I’m married with three school age children. I make good money. My wife and I generally get along just fine, BUT
every so often we have an incident, like the one last week where she goes on a ridiculous spending spree, gutting the bank account and pretty much ruining earlier agreed plans like, in this instance, buying some plane tickets for a family vacation this summer. (After about a three week campaign of telling me at every instance that we need to hurry up and buy the tickets). I was so pissed yesterday that I made a conscious effort not to bring the issue up until today so I could talk about it in a somewhat calm fashion.
So this morning:
lancer: I made a deposit yesterday and the bank statement was about $2k short of what it was at the end of last week. Did you spend that much?
mrslancer: No. I bought some clothes for the girls, but it wasn’t that much.
So I get on line and access that account showing pretty much what I expected – a shopping orgy. I identified some of the larger items and said that if they were wrong we needed to notify the bank.
mrslancer: I guess those are mine then.
lancer: What possessed you to spend that much money?
mrslancer: Sorry. I don’t know.
WTF? Like I said, this is not a first. We’ve tried all sorts of various solutions, but none seem to work. I do not have time to work and perform all of the shopping. (Mrslancer is a stay at home mom). Mrslancer is 40 yo, so an allowance seems silly. In any event she has the credit card that hooks into the bank account, so she would probably just spend the allowance and then go back to tap our bank account.
A day later and I’m still pissed. (I tend to be a “hold it all in” person, so I’ll probably give myself a heart attack). Your suggestions please.
My father-in-law has done lots of financial counseling. HE
preaches that there should be an account that money goes
into that pays all the bills, and each person should have
a separate account for other things.
If she can’t control her spending when there’s money
available, she shouldn’t have a credit card into that
account.
It’s hard when you feel like you can’t trust your spouse,
though. Does she feel she can’t be trusted with money?
Her acknowledgment would be necessary to move forward, I’d
think.
There are a number of possibilities, but the answer to most of them sounds like counselling to me.
One thing that comes to mind. Shopping as an anti-depressent. Some people find shopping and buying a bundle of new things to be a soothing experience that gets them out of a funk.
Another, she knows it gets your goat when she does this, and she’s got some other issues she is supressing and so acts out in this fashion to get your attention.
In the short term, were the items she purchased unnecessary, and are any of them returnable?
In addition to financial counseling, see if there is some sort of addiction support counseling you can get her into.
I wish I could give better advice, but I can’t. But I do wish you the best and I’m sure that you’ll get lots of good advice from the rest of the people here.
My parents had every type of fight about money you can think of, including, at one point, my father turning his entire paycheck over to my mother and letting her put him on an allowance (she kept complaining her allowance wasn’t big enough to run the household).
The other posters are right. This is a job for a professional counselor to tackle. If it were simply a matter of poor money management, you could get a lot of advice here. But it looks like there are some issues (with both of you, by the way) that need to be addressed.
But there’s nothing wrong with an allowance for adults. What do you think the personal finance advisors are talking about when they call it a “budget”?