By Dr. Rikki Racela, WCI Columnist
Meredith, my wife, and I are not on the same financial page. Not being on the same financial page has caused numerous fights and disagreements regarding money. Yet we have worked through it, and despite not being on the same financial page, we aim to at least be on the same financial chapter. Dr. Jim Dahle has already given great tips on the topic, which was phenomenally helpful in guiding us as we created and implemented our written financial plan.
Today, I am going to add some other advice that we discovered as we moved through our financial journey.
But first, why should this problem exist in the first place?
I find it easier to step back for a second and analyze the source of financial disagreement. It shouldn't be too surprising that you and your spouse aren't on the same financial page. You're two individual people, and you've probably disagreed with each other on plenty of other issues, correct? You may have many things in common, but chances are that you have more things not in common.
Meredith and I were raised by parental figures with contrasting views on money. That old platitude that opposites attract makes sense, as it is your spouse’s individuality and dichotomy from yourself that makes them so interesting. So, you fall in love and marry. Therein lies the solution for us. We love and understand each other, and that includes understanding the foundation of our money beliefs and the money script that follows. Despite differing money views, we share the same roof, the same kids, and the same financial goals.
How, you may ask? Let’s dive into my money relationship and that of my wife—two diametrically opposed people in regard to finances—and how we align our pages to at least be within the same financial chapter.
More information here:
Actual Money Fights We’ve Had (and How We Solved Them)
#1 Know Where Your Spouse’s Money Beliefs Come From
My wife did not have the easiest childhood, financial and otherwise, leading to different money beliefs than mine. Unfortunately, her experience early in life encouraged an innate reflex to spend. She never knew her father. She was raised by her uncle because her mother was too sick to care for her. Unfortunately, her uncle had lung cancer which was eating at him slowly throughout the years. His hacking coughs were an incessant nightly occurrence which became a driving force to encourage my wife to become a physician. Her uncle’s medical condition also precluded gainful employment, so the only money coming in was in the form of SSI/disability.
My wife never knew when her uncle would pass away and when the disability checks would stop. Compounding the insecurity of any stable income was the fact that her uncle, knowing his days were numbered, actually opened as much credit debt as he could from any bank that was willing to lend to him. We say you only live once, and for my wife and her social father, that could have been only one more day. My wife tells stories of him binge-purchasing on QVC (for those who are too young to remember, that's a TV channel for buying displayed items with credit cards), knowing that the possibility of him dying with thousands of dollars of credit card debt would be a money win. A morbid money win but a money win nonetheless, because that debt would disappear upon his death.
Since her uncle and her mother were both on disability income, they could not afford a regular house or apartment. Their living space was a tiny apartment on the top floor of a tiny house. But by a very random twist, her poor living conditions were located a few blocks away from the New Jersey shore. If you know anything about New Jersey, many towns are overpriced and opulent, especially houses and lifestyles near the shore. Billy Joel’s house was the next town over (and shaped like a piano!). This contrast of poverty amid the surroundings of extreme wealth does not mold healthy money beliefs. My wife, ashamed of growing up in squalor compared to her peers, never let her friends ever visit her home. She saw medicine as a way to medically care for sick mothers and uncles like her own and as a conduit to attain money to escape her dire past.
This epiphany about my better half is what bridges understanding of where she is coming from when she spends, when we budget, and when we form financial goals.
#2 Know Where Your Money Beliefs Come From
Believe it or not, this may be phenomenally difficult. In Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, he mentions that it is much easier to recognize other’s mistakes than our own. As Morgan Housel mentioned in an interview on the Afford Anything podcast:
“We look at other’s money decisions through the lens of their actions and can say this was a bad decision because of x or y. But if you examine your own decisions, the mistakes can be justified through an internal narrative. You can say to yourself, ‘Yes, this is a bad decision, but I did it because of x or y.' You can rationalize your own financial flaws. You are great at telling yourself a story to gloss over your mistakes.”
Well, the following is an objective look at my financial mistakes—without the internal narrative justification—and how they shaped my money beliefs.
My money story starts when I got into college. No joke, when I got into Princeton, my mom's exact words were, “Baby, we won the lottery!” I interpreted this in two ways. Yes, getting into the (usually) No. 1 ranked college in the country is a very lucky circumstance given the competitive applicant pool. But my mom was also alluding to the illusion that getting into a higher-ranked school is correlated to how rich you will be in the future. And Princeton, (usually) No. 1 on the US News and World Report college rankings, meant I would be, at least to my mom, one of the richest people in the world and would never have to worry about money.
The false idea that I would be well on my way to vast riches was only reinforced when I got into medical school. That’s how Ivy League students eventually become rich, right? They all become doctors or lawyers, right?
This sort of conclusion seems ridiculous. But when you think from the perspective of my Filipino parents, an understanding emerges. There is a mentality in Asian culture where coming to America and having your offspring attend the best colleges and become a “rich” doctor or lawyer is an automatic golden ticket to riches. As Americans, we have all heard the stereotype of the rich doctor or lawyer. In the minds of Asian parents, that stereotype is exponentially increased! First-generation Asian-Americans dream of coming to this country and having their son or daughter become a rich doctor or lawyer.
It is difficult to imagine how this stereotype is so ingrained if you are not a foreigner from a poor country. With the stark contrast of poverty, this is how the rich doctor stereotype can be amplified. My mother grew up in a third-world country in a one-room house in Leyte—one of the outer islands in the Philippines—which she shared with her five brothers. There was clothing and food, but those clothes were T-shirts and shorts and that food came without utensils to eat it.
My mom would relate a story where she and her friends would go to the home of the only rich person in town who had a TV, and they would peer through the window so they could catch a glimpse. Who owned that big house with the TV? A doctor, of course. And what would be on TV? American images of beautiful clothing and American movies featuring tables of extravagant food that poor Filipinos could only dream of.
In Filipino culture, education is highly valued and is the door to move up the wealth ranks. In the eyes of my mother, the variables and the equation were simple. America = rich. Best education = rich. Doctor = rich. So America + No. 1 college + doctor = Rikki is going to be very rich and never have to worry about money ever and can even support his two parents and disabled brother and then still buy Porsches, houses, etc.
Yes, my mother’s money beliefs were seeded into my mind as I grew up, and her money beliefs became mine. She encouraged me to be a doctor not just to help people like my handicapped brother but to be rich. Very rich. And for a while, it seemed our false money beliefs were reinforced. Meredith and I, upon making big-time physician incomes, ate out nightly, traveled extensively through the Caribbean and Europe, paid $80,000 for a wedding and honeymooned at $12,000, leased two Mercedes, and bought a $1.26 million house with yearly property taxes of $24,000 (we were also being screwed into paying $28,000 in yearly whole life premiums). Yep, we were living the dream!
Then, Mia was born. Yes, my second child was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My wife and I were suddenly in $31,000 of credit card debt. Everything I learned about money was a lie. My mom was wrong! I was wrong! I responded by getting as financially literate as possible through The White Coat Investor, but financial literacy has not fully quelled the new money belief in me: doctors, especially this one, are terrible at money.
As a doctor, I have to penny-pinch in order to survive, because if I didn’t, I would be in $31,000 of credit card debt again. Going to Princeton and being a doctor was a false sense of financial security, and my emotional reaction when that security was broken was financial insecurity. I have adopted a scarcity mindset. Logically, I know these money beliefs are not true. But emotionally, they eat at me. I thought I never had to worry about money, and when that thought became such a spectacular failure in real life, I was in danger of hoarding money and becoming the richest guy in the grave. Coming from this angle, knowing this about myself, helps guide discussions regarding money with Meredith.
So, my money beliefs really clash with my wife’s. She would rather spend every dime now since she learned growing up you may never live to see tomorrow. And that money should be spent on things that will show you’ve made it. Forget spending to keep up with the Joneses; my wife spends to prove she is not that poor nobody Jersey girl. At the same time, I feel I can’t spend money because I am only a doctor, and doctors are stupid at money and my losing $50,000 to whole life insurance is proof that the rich doctor crap that society embeds in us is a lie.
Now, let’s see how we, as a couple, talk about money and goals given these different money beliefs.
More information here:
Yes, Risk Tolerance Can Be Modified: You Just Have to Rewire Your Brain
A Candid Conversation with My Physician Spouse About Burnout, Guilt, and Resentment
#3 Know How to Communicate with Your Spouse
Financial advisor Justin Harvey on episode 163 of his podcast, APM Success, mentioned three ways to talk to your spouse. These involve:
- Gathering the data
- Letting the data speak for itself
- Choose your language (no pointing fingers) with words like “we” and not “you”
This is sage advice, and knowing your and your spouse’s money beliefs helps through this process. The data-gathering Justin was referring to involved the hard numbers of how much a couple has, how much they spend, etc. Knowing each other’s money beliefs is also part of data-gathering. I like his second point, where you don’t dictate a financial conclusion to your spouse, but let him/her make it. Nobody really likes being told what to do, spouses included. But having a more eureka moment of whether you can afford to spend on something is reinforcing instead of offputting. With his last point, it is almost universal—not just with money—to not be accusatory in any way.
An example of using Justin’s communication advice would be our recent decision to send our kids to summer camp for $15,000, despite us already having a full-time nanny and having every dollar in our budget accounted for. I know I am the one writing this article, but my wife, being the one who wanted to spend money on such an expensive proposition, knows very well how to communicate spending to attain my approval:
Meredith: “Hey Rik, you know this camp is fantastic and teaches kids all sorts of outdoor skills that they’re not learning now. I think we should really consider this next summer. Look at these reviews on the website! Look at these pics! It is kind of expensive at $7,500 per kid.” (She did some great data gathering!)
Me: “Mer, are you serious, though? We are paying our nanny already to look after the kids and do activities with them. This might be kind of a waste!”
Meredith: “But look at these reviews, and the memories these kids rave about! And we didn’t go to Turks this year so that money can cover this next summer.” (She’s letting the data speak for itself!)
More Meredith: “I know we are trying to save and budget, but we want our kids to do things that we never had the chance to do, right?” (I appreciate that she didn’t say, “YOU are trying to save and budget” or, like in the past, “You are so damn cheap.”)
Me: “Mer, you're right. Let’s do this.”
If she had presented this differently, there was a very high likelihood that I would kick/scream/fight paying a five-figure amount for this camp, on top of paying our nanny. But her communication was key. As we have become more financially literate, better communication has been a real boon.
#4 Realize You Don’t Know What Will Make You Happy
A few years ago, I was totally against getting a desktop computer despite my wife’s persistence that we buy one. “But why?” I would ask her. “We have two perfectly good laptop computers, one for each of us.” Being the cheap guy that I am (see above), I didn't see the utility of the happiness return a new desktop computer would bring us. My wife, who usually does not like doing research on new technology or computers, kept asking me to look up a nice desktop to purchase. I kept resisting, and finally, she took matters into her own hands and bought a Dell desktop. Well, guess who uses the thing more than she does? In fact, take a guess which computer I am writing this post on? You got it: me. This desktop has a beautiful monitor twice as big as our tiny laptops, the speakers that are currently cranking out Winger’s “Miles Away” sounds phenomenally crisp compared to the laptop, and I type without my neck feeling strained. This desktop has made me plenty happy.
This type of financial misperception, not knowing whether a purchased item will bring you happiness in the future, is known as poor “affective forecasting.” As Belsky and Gilovich comment on the phenomena in their book, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes:
“Studies show that, in many ways, people are not adept at forecasting their future levels of satisfaction, joy, or contentment. These ‘affective forecasting' errors exist in part because . . . we often don’t know what’s making us happy or sad today, but also because we underestimate our ability to adapt to life challenges and overestimate the improvement in mood or satisfaction that imagined riches or better circumstances will bring. As a result, we let fear or greed dictate our financial decision . . .”
Which brings me to an insightful point when aligning your goals with your spouse. It is very possible your spouse is a better affective forecaster than you are. Yes, the person that you have promised to share your life with is not subject to the biased poor affective forecasting of the self, and, in fact, likely knows more about you than you know about yourself. Maybe that financial goal your spouse has, despite not being one you think will make you happy, might actually end up being the most worthwhile and fulfilling goal to you in the end. Happiness research has, time and time again, shown that, as humans, we have poor insight into what makes us happy—usually to one’s financial detriment. We buy material things thinking it will bring us long-term happiness. Yet that sort of “thinking” is actually a System 1 brain reaction responding to a dopamine hit in the nucleus accumbens. Realize that your spouse’s goals, even if you don’t think they'll bring you happiness, oftentimes will. Your spouse (assuming a happy marriage) would not choose a financial goal that would make you unhappy but instead has made a calculated decision that he/she believes will make you BOTH happy.
Taking the desktop computer lesson to the next level, WE have a goal now of putting a swimming pool in the backyard complete with lush landscaping. The price tag for such a project: $300,000! And that is only an estimate. Given my money-scarcity-mindset-rich-doctor-is-a-lie mentality, I balk at the price tag. But I know my wife’s money beliefs, I know mine, and we talk about it. We have a plan to attain this goal financially. The discussion was similar to the summer camp decision mentioned above. We gathered the data of cost vs. how much joy we might get from the purchase, let the numbers speak for themselves, and didn’t point fingers as to who is spending too much or who is the cheapskate. Despite my doubts, this purchase might really bring a lot of joy to the entire family.
More information here:
My Financial Plan Calls for Me . . . Being Hung by My Fingernails????
To Summarize with a Little Neurology
I hope that these additional insights help you and your spouse get on the same financial page, or at least be on the same financial chapter. And I hope the personal stories of Meredith and me drive home these points.
As always, being a neurologist, I have to talk about the brain. Stories always have a way of searing into your mind. In fact, the stock market media does it all the time. The story starts in your visual cortex as you read the words of this article. Take what I just mentioned about Meredith. As you learn about my wife, different parts of your brain activate as the story fills in. She is a woman doctor, activating temporal areas where lexicons exist identifying these words. She is from the Jersey shore, activating the parietal lobe which is the seat of spatial processing. Growing up impoverished will activate emotions that are a frontal lobe function. Heck, even using her name takes the processing from some nebulous fairy tale to one of real life. The same goes for when you read about my money beliefs. Now you have all parts of your brain etching information into your temporal lobes for memory processing, that knowing your money beliefs and that of your spouse’s are essential, that communicating financially must be done in a sensitive way, and realizing that your spouse’s goals might make you happier than you think.
All these are crucial skills in getting on the same financial chapter and attaining your goals. Together.
What do you think? Do you know your and/or your spouse’s money beliefs? Has this helped to get on the same financial page? Do you think your spouse knows more about what will make you happy than you? Comment below!
Great article. I can definitely relate to the Asian parent mentality and it applies to Asian parents of all economic classes. Also glad to see you mention the Afford Anything podcast! I listen to it too!
Ha! yes the stereotype does come from somewhere! I think also it is kind of self selecting bias for Asian immigrants to America. My and other Asian immigrant come to America driven by the perception of the opportunity to immense wealth through hard work and getting the best education. The Asians that don’t have that perception, well, they stay home and don’t immigrate to America.
And I love Afford Anything. Paula Pant, for a non-neurologist/psychiatrist, is incredibly insightful when it comes to behavioral finance, and leverages her knowledge of the subject to be successful.
Thanks for a great post. This is your best one!
thanks Bev glad you enjoyed usually you’re a tough critic!
I enjoyed reading this article and I appreciate the tips on how to get on the same financial page as your spouse. I agree that communication, understanding, and compromise are key to achieving financial harmony. My spouse and I have different money beliefs and scripts, but we have learned to respect each other’s views and work together towards our common goals. We also follow the White Coat Investor’s advice on how to build an investment portfolio that suits our risk tolerance and time horizon. We are grateful for the resources and guidance that this blog provides for us. Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences!
np and glad you didn’t even need my article as you guys are already respecting each other’s views and working together! well done 🙂
Do you know of any dual income couples where the frugal one retires early and the big spender keeps working until super old age?
That would be one potential solution and would align with each person’s priorities. The person who loves spending money can keep working perpetually to support the habit.
I don’t, and it seems like for me and my wife it will be the frugal one working while the spender retires/cuts down. It seems right for us that one who cuts down from work is the one more burnt out/has parent’s guilt for not spending time with kids.
I think any reasonable person would agree that this is not a fair arrangement.
The person who spends all the money should not be dumping that burden onto someone else and quitting early. If anything, burnout should be an excellent reason to re-examine one’s spending habits and decide if the the money spent is truly worth the time sacrificed.
yup, but that’s marriage. Though mer is absolutely worth it- you see how beautiful and smart she is, you will likely see why this arrangement is very fair. I’m the lucky guy to be with her.
man I wish she would read WCI and this comment so I can get brownie points!
It’s awesome that you’re happy and you’ve found a good situation that works for you, but readers – especially the younger single ones – should not ever feel pressured to sacrifice the most valuable time they have left on earth to feed a partner’s spending addiction.
My marriage is nothing like this. We each made sure we had the same life goals, financial and non-financial, years before we got married.
Yes agreed single readers should seek a partner that is more financially aligned, but then Again you never know who you will fall in love with and marry, and might have to be prepared to deal with a spouse who believes happiness can be bought. And who knows, happiness research says spending more than $75k tops out happiness, but that’s an average, and maybe my wife’s happiness will exponentially still increase when spending $300k or more!
In the examples you gave, it seems that you are usually the one compromising your financial beliefs for your wife, and not the other way around. She talked you into the summer camp, the desktop computer, and the swimming pool, which you admit you still have doubts about. Do you have any similar examples of her compromising on her financial beliefs for you? Other than foregoing an expensive vacation in Turks and Caicos, which most would agree is a huge luxury?
Like the previous commenter, I believe having aligned financial beliefs is hugely important, and it was something I prioritized when I met my current partner. I’ve seen a lifetime examples of how misalignment in this area causes huge stress and erodes trust over time. That’s not to say people’s beliefs need to be identical, but I find it concerning when one partner is always being asked to cross their own boundaries, and the other does not offer to do the same in return.
Hi Valerie good point and absolutely there are examples. Since I am the cheapest man alive, there are tons of examples of her compromising on things we can’t afford if we were to prioritize some of these other purchases. One example is she would love a new toyota Sienna hybrid. we discussed as a couple that vacations and a pool in our backyard is more important, and there is no money in the budget for the toyota sienna. so she drives a used Toyota highlander. She would love jewelry, though she can’t remember the last time she bought any, nor can we remember the last time I bought her any since we discussed that again, buying the pool, vacations, and spending on kids activites is more important.
As the spender she has compromised the most, and as for me being cheap it doesn’t feel like I compromised much. But I have to admit the things that we discussed and bought together have turned out to increase the quality of life and made me more happy despite my doubts before the purchase, and I think it is because we are trying to make each purchase as intentional as possible.
We did *sort of* opposite- one who has it made already can retire. Aside from me being more frugal and money worried, the bigger monthly income is tied to him being alive, so if I died (earlier on before I vested in my pension) his income would RISE if he stopped the cost of the survivor benefit plan (though I’ve counseled him to be CERTAIN about- research any- risks to any possible future wife if he stopped it), whereas if he died before we hit 60-70 I would certainly wish I hadn’t hung up my medical license. So he retired fully from medicine once he hit 20+ (and a last promotion) in the Army, I worked 10 more years (and I’m 2 years older than him) until physical/ emotional health and vesting in pension made work a losing proposition instead of a winning one. (Since I had many more sabbaticals/ pauses in employment due to our moves for his military career, plus much fewer years in the military myself ie no deployments unlike him, he did not work fewer total years than I did- and if he worked fewer total hours that’s more due to my putting in more hours a week to similar jobs.)
We were wary the retired nonfrugal spouse would increase spending tremendously with more free time. Instead his new hobby has been searching for bargains- now my gripe is the amount of STUFF. No I don’t need a 3 minute omelet maker even for only $3 Honey, thanks for thinking of me when you needed one more purchase to get free shipping.
Perhaps you did win the lottery by getting into Princeton, you just didn’t cash the ticket by going into private equity or investment banking. 🙂
Also nice that you have a high income spouse. I suspect that even the potential splurges you report like $7500 summer camp are still less than the amount she brings in with her income. Although you can always outspend any income — see for example Johnny Depp.
Hey Greg, you’re definitely right, Princeton really doesn’t have any better education than many other fine schools in the nation, but rather its #1 ranking comes from the hookup you get from alums you hire you in their billion dollar firms because you went to the same alma mater. Heck, even Jack Bogle was hired at Wellington because his boss Mr. Morgan was a Princeton alum. I threw that ticket away!
Agreed. As an alum of the other usually (won’t research which is more often, might make me feel bad) No. 1 ranked college in the country, all it did was impress some people and give them a nudge to more carefully consider hiring/ respecting me. We wasted our connections doing medicine where residency and personality is way more important than college. (Some places I got more respect from having been a ((5 jump chump but it counts)) paratrooper- especially in the UK where I guess it’s the term for commando/ green beret types. One doc there said “You get the job. Since you might kill me if you don’t.”)
Hey Jenn, who knows, if you were to pivot to a different career you might still be able to utilize those ivy league connections yet!
Thank you for sharing your personal financial journey with your wife and providing such valuable insights into how you have managed to align your financial goals despite the differences in your respective money beliefs. Your candidness is refreshing, and let me relate to your experiences on a more personal level.
It’s essential to recognize that our upbringing and cultural backgrounds can significantly influence our financial mindset. I commend your focus on understanding the origins of your and your wife’s money beliefs, as it lays the foundation for better communication and decision-making in your financial life.
Moreover, Justin Harvey’s three-step approach to communicating with your spouse—gathering data, letting the data speak for itself, and using non-accusatory language—is an excellent framework to apply in any financial conversation. Implementing this approach, along with acknowledging that our affective forecasting abilities may be flawed, can lead to healthier and more productive discussions about money.
Your story exemplifies that understanding each other’s money beliefs, working towards open communication, and continuously adjusting your perspective on financial happiness is the key to being on the same financial chapter as your spouse. Thank you once again for sharing your experiences and for providing actionable tips for couples who may find themselves in a similar situation.
thanks so much Tom! I hope this is helpful to couples, as really these insights have been helpful to me.
I enjoyed reading about the journey to date and the background information as to how it affects one’s “money mindset.”
My wife and I are fairly frugal these days as our income in 2023 will be half what it was in my last full time full year (2021).
One of the things that occasionally helped me with a purchase was to look at its use later and see what it “cost to use”.
Examples:
We put a sauna in our house in 2003 that cost $6000. We used is perhaps sixty times…so it cost $100 a time to use, less any help it provided in selling the house.
We bought a $7500 play set when our kids were 4 and 9. They played on it perhaps 100 times (even counting the two that weren’t born yet). So each time to play on it cost $75. We had a fellow cart it away for free when we sold the house, so it added nothing to the house value.
I once calculated how much it cost to drive 30,000 miles a year in several cars from 2001 to 2011. My commute was 50 miles each way. A 1993 Lexus LS 400 cost me $10000 a year to drive from 2001 to 2003 with gas, insurance, depreciation, insurance, maintenance and repairs. I drove a 2003 barely used Toyota Camry from 2003 to 2006, and it cost me $6500 a year…and it was essentially new.
As you know from my prior articles for WCI, I calculated that living in the McMansion from 2003 to 2022 cost me about a decade MORE full time work.
Since going to half-time and downsizing, I do like our much lower expenses.
Best wishes on your financial journey.
yeah dude excellent insight! Great way to look at the value an item got you. I will make sure to make use the s— out of my $300,000 pool once its in.
btw, you think doing zoom calls on a floatie while in my pool bad form? You think I should shut off the camera so patient’s don’t see that?
You can’t fill the hole in your heart with a $300k pool.
actually the $300k is creating the hole in my heart, as it does mean working harder for longer for both me and the wife. but she swears it will bring joy. from personal experience of growing up with a pool I know it does bring joy . . . for the kids!!! I keep telling wifie it likely will be painful for us having to compromise some of our time to work towards the pool, and then pay someone or spend our time to maintain the thing. She kind of has a rosy picture in her mind of how it will be. But she has committed to working harder for longer to put the stupid thing in!
This is bizarre. It’s okay to spend money if you have it. But $300K is a pretty expensive pool.
What is bizzare? Being henpecked into a terrible financial decision?
He obviously doesn’t want the pool, they obviously can’t afford the pool, and he’s being abused into saying yes.
Ha! I’m not sure which is worse, the kids drowning or the affair with the pool boy! But seriously I can’t change my wife’s mind about the pool, but at least let her realize we are delaying FI and impairing our freedom from work the more we spend.
I haven’t yet tried the Justin Harvey approach to *convincing spouse I am right*. But I add up the $170K initial purchase and $10K annual costs (slip fee, diver to clean, insurance, maintenance) of the sailboat where I now sit and divide it by nights spent here or days sailed and remind spouse how expensive this hobby is. He says we have a vacation home on the water; I remind that I didn’t think we should get a vacation home. And actually the original discussion about buying it became an exercise in overcoming my financial background and mindset because we COULD afford it. (But every time I think about it I wish I would take up horse breeding or some other insanely costly hobby. Relocating closer to grandkid for a net quarter million doesn’t count since we needed a house to live in anyway. Maybe I should buy the house next door to have a larger garden and put in a pool and hot tub there.)
ha! yes if you can afford it, buy the house next door! Add the pool and hot tub! just make sure it brings same amount of joy to you as the boat does for the hubbie 🙂
Thank you for writing this, Rikki. I totally agree that understanding your spouse’s personal experience with money, especially childhood stuff, is the key to understanding how your shared finances now. My husband and I are more similar in our backgrounds than what you describe, and we still have had to work on coming to the same page. Once I was able to explain to him what it was like having a spendthrift parent, who came from money and died almost penniless, he was a lot better able to understand why any debt – even a trivial amount – makes me almost panicky. So we work around this. Thanks and best wishes to you and your wife!
thanks, and yes, your money story, put simply, sucks.
I forget, but did your parent at least enjoy what they spent? As you could figure from my wife above, she would think being a spendthrift is ok if at least you maximized happiness and didn’t become a burden on your children.
Nah, I consider myself very lucky. One parent good with money, one terrible with money = I had an example of what to do and what not to do. This stuff definitely sticks with you though!
[Post removed for not contributing anything to the conversation, being nonsensical, and possibly being ad hominem and commenter put on the moderation list.]
“ We are paying our nanny already to look after the kids and do activities with them. This might be kind of a waste! … (gives in) … Let’s do this.”
-buys desktop after wife’s nagging
This doesn’t sound healthy at all. Your article is basically “just give in to whatever your wife wants.” I recommend you start watching Andrew Tate. Sure- he’s a lolcow, but there is a kernel of truth to his advice to low status men, like the author.
I hope you stop being emotionally and financially abused! WCI had lots of good articles on escaping a financially abusive marriage.
You talking about the guy who was in prison for suspicion of human trafficking, alleged rape, and allegedly forming an organized crime group? Yeah, maybe don’t take advice from that guy.
WCI is a cult- but a good one like AA 🙂
agreed. or like a good cult that loves random movies (cult classics) like Point Break, Swingers, Dazed and Confused, and Office Space.
Ricki! Get help- your wife is abusing you!