Advice on wife's idea for our finances

[Jluke]

Hope you gave her back the $22 or took less allowance so you could absorb your $22 saved.

Right now you are using training wheels. I think the more you see the progress of your finances you will want to “play along” too. The success of this plan in the long term will be a change in your spending.

The short term plan is guaranteed to work because of the training wheels approach.

Good job and thanks for the update.

[DanaFinance]

Hope you gave her back the $22 or took less allowance so you could absorb your $22 saved.

Right now you are using training wheels. I think the more you see the progress of your finances you will want to “play along” too. The success of this plan in the long term will be a change in your spending.

The short term plan is guaranteed to work because of the training wheels approach.

Good job and thanks for the update.

Don't give her any ideas. Actually we discussed that (giving $22 back) a little more. She said I could keep it and wanted to see what I would do with the savings.

I am willing to see how all this progresses.

[snafu]

Thank you for the update. I truly acknowledge and recognize major change is difficult. I too compliment your one month effort to be mindful of spending and celebrate your success. I bow to your miracle worker wife who you tossed into the maelstrom, trying to pay bills and somehow make ends meet in spite of your mindless spending for something like 240 months.

In those moments of frustration when you forego a treat, imagine how wonderful it will be to be free of credit card debt with a loving wife who is thrilled to be able to go forward on the agreed plan for your family's financial future.

[Gailete]

Very happy to hear this! I'm happy for you that you have the excess $22 as well. No, I don't think you should send it back her way. That is your money. You have now seen that you can survive and actually have money left over. Can you imagine being able to save up enough for the two of you to go out together for a date night all paid for by you with your excess? Or next year being able to buy her a special Christmas present without breaking the bank? I see good things ahead for you.

[DanaFinance]

. . . I think the more you see the progress of your finances you will want to “play along” too. . .

My wife looked over the blog again today and reread this comment. She wanted to discuss it and wanted my interpretation of the statement. I told her my interpretation was that you were suggesting that I eventually volunteer to extend our arrangement as we see continued improvement of our finances. That was her thought too. (Not sure if that is what you meant, but that's how we took it.)

We discussed again how well this first month had went and then she went over her projections for the next 2 to 4 years of our finances, based on this limited data. Seeing those numbers and knowing how much happier she is with this arrangement, I told her I wanted to extend our arrangement out to at least 3 years. I said we could revisit this discussion in another 6 months and see how well we are doing compared to her projections. She thanked me for adding on a year on my own initiative. I thank you for planting the idea, even if that was not your intent.

I know everything is becoming less temporary, but seeing the finances and my wife's happiness, I feel good about her extending my "bare necessities" allowance and my extending the length of the arrangement.

[~bs]

you should keep it as a reward for spending within your means.

And perhaps on milestones of your new budgeting technique, you guys should think about treating yourselves to something nice. Its difficult to scrimp and save continuously without rewards at some point.

[Jluke]

My wife looked over the blog again today and reread this comment. She wanted to discuss it and wanted my interpretation of the statement. I told her my interpretation was that you were suggesting that I eventually volunteer to extend our arrangement as we see continued improvement of our finances. That was her thought too. (Not sure if that is what you meant, but that's how we took it.)

We discussed again how well this first month had went and then she went over her projections for the next 2 to 4 years of our finances, based on this limited data. Seeing those numbers and knowing how much happier she is with this arrangement, I told her I wanted to extend our arrangement out to at least 3 years. I said we could revisit this discussion in another 6 months and see how well we are doing compared to her projections. She thanked me for adding on a year on my own initiative. I thank you for planting the idea, even if that was not your intent.
.

Yes. I also think that you are in the beginning stages of developing a new mindset on finances and money management. Eventually you shouldn’t need your wife watching over you (training wheels) and still adhere to the plan.

Have you missed the old way and the things you used to buy? I’m going to guess not so much since you are focusing on other goals. It becomes an internal debate (example) of “do I need to overpay for this bag of chips at the convenience store or would the money be better off going towards savings/debt”

[msomnipotent]

Your wife is handling this better than I would. It would be hard for me not to snap, "Well, it's about time!!!!" after my husband stuck to a plan for a month. Try to understand that she has been stressed about this for a long time and it will take a while for her to change her mindset just like you need to change yours. She will have to ease herself out of giving harsh advice and graduate to giving helpful reminders. It is hard. It took me a long while after getting out of debt not to automatically snap, "NO! We don't have the money for that!!" I still do it sometimes.

Struggling with the new system is understandable. It is a big change and you have to retrain yourself. It is hard to cold turkey with anything. You two might consider building in incentives to keep you motivated. It doesn't have to be a lot. Maybe an extra $25 every 3 months you stay on plan, or something special after paying off each credit card. And don't get too hung up on slip ups. There will probably be a time when you really, really want lasagna for lunch, so you wind up spending your week's lunch money on an Italian restaurant. Now you have to bring a lunch from home for the rest of the week. That is a slip up, and now you know what the repercussions are. Coming home with a new cell phone because you wanted one is not a slip up. It deserves a throttling. Little incentives could prevent you from splurging.

Not sure if you are still employed, but have you discussed what you will do with raises or bonuses? Maybe give yourself a small raise or bonus if your employer does?

[sblatner]

I don't think there is anything wrong with getting a raise every so often. Prices go up. Even $5 or $10 a month to reward you is not a bad thing. I'm not saying now but maybe in a year. If you stay at the same amount for three years, you are going to have to cut back.

Thanks for updating us.

[DanaFinance]

Gailete and ~bs
I do get to keep, the actually $21, overage as mentioned earlier. Now that we have gotten to Friday I had $21 left over.

Jluke
I want say thank you again for providing me the impetus to extend our arrangement out to 3 years or more. My feeling is that the longer that we keep this arrangement in place the happier my wife will be. We will revisit in at the 6 month mark. My wife either reads my posts after I post them, or sometimes, like now, as I craft them, so I will put this out there as she is reading this – I am now predisposed to have our financial arrangement be for at least 5 years (she said will discuss at 6 months, but likes!)

msomnipotent
My use of the word harsh was a euphuism, she was basically yelling at me at the end of the first week for hardly having any money left, and she was emphatic that my allowance was a hard number. I am expected to stay within my allowance. If somehow I need more money for gas because I have over spent, that amount will be subtracted from my allowance the next time period.

I am trying to give her a break here, but yes she is pretty well done with whole situation and is probably closer to what you are saying than I have indicated. With respect to slip ups, as I noted I am expected to stay within my allowance. Yes, in the situation you noted I would be “brown bagging it” until my next allowance.

We have parameters, or rules, regarding my allowance for the now first year (since we extended it), and there is little to no negotiation. I agreed to this and will abide by it. My wife just expects me to accept what we agreed to, with no mentioned incentives for the first year. My incentives comes from saving my allowance, like the $21 after a month.

Yes, I am employed. There will be no change in my allowance for raises, but I do get 1% of my bonus.

sblatner
Let me clarify something. The financial arrangement is having the separate accounts, my limited transaction savings account where my allowance is placed, and her accounts to which I have very restricted access (basically I only know what is going on during our monthly meeting). This is in place now for at least 3 years on my request to extend from 2 to 3+ year. She won’t let me have regular access to “her” accounts until then.

The other part of our situation is my allowance to which I have agreed that it will not be any greater than $20 plus gas money per week for a year as you noted. At the end of the year we will discuss if and by how much it should be raised.

[Milly]

You sound like you are ready to resign and take the lazy way out and let her manage the money. It is fine for her to be in charge of tracking and researching, but decisions need to be a couple thing.

Example: I usually cook dinner, but I don't feel like his personal cook because he occasionally cooks, and when he's home, he helps come up with the menu.

I doubt you will do anything foolish for a full month after posting this. Use that time to get into the habit of getting it right. Set rules and don't break them, it is that simple.

If you are supposed to be buckled while driving, that doesn't mean you have to chain yourself to the seat so that you CAN'T unbuckle. We do that with our babies (car seats) because they don't know any better. Put on your big boy underwear because you can handle it.

That doesn't mean you can't have a $20 budget for the "Husband's Discretionary Usage" though. That is a great idea, especially if it is cash.

Sorry, this was a little scattered. I hope my points made it across.

[Gailete]

You sound like you are ready to resign and take the lazy way out and let her manage the money. It is fine for her to be in charge of tracking and researching, but decisions need to be a couple thing.

I doubt you will do anything foolish for a full month after posting this. Use that time to get into the habit of getting it right. Set rules and don't break them, it is that simple.

Millie, this was his decision to give control of the money to his wife for the next few years as he had been making some really bad decisions for years now. I'm sure, though is something big came up it would be discussed as to what they should do, but whatever the circumstances his wife will be writing the checks for the foreseeable future. He is doing this NOT because he is lazy but because he loves his wife and was driving her nuts by constantly grabbing money from ATMs, etc. so when she went to pay bills, the money was gone from the account.

At this point they are both apparently happy with their decision and I admire the fact that he was willing to do this.

[DanaFinance]

Millie, this was his decision to give control of the money to his wife for the next few years as he had been making some really bad decisions for years now. I'm sure, though is something big came up it would be discussed as to what they should do, but whatever the circumstances his wife will be writing the checks for the foreseeable future. He is doing this NOT because he is lazy but because he loves his wife and was driving her nuts by constantly grabbing money from ATMs, etc. so when she went to pay bills, the money was gone from the account.

At this point they are both apparently happy with their decision and I admire the fact that he was willing to do this.

Gailete was correct in her response. Big items are discussed between us. Haven’t had one yet, but that is what we intend to do. Yes, it was my decision to give control of our money to my wife (with encouragement from some on this site) for currently 3 years, for two reasons. So she could actually execute a budget and improve our finances and so she could have some piece of mind/lack of stress for these few (3+?) years. She is very happy with it and I am happy since she is happy.

[DanaFinance]

Things have not gone well since by my last update. During March I was only able to save $8, better than nothing but not as good as the previous month.

Our monthly discussion centered around 2 topics. First was my savings, she was glad I had saved some money but was disappointed that it wasn’t more, as I had averaged $7/week the first month (with a bad week) so she had expected that I would have saved at the same rate as last month. She said try to do better next month. Second was that she had even more money this month and was able to put more on the credit card and send some to “her” savings. She is really, really happy with this arrangement. She loves that there are no surprises and she has complete control over the main money. She reiterated how happy she was that I had suggested to extend this out to at least 3 years.

Well you could say I fell off the wagon in the last 2 weeks after our monthly discussion, not only did I go through my allowance those 2 weeks but the savings that I had built up to $30 is now down to $2. What made it worse was I felt so ashamed that I didn’t tell her, but she “discovered” it when she when to give me my allowance and gas money last Friday and saw I only had $2 in my account. That’s when she started yelling at me and said “I almost don’t want to give you allowance!” But she did. Then we discussed this whole mess. Obviously my wife is furious with me, especially after our monthly where she said she said she expected me to save more this month. She is very glad that it didn’t effect “her” money which is why we have the separate accounts, but can’t understand how fast I could revert to my old ways. She noted comments by posters not to make too big a deal of slip ups, but she can’t believe how short a time this worked for me. She is also annoyed that she agreed that I could keep what I had saved previously now that I have squandered it. I am embarrassed that I did this. I feel I have broken a trust (again), and I am very disappointed in myself. I apologized profusely to her.

I stewed over this for the last couple of days and then remembered what she said about wanting to not give me my allowance, though she did. I went to her and apologized again, reminded her of that comment and told her that I thought that she was right to suggest that I should not have an allowance and that it was a completely appropriate consequence for what I did. I told her to take away my allowance for however long she thought was fitting. Initially she said that she said that when she was angry and upset with me. I told her know, but that I really should be held accountable and need a consequence for this and not having an allowance for a period of her choosing, since it was her idea in the first place, was more than appropriate. She thought about it and then said she actually liked that idea after all, and that I wouldn’t get an allowance for 4 weeks, just gas money, starting immediately. She logged into my account and removed the $20 she had given me a couple of days ago. She told me that she picked 4 weeks since it was more money, $80, than the $70 (2 weeks allowance and $30 dollar savings) that I had carelessly spent. She then lectured me again about the incident, about how irresponsible I was, how she was glad that it didn’t involve her money, and that not having an allowance for a considerable period with no other money would be a good lesson for me. She also said our monthly discussion would be after these four weeks.

I know some here will think this is not a reasonable thing to do, but I asked her to take away my allowance for a period that she thought was reasonable, as I really needed a consequence and to be accountable for this. Even though overall my wife is happier, it was obvious that my blowing through all that money, even if it didn’t affect her account upset her, so that is why I felt I needed to be held accountable.

[Jluke]

What did you squander the extra, saved money on? You never mentioned that so I’ll have to assume it was wasteful spending.

If you are expected to save some of your allowance maybe you should just have your allowance amount adjusted/lowered. Let her do the saving and most importantly keep your spending under control (assumption about the unknown squandering of your savings).

Another option would be to set your allowance amount. Say it is $50. At the end of the time period if you have $12 left then she adds $38 to get you back to $50. Just an idea.

Slip ups will happen since this is a behavioral change with money.

Hang in there (both of you)