I'm wondering if anyone has advice on helping a (suspected) ADHD spouse pay attention to/understand the financial "big picture" in a relationship. For most of our 2 1/2-year marriage, I have been the sole breadwinner, bill payer, and overall tracker of our finances. I have struggled to get my husband to show any interest in how much money we have each month vs. how much we spend. This has been an issue because he does a lot of the shopping for groceries and other necessities since he's home a lot more than me, but I feel like he has little concept of whether what he's spending is in line with what we can truly afford. I use Mint.com to keep track of our spending, bank accounts, and credit cards, and find it to be a very easy way to quickly see what our daily cash flow looks like. I've tried to get him to use it too, or at least look at it, but he seems to find it overwhelming and confusing. I've tried creating a monthly spreadsheet to track our spending vs. income but he would not use it consistently and it quickly fizzled out. Finally, I started giving him a weekly cash "allowance" rather than letting him have free use of the debit/credit cards. This has helped, but the fact remains that he only focuses on that chunk of cash he gets every week and has little understanding of how we consistently end up spending more than we earn each month when our bills and other expenses are factored in. I'm acutely aware of this net loss and feel guilty if I spend almost any money on myself, but he considers part of his weekly allowance to be spending cash to use on little extras (books and magazines, eBay purchases, alcohol) that I generally deprive myself of because I know, for example, that we need to set aside X amount to pay the next month's credit card bill. I don't know how many fights we've had about this, or how many times I've tried to calmly explain why it's important to me. It just doesn't seem to stick. Am I expecting too much? I don't mind being the financial manager in the relationship because in general I think I'm good at it, but without him on board to a greater extent I feel like there's only so much I can do to keep us on an even footing. Thanks.
Seeing the financial big picture
Submitted by soconfused on 02/21/2014.
Finances
Submitted by Monkeygirl on
I am in the exact same situation as you. Recently, though, there has been a number of situations where my husband seems to have realized that there really is an end to how much money is in our account. I have a feeling that making it a shared issue helps - like when we were standing in a foreign country twelve miles from our hotel, and were told that we could not renew the rental on our car due to a blocked credit card. He understood that WE had been spending too much and that WE had to be more careful. I think it is important to not make it all about how foolishly HE spends his money. After all, if you are in charge of the credit cards, then it is you allowing the over-spending, so in that sense you are both to blame. I get the feeling that that approach helps his understanding of the problem.
I have tried five different schemes to make him stop overspending. What works relatively well is that at the moment he has a credit card that allows no overdrafts, he gets a weekly email from the bank stating how much is on the account, and small daily allowances go into it. I didn't want to be stingy, so he gets a little more than what he needs, strictly speaking. But I think that was was a mistake. If there is money on the account and a bag of crisps on the counter, then he will buy those crisps. If there is food in the fridge but money on the account he will walk across the street for takeaway. If he has spent his money at the pub he will get a tab. I am thinking of giving him a smaller allowance but setting up some sort of saving for him, so that the junk-food money can be saved up for buying stuff that he really wants. As it is now, his extra money goes towards junk, and the special things that he wants to buy come out of my account. All the while my wardrobe is wearing out and I'm not sure if I should wait until next month to buy a decent bottle of body lotion. I see the hairdresser every six months, now that is not a life for a hard-working professional :-)
I think you are right that he does not understand what you can truly afford, at least not in the situation where there is something he wants to buy. So I think you need to reassess how much money you give him; simply explain to him that the two of you are overspending and at the same time aren't getting enough value for money. I am saying this to myself too, because we too have to change our spending style soon; that means having me, too, pulling myself together and not allowing overdrafts. That will be difficult for me as well, I just hope that he will understand it when I say to him that there IS no more money. I am hoping that it will work. My experience is that he will spend what he gets; if he had unlimited access to our account we would have been out in the street two years ago.
I can't help thinking that both you and I are to some extent a little deluded - isn't overspending a sort of delusion? We KNOW that it is not going to help, on the contrary, it will make matters worse. If we fall for the temptation without suffering from adhd, then maybe it's not so strange that our husbands do so too. I am not saying this to make you feel bad, because I already know how bad and out of control being married to someone with adhd can feel.
As to whether you are expecting too much - I don't want to say yes you are, because after two and a half years of marriage I was still having the same expectations. Just don't give him money and then complain that he spent it, unless you want to argue over money for the rest of your life. Give him less money; perhaps his contribution to thinking about your economy can be helping to decide where the money that you end up saving goes to: something for you or something for him.
I hope this helps; but mind you, half it are just resolutions for what I am going to do, not what I am currently doing!
Good on you
Submitted by Ajay on
Good on you for showing strength. I don't think you're expecting too much. Things might have to get worse before they get better, though.
It took a year and a half of living a nightmare before my wife began to spend less: the tax office threatening to take us to court, and her being out of work for half a year, and my restricting her to a debit card for a year, and my refusing to buy her more than a basic phone when her iPhone ended up on the floor again, and a lot of anger on her part. Her spending comes in waves now: some weeks she underbuys, others she'll bring home multiples of the one item. Generally, though, she's toned it down.
Thanks for your comments. I
Submitted by soconfused on
Thanks for your comments. I think things have been getting better, and maybe I'm just frustrated because they aren't improving faster and we still have occasional setbacks. Like Monkeygirl said, I'm tired of being a working professional with a decent salary who can't afford new work clothes or a regular haircut. There is a lot of resentment built up that I'm trying to combat. But I do have to recognize the way things have been slowly improving over time, and the ways he's been making progress. I have, however, tried to sit him down at times when money is really tight and explain to him, look, we have less cash than usual this month, so I'm going to have to give you less money and you're going to have to cut back on the groceries, etc. It seems so cut-and-dried to me but he'll argue about how he can't get by on less than the usual amount. That's where I feel like I'm hitting a brick wall. To me the numbers are irrefutable, so why are we fighting about it?
One thing I had considered doing was cutting out the use of credit cards except for large purchases. I originally started using them to accrue travel rewards, etc., but at this point I'm not sure that this benefit is at all worth it. I still use them for just about everything I purchase, so the amount of money we have in our checking account at any given time isn't really an accurate indicator of our spending, which might be a part of what's making it hard for him to keep track. I'd be interested to know if others have tried this tactic for controlling spending.