this sort of eavesdropping. In the early 2000s credit card companies started getting stingier than they had in the past. You couldn’t live la dulce vida for very long on credit cards only giving you $300-500 for the first year. And if you paid minimums, you wouldn’t easily get another $300-500 when the second year came along.
Huh? I’m assuming that’s if you’re 21 or have atrocious credit. I wouldn’t even consider another credit card unless the limit was at least $10k. $300-500 isn’t even enough money for a credit card to be useful at all.
They’ve gotten a bit stiff over the last few years, although I think they’re letting up a bit now. I have an 800+ credit score and let’s say plenty of money socked away, and for my business account they only wanted to give me $5000. I had to consolidate a couple of credit accounts for them to get me to the 10K level. Made no f@#* sense to me, as before the all this happened, I had something like $35K in credit available, which I didn’t use at all. I just wanted a single business card with a reasonable limit so I can rent shit.
Well, yeah. I was talking about people in their 20’s to early 30’s starting a relationship in general and checking compatibility. If you are 25 and getting offered $10K in new credit, you’re doing something way, way right. Assuming you aren’t rich from your parents, at least.