Couples and Money: Consultation vs Allowance

One piece of financial advice that I often see offered is this: If you are part of a couple, give each other a measure of freedom with the money you earn but consult each other on any purchases over $100. In some variations, the consultation amount is $50 or even $20. Whatever the amount, the idea is to give each partner some freedom and an ability to spend without answering to the other on every little purchase. It’s reasonable advice in that it keeps one partner or the other from feeling like a child and like he/she is going begging every time they want to buy something, but as a way to manage a budget it’s not very sound.

Why? Because it’s as easy to sink a budget with little purchases as with big purchases. I saw this played out with a couple that I am friendly with. They created a budget so they could work on their debt. They agreed that they would each be able to purchase any item under $30 without consulting the other. Anything over $30, other than gas, groceries, repairs, or bills had to be approved by the other spouse.

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“It was a reasonable plan, we thought,” the wife told me. “But we still ended up deeper in debt.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“We both bought too much stuff that was under the limit. We kept thinking that it was okay since it was all under $30. We never counted on the fact that so much stuff bought under $30 could sink the budget.”

It sounds like this should have been obvious to this couple, but it wasn’t. It turns out that what was happening, in addition to simply buying too much, was that both of them were deliberately breaking up purchases to come in under the limit. For example, in the pre-budget days the husband thought nothing of dropping $150 on an order of DVD’s, books and CD’s from Amazon. After they implemented the budget, he realized he couldn’t do that anymore but rather than curtailing the spending, he started breaking the orders into smaller pieces that came in under the $30 limit. She, in turn, was adding unnecessary items to the grocery cart (shopping at Super WalMarts and Targets make this a real problem) in order to avoid notice. Since “groceries” could be over $30 without approval, she rationalized throwing an extra DVD or purse into the cart during a grocery trip as “grocery spending.”

“Our credit card statements looked ridiculous,” she told me. “There were all these charges, for $28.95, $29.00, or even $29.99. Then there were the $300

Jennifer Derrick

Jennifer Derrick is a freelance writer, novelist and children’s book author.  When she’s not writing Jennifer enjoys running marathons, playing tennis, boardgames and reading pretty much everything she can get her hands on.  You can learn more about Jennifer at: https://jenniferderrick.com/.