As for Linda, I think she should make sure they have the same goals. As long as he’s saving and not adding debt, cut him some slack. It’s taken me almost 40 years and two divorces to realize that the only person you can change/control is yourself. If you can’t accept him as he is now, you should think long and hard about whether you should get married.

Then husband’s income got lower, and lo and behold, the man whom I always thought to be more of a spender was better able to adjust his spending to his small income than I was. So – carefully check who’s really the spender and saver.

After living for 10 years without real plans and a lot of financial and work ups and downs, we finally have a goal (house) and a plan and I’m going back to freelancing to make money to put into this. And for the first time, we’re really inclined to save money into one pot

We still and always had separate banking accounts, and I think it’s a good thing in any combination of personalities and incomes.

Good luck with finding your solution, Linda.

In our case, I think simply having good role models – myself, and some friends – was the key. When you grow up in low-working class living paycheck to paycheck, week to week, you simply don’t realise that there are other ways to do it. Through me, he saw that you COULD save up and buy big ticket items – a computer, a holiday, whatever – and that car dramas, be it repairs or a whole new vehicle, and we’ve had plenty of those – didn’t need to be a total emergency. He does like his toys and shiny new things, and realising he COULD have them if he saved was a revelation. I smile when I think back to the day he bought his Xbox 360.

Oh, and redundancy also forced him to learn the importance of having a savings account.

You need to decide, as other posters have stated, whether you can live with this man “AS IS.” If not, and you don’t want to go the his/hers/ours financial route (what we now do), LEAVE HIM. Do not put yourself through what I’ve gone through. It’s a miserable, frustrating, and very depressing situation. You may love other things about him, love them very much even, but you can’t live on love alone. As another poster said, spending habits are about shared values, and you need to figure out if your values are in line.

On a personal note about weddings: we got married in front of a few friends at the Justice of the Peace office, went on a European honeymoon, and returned home to throw ourselves a “Wedding Party”. It was awesome! Zero wasted dollars on wilting flowers, fancy outfits and rental fees, and just a few hundred spent on booze and food at our big party. No stress, plenty of time to hangout and share memories/pics, and we had a blast. Don’t feel pressured to throw a $25K wedding… weddings are for everyone else to enjoy.

A couple times a month, I would just show her totals of everything that she spends. This method would require a lot of discipline and hassle on your end, but I think the most powerful way to get your message across is to simply show them what they are currently spending. So much spending is mindless; when you become aware of where all the money is going, and how much you could really save if you cut it out, that in itself becomes a powerful motivator.

I’ve never tried this, so I don’t know if it would work. But I wish you luck.

It is not clear if the spending is compulsive (something outside of his control). It does sound like she is experiencing some anxiety, and I’m not sure if it is warranted or not…non the less she is uncomfortable with his habits.

To examine if his spending behaviors are compulsive/addictive spending they each would want to look at how it is impacting his/her and their life. Does his spending prevent them from paying their bills on time? Does his spending prevent them from taking care of medical needs? Does his spending interfere with relationships with friends, family, etc. (i.e is borrowing from friends family and not being able to pay it back). Continuing to run up debt etc.

Likewise, He/She and they can evaluate where her feelings are coming from about him spending money. Does she tend to “hoard” money and have a difficult enjoying “letting go” of her money. In the scenario above, it is just not clear.

Exploring our own responsed to the above scenario can give us insights into our own values, beliefs, mindset, and “blindspots” about our own relationship with money.

Gasp! The horror!

So? What does that mean? It implies he buys coffee. We don’t know how much coffee. Maybe he spends $4 daily on coffee and maybe he spends $4 weekly. Is buying an occasional Mocha somehow abhorrent behavior that must change or he’s a bad person?
Does Linda even know how much coffee he buys or is she making assumptions?

I’m not saying the guy is frugal but lets not automatically assume that frequenting Starbuks means you’re irresponsible with money. My wife tends to buy coffee drinks 1-2 times a week and we save >30% of our income.

The fact of the matter is people do need to save. If he’s saving 5% of his no longer huge salary, and spending tons on lattes, vacations, and iGadgets then he’s not saving enough. If he’s saving 50% of his salary and still has money left over for those other things, then fine, but that doesn’t seem to be the picture she’s portraying.

Likewise, if someone saves 5% of their salary because that is all they can reasonably afford, then that’s fine too. Everyone has to start somewhere. But if you can only afford 5% because of the unnecessary luxuries in your life, then you need to adjust your budget.

I will agree with one thing heartily, though. If the savings is all going towards throwing a multi-thousand dollar wedding, then the money would be just as well spent on lattes. Having been married last year, I promise you the day will be a blur and be over before you know it. If you’re kissing away $20k in the process, you’re going to wish you put the money to better use.

I agreed to a caribbean honeymoon as long as we could pay it off within a month. The deal was that he’d have to give up his morning coffee and make his own. Eat breakfast at home, minimize going out to eat and cooking more. It was a start. It went from there to pay off the wedding, first home purchase, baby #1, second home purchase and baby #2.

We are far from perfect but we do our best to be frugal.

best of luck.

People change if it is important to them. If money is the center of your life and your arguments, think before you leap.
We never really argued about money since when it got short- one of us got a second job. We both knew when to cut back. It seems our children (and their significant others) are taking a page from our book and making it work for them as well.

-the first thing i did when we combined finances was to create our net worth calculation. it was negative! It was a powerful at first to show him the numbers to de-personalise the situation. For him there was a big difference between what he thought the situation was to the actual reality of it.

-we agreed on adult allowances, the money goes into both our personal accounts every Friday and i don’t really care (or check, or ask) how he spends his amount

-we’ve automated all bill paying, transfers to savings accounts, and 401k contributions to remove human error & emotions, we’ve mistake-proofed it against ourselves

-for the remaining money each week that actually gets into our hands (a very small amount) we use for food, gas and any incidentals, we have a quick chat once a week to allocate how we will spend it that week. Then we take it out in cash (so we can’t overspend at the grocery store, etc)

Hope this helps! We are still very different money personalities but both of us understand and accept where the other person is coming from and try to work together

Seriously though, this guy doesn’t sound like he’s a spendthrift. Cut him some slack. Unless theres worse spending habits we didn’t hear about then I tihnk maybe Linda may be the one who needs to lighten up here. She can’t expect her fiance to change entirely over night to suit her exact specifications. She says he has changed a ‘lot’ and she should be happy with that. Maybe Linda is a miser? How much has she changed her spending and financial habits to suit him? Should she lighten up and not get upset if he wants to eat out dinner once in a while or buy the new apple iThing?

What I think they should do is have a frank and positive discussion about spending. When Trent at Simple Dollar wrote about this nearly a month ago my suggestion was that she and her fiance should make lists of their individual spending priorities and then compare them. They should also make sure that they each now how important different financial goals are and what expecations are. Does she think they need to save 25% of their income while he thinks saving 5% is OK? Or are they closer to agreeing? Is having money in the bank very very important to her and maybe he doesn’t realize that?
Maybe he ‘gets’ that saving for a wedding is important but he just doesn’t ‘get’ that its super duper important and Linda can’t sleep at night since she obsesses about worrying over it.

Just because someone is saving for a wedding doesn’t mean they are having some extravagant $50,000 wedding. Weddings cost money and there is nothing wrong with wanting your family and friends to celebrate with you on that special day. Even if you elope in Vegas or go the the JP and have an awesome reception you are still going to spend a good amount of money. I don’t know the poster’s situation and neither do you so could we stop assuming she wants some ridiculously expensive wedding and couldn’t care less about the actual marriage?

My DH is responsible with money, but he also wants to have a certain level of fun and entertainment in the “now” rather than save everything for the uncertain “later” (and he has a valid point). I’m a saver through and through, and always will be – it’s just the way I’m wired. So for many years while I was at home eating KD for lunch with the kids so we could save money, he was out with friends or business associates eating in nice restaurants. This drove me crazy and made me resent him, but what was I supposed to do? Spend more money to punish him? Leave him??? Our income finally caught up with his lifestyle and now I don’t mind that he spends money because we’re saving a generous amount too, which was always my goal. Now we can both enjoy ourselves guilt free.

So the moral of my story is that, in the end if you want to make it work, sometimes you have to change your perception rather than change the other person.

Linda, since she’s the motivated one, should set up joint accounts for these goals, and help her fiance set up an automatic withdrawal from his account for the agreed upon amounts. She’ll contribute too.

If they can do that then who cares what the fiance spends his fun money on! Our purchases, be they comic books, a house cleaner, guitars or flowers, will always seem silly and unnecessary to someone. So I think Linda should get past the judgement to the root of her fears – which is that they won’t be able to save money, and focus on a joint plan to tackle that. It can be done!