LOL Scanner... no trust me, I get your point. I know part of it is a psychological shift too... I'm kinda thinking most irresponsible spending starts that way anyway. The fridge thing though... to be fair... was 9 years ago when we FIRST got married. I'd buy things to make for dinner and then he'd get the "munchies" and start eating stuff I had planned to use for dinner. But ... I was 18 at the time and we were newlyweds. I don't do that anymore... yeah, sounds incredibly stupid to admit we started listening to that counselor 9 years ago and just never changed our ways till things got this bad.
But noppend had it right... I'll do the finances, panic and say we can't spend any money... then I get comfortable and am like "Oh we can afford this".... and I haven't completely let my husband go deprived.... he may lose the smaller ticket items more frequently, but when he guilts me long enough I tend to give in and when I do it tends to be for a lot. Thats how he got 2 motorcycles that we had to end up selling a year afterwards because we bought them when we couldn't afford them.
I win more often on the smaller/everyday ticket purchase items. But yeah, its time to end the double standard... and I told him that myself and he just looked at me like "Umm yeah, I've been telling you this for YEARS" Needless to say, I think we're both finally coming to a point in our marriage we are both realizing that we are both at fault.
Oh and I found out the HVAC does not need replacing in our rental, so I was excited that I could put that cash from the stimulus to paying down the CC... so now its down to $10K instead of $12500. Small milestone but I was happy about it
