I think that my wife has a spending problem, and I'm scheming how to take 100% control of all of the family accounts back under my name, so that my wife is specifically not able to access them. I will pay all the bills at the beginning of the month myself, and just hand my wife a stipend, in the form of cash and/or a debit card every month. She will be physically unable to spend more than the budget. This is drastic action, but I am beginning to feel action is necessary. Has anyone undertaken such a personal-finance re-adjustment, which did not end in divorce, etc.? Tips?
because everyone will ask, more details follow.
Numbers:
It's hard being single-income, but I do make a 95th-percentile salary. We have a nice modern house in a nice neighborhood, 2 cars, zero debt except our mortgage. We aren't poor, but we will be soon if we keep overspending. The current discretionary spending budget, which does not include any bills but includes groceries, gas, clothes, household, hobbies, etc. is $1400/mo. Every time we start totaling up reasonable expected expenditures like $800 for groceries, $50 for kid clothes, $75 for gas, etc, it always adds up within-budget. She doesn't like that method, though, because it exposes that the current budget of $1400/mo is reasonable. Regardless of how reasonable it is, that's really all we have, so it just has to work. I have limited ability to wish more money into existence. And I guarantee if I got a promotion and the budget went to $1600/mo, it would be over-spent just the same.
Background:
For the first 5 years of our marriage, my wife had some job or other. For a time, when I was in grad school, she even made more than me. Money was never a real issue with us. I never told my wife what she could spend, and our finances were always shared. As long as she was making money, I didn't feel it was my place to dictate her spending. I still don't, as long as she isn't consistently over-spending. Which she is.
2.5 years ago, under mutual agreement, she quit her job to become full-time mom. She is still in charge of spending nearly all the money for the family. Groceries, clothes, household supplies, etc. And "we" have consistently over-spent the budget, every month, for the past 2.5 years. Without fail, there is $100-$500 over-budget on the credit cards every month. And because I refuse to pay credit-card interest rates, we pay the cards off every month. And in this manner, $20,000 in savings has become $10,000. This is a problem, and must be fixed. I understand that our income went down by 1/3 when she quit, so an "adjustment" or "transition" period of overspending is expected. But 2.5 years, with no improvement, is not a transition.
Since our spending is so out-of-control, I have responded by tightening down my own spending. I haven't bought a gun in...2.5 years, and no longer practice because I can't afford ammo. I dropped all my hobbies. I sold my convertible. I mow my own lawn, instead of hiring it out. Then one day when I decided to switch from synthetic oil to discount-brand conventional oil, the clueless husband in me realized that switching to cheaper motor oil to save $5 per month is not going to save this budget, and it's really my wife's spending habits that is the dominant factor here.
We have discussed this many times. When we discuss this problem together, I get a renewed promise to do better. Sometimes I get blamed because I spent $150 on a welder or something, and that totally accounts for the whole $600 we are over-budget. It's going to be different this month, because she has some new money-tracking phone app. Or she has been listening to Dave Ramsey, and so the envelope system is totally going to work. Or it's a new year resolution. It's like somebody jumping diets, but still gaining weight the whole time. She has told me, in tears, that she does not know how to spend less money, and I believe her; I do.
The thing is, I lived with this woman back when our combined income was 1/4 what it is now. We bought cheap groceries, and didn't go out to eat because we couldn't afford it; literally did not have the money, and everything was ok. Somehow, this has slipped to where she knows we don't have the money, but also knows that the credit card has a $10,000 credit limit, and that there's money in the bank to pay it off. I have already tried implementing limits in "soft" form by doing cash-only (results in extra ATM withdrawals near end of month) and debit-card-only (results in overdraft near end of month). I think I just need to make it so she literally does not have access to more than the monthly budget...so the budget is not a target but a hard limit.
