Wedding Woes

Classic: My spouse is a spender and is calling my budget plan 'abusive'

Q. Financial abuse? For nearly 10 years of my marriage, there has been tension due to my spouse’s refusal to abide by a budget. We make enough money for a comfortable lifestyle plus retirement savings, but my spouse enjoys shopping for the sake of it and every month blows through some of the money that should be earmarked for retirement. Right now we are lagging too far behind in our retirement savings to be able to retire at 65, our original goal. We have tried counseling, discussions, and collaborating on budgets. Nothing has worked. This is a constant source of stress for me and I want to separate our finances. The plan is to split everything in our joint accounts 50-50 and from then on maintain separate accounts. I work full time and my spouse works part time at a slightly lower-paying job. This split would mean that their spending money is significantly reduced. My spouse says that my insistence on separating our finances constitutes financial abuse, because they will have less spending money. Do you think I’m being abusive?

Re: Classic: My spouse is a spender and is calling my budget plan 'abusive'

  • I think you should get a divorce. That’s how you separate finances and protect yourself. 
  • CharmedPamCharmedPam member
    First Anniversary First Comment First Answer 5 Love Its
    edited December 2022
    This is my fear if I ever meet someone serious and get married. Because I am LW’s spouse and they’d be writing about me.

  • Y'all sound quite incompatible.  So to fully protect yourself and your finances, divorce is the best option. 

    But riddle me this, if there's a pay disparity, why aren't you figuring out each of y'all's contributions to bills and savings based on percentages and the rest is discretionary?  A 50/50 split isn't fair if LW makes more money. They should be basing it off pay.  That way discretionary funds will end up being close to fair/evenly split. 

    I've read this 3-4x now.  I'm throwing out some conjecture here, but I think the writer is a woman and the spouse is a man.  LW does come off a little controlling sounding.  I'm not saying he's *NOT* overspending, but LW is quick to point out that they live comfortably and also goes on about their long range plan to have a hard stop and retire at 65.  I mean, that's a great goal...but life also can or may get in the way.  So is LW being 'mommy' to their H and he's rebelling by blowing their budget?  Money sounds like the outward issue to inward turmoil in the relationship and maybe in LW and the spouse. Have they addressed those issues in counseling or is it just that spouse overspends and LW wants them to stop and/or feel ashamed about it? 

  • mrsconn23 said:
    Y'all sound quite incompatible.  So to fully protect yourself and your finances, divorce is the best option. 

    But riddle me this, if there's a pay disparity, why aren't you figuring out each of y'all's contributions to bills and savings based on percentages and the rest is discretionary?  A 50/50 split isn't fair if LW makes more money. They should be basing it off pay.  That way discretionary funds will end up being close to fair/evenly split. 

    I've read this 3-4x now.  I'm throwing out some conjecture here, but I think the writer is a woman and the spouse is a man.  LW does come off a little controlling sounding.  I'm not saying he's *NOT* overspending, but LW is quick to point out that they live comfortably and also goes on about their long range plan to have a hard stop and retire at 65.  I mean, that's a great goal...but life also can or may get in the way.  So is LW being 'mommy' to their H and he's rebelling by blowing their budget?  Money sounds like the outward issue to inward turmoil in the relationship and maybe in LW and the spouse. Have they addressed those issues in counseling or is it just that spouse overspends and LW wants them to stop and/or feel ashamed about it? 

    I think the writer is a man and the spouse is a woman.  Pure speculation!
  • A 50/50 split isn't fair...at least for main household bills...if the LW makes more money.  I wasn't quite sure if "slightly lower paying" meant "per hour".  So that if someone only works p/t than that can mean bringing in a lot less money.  Or if the H's p/t income (total) is only slightly less than the LW's.  If it's the latter, then I'm less sympathetic to the H if it's not that much difference anyway.

    But the H also needs to stop the bs about "financial abuse", if that allegation is only based on the LW wanting separate finances.  LOTS of couples do that. 

    It sounds like the LW's biggest concern is retirement and that they both generally agree on it.  Perhaps another way to tackle this is for each of them to contribute more to their 401Ks, directly out of their paychecks.  If that is not possible, they could still do something similar.  Like every paycheck date has an automatic transfer to a retirement account.  That can especially be helpful for impulse shoppers because if they can't "see" the money, they don't spend it.

    I saw one person on a personal finance forum who set something like that up, but to a savings account.  But she set the savings account up where she couldn't transfer the money to her checking account online.  She had to personally walk into the bank to do that.  The funds were still readily available for an emergency.  But the slight added inconvenience, plus sometimes having to wait until the next business day to use the savings money, resulted in her buying substantially less "fluff" and almost totally cut out her impulse buying. 
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  • I don't think it's financial abuse but I do hope that the LW isn't advising to split things 50/50 for things like household expenses.

    DH makes more than I do and I'm often doing things like buying more clothing or stuff for the kids (he does too).  I would put a hard stop if he wanted things like our home expenses split 50/50 when that would wipe out additional money for me and leave him w/ more. 
  • Agreed with everyone saying 50/50 is not okay.

    M & I split it but with our income I think it's more 60/40
  • Do they have kids? Does the part time spouse spend more time doing child care? Or household labor? What does that division look like? 

    Did they both equally have input into the budget or did LW say what the budget was and then get pissed when the spouse didn’t abide by something they didn’t have input into? 

    We have combined finances (mainly because when we got married neither of us had any assets, he moved to take a job where I was) and I’ve made more money for all of our marriage. Our income now is closest it’s been to one another and we have different spending habits (I spend more than he does, he worries more about retirement than I do) but overall we’re on the same page. I don’t know how you manage when you’re fundamentally misaligned. 
  • I agree with the 50/50 split not making sense here.  I also agree with the automatic paycheck deduction to retirement savings - I do that and it is great.  
    The issue here isn't necessarily the money, it is that neither wants the other to have any control and they can't agree on how to accommodate both.  One wants to spend it all and not listen to the need for a budget.  The other wants to budget and not listen to the other's need to spend.  I don't think splitting things is going to resolve the issues.  

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