How to make my peace with our lifestyle

You need to sit down together with a spreadsheet- money in, fixed costs, then set budgets for variable costs including gifts. It isn't rocket science but it takes discipline. I find that it's easier to be sensible when there's a significant carrot at the end eg frugal 3 months then nice treat. I'm sure with a bit of belt tightening you'll be fine but he must be on board

Maybe get him to read the thread on here about how much people are planning to give their kids towards a house deposit! Not realistic for most people, but might give him a sense of what other people do with spare money.

@Meetinginthemiddle you say there are no financial difficulties but also that your DH doesn't rein it in until the second warning from the bank. Surely one warning signals financial difficulty.

I could not live with someone with such an irresponsible approach to money.

Set a target for a savings pot that you're comfortable with, and set automatic transfers from your accounts into it. Same with the bills account. As you suggest, weight it according to relative income. These are shared family expenses - bills AND rainy day funds. He doesn't get to duck out of that shared responsibility.

After those two things are sorted- , automatically, each month - he can spend as he wishes. You get peace of mind, you get to save extra if you want to (but I'd put that into a fund of your own, not family funds) and he gets to splash his spare cash if he wants to.

I would worry as much about how he affects the kids. Major gifts just after Xmas is ridiculous and you are in danger of raising spoiled brats. It is your job to teach about money and budgets and being sensible. Hate meanness, but they should be shown a middle way. There is a danger they will think things buy happiness. The best gift he can give is his time and interest in them. Having been able to help get mine on the property ladder, they would have been in rubbish rentals, if I had overspent for years. Seeing my dgc in a modest secure home with a garden is more important than the latest toy.

This is why I'm not married to my long term partner. The man's a total idiot with money.

You need to get some kind of control of this because if you stay together, retirement will be poorer than you deserve and if you divorce he will get a huge part of whatever you save.

Some great suggestions on this thread. Also, if he is diagnosed adhd, get him on medication. It's helped us a lot, though the impulsive stupidity is still there, it is much reduced.

Why should you accept them? Why should you be the one to change? Does he actually know how much his extravagance upsets you?

Did his mum or dad talk about their finances a lot when he was a child?
Did they go on about how they can't afford something, perhaps there was a huge financial loss (bankruptcy?) And they discussed it with the children?
This sometimes causes the children to grow up and over indulge because they're still in the mindset that they need to spend before it's taken away.
Perhaps he could go for counseling?

I think @3LemonsAndLime has great suggestions because these work with our psychology.
I think your dh would be in financial trouble without you.
I think your priorities are as important as his.
I think saving for pensions and the dc needs to be set up too.
His fun is getting boring.

How do you find a man that stupid and wasteful attractive? I couldn’t.

My ex husband was a high earner and a spender. Always overdrawn, two golf club memberships, spent his lunchtimes going round the shops buying 'stuff', new car every three years, gadgets, you name it. We never had savings (I didn't bother as he would have just spent it), my suggestions to overpay the mortgage fell on deaf ears.

Divorcing him was a big relief as I could have a say over spending/budgeting. However there were relatively little assets when we divorced and had to settle for ongoing maintenance which caused endless problems. Ended up with him taking me back to court to get rid of it. I got a final settlement and total freedom.

Long story short he remarried and is going through another divorce. I hate to think what his retirement will be like. He can't work forever. Spenders are reckless with no forward planning imo. I would never be with another one. Life is precarious enough without someone living beyond their means. Not sure how you can prevent it though, it's a personality trait.

The remaining issue is him chasing the dopamine hit

Good point. Maybe Premium Bonds? You need tens of thousands to get regular winnings but once you have them it can make you reluctant to withdraw your savings in case you miss a big win.

On a smaller scale, a savings account that pays interest monthly. Transferring in more money to boost the next month's interest is very motivating.

This is why I will never get married or share finances again. My ex husband was like this and would randomly splurge oh stuff because “life is too short to worry about money”, which was easy for him to say but I was the main breadwinner and the house was in my name. I can’t think of anything more frightening than this.

If the relationship is good and you want to stay together can you talk to him about ways to ringfence your finances a bit more? Does he understand how much anxiety this gives you?

What this comes down to is control and influence. You can’t control an adult and you shouldn’t want to. You can influence them and in a loving relationship you hold a lot of influence. In a marriage and a family you hold a lot of influence. Whether you are effective in your influence depends on you, the issue and his willingness to be influenced.

If he was not taking responsibility for putting the family in debt and that caused you stress that is wrong and is on him. If you are stressed because you don’t have a years worth of mortgage saved up then that is a you problem. Because this is something that is desirable not necessary for him.

It would be better for you if he did buy into it but he doesn’t and he doesn’t need to. Even if you made it a deal breaker he won’t really change his mindset. Just like you can’t change yours. You will both keep pulling in other directions. if there was a compromise you would have found it before a marriage and children.

Yet another reason to remind people that most of the marriage vows are ceremonial window dressing. Marriage is about money. It is a financial commitment and that should be completely understood by both parties.

It sounds like he's a shopaholic and addicted to the buzz of buying.

Buying expensive smartphones for your dc's just after Christmas isn't normal behaviour. My dh is a very high earner but even we wouldn't do that - it's not good for the kids and will give them unhealthy expectations.

And ordering stuff that doesn't fit and not returning it - Id be livid tbh, I don't think I could live like that. He needs help for his addiction imo.

Are you both saving sufficient amounts into a pension?

What are your plans for when you are older? If he is as reckless as it appears, I worry that he will not be saving enough in his pension.

Have you thought about seeing a money coach together? They aren't an independent financial advisor (who only really work with people with 500k minimum of savings) but are a sort of halfway house and can take you through an analysis of of where you currently are in terms of savings, mortgage, pension and how that looks in 20, 30 or 40 years time depending on the choice you make now. If you have specific goals (saving for children's uni fees, extending house) you can look at what you need to do now to achieve that by your target date

Someone like:
https://octopusmoney.com/

Might help trigger some conversations between the two of you that need to be had.

Not having savings, an emergency fund and a budget IS being in financial trouble.

What is your pension situation?

Op you sound like a really nice person who considers the future implications of purchases and material possessions - not just for your own finances but also for the environment. It sounds like you have a very different approach to money and possessions in general from your DP. As pps have suggested I think you need to sit down and decide together how much you will save and spend each month, and maybe some rules on spending in general (eg do you have something like it already? Big tech purchases for the kids to be agreed by both of you, if something doesn’t fit return straight away, spend on experiences rather than items etc).
also another suggestion - but maybe look into why does your DP feel he needs to shop all the time? Is it boredom? Could he take up a new hobby (this might of course result in more spending for stuff for the hobby but it might be more meaningful spending on something he really enjoys rather than expensive trainers that don’t fit).

You’ve been given some great advice around tackling the symptoms ie saving pots etc.

The remaining issue is him chasing the dopamine hit. You aren’t going to be able to stop his need for that dopamine but you can guide how he gets it. Selling on Vinted, seeing savings grow etc can all give that hit. Or him buying to a budget on Vinted too.

Without allowing for that, he won’t be able to change.

I dont think you should be making peace with this impulsive careless behaviour of his. He needs to address it, therapy needed.

This is what I'm thinking... I'll figure out the monthly expenses, weight it according to our salaries (he's the high earner) and then we put it in at the beginning of the month. Then he can spend his leftovers and I can save mine.

So do you do this calculating every month? That would be very wearing.

We do something vaguely similar except we both put the same amount into the joint account every month which covers all the joint household expenses with some left over which goes into joint savings (for house, holidays etc). Then we have our own spending money. (DH puts his spare cash into his savings and I invaribly spend all mine 😳😄)

Just seen three lines has said it.

We do this but in a slightly different way

I'd also add in a separate pot for children expenses, school stuff, uniform clubs hair cuts and another for Christmas.

I was about to suggest this. Open a separate account that is purely for bills. My DIL has nine different accounts she said for various outgoings and savings , spreadsheets, but she is uber organised and my son is happy for her to handle this.

I have a friend whose ex was like this.
He used to laugh and say it’s feast or famine in this house.
My friend went along with it for 16 years but getting older and wanting security became more important and in the end she left.
It was just too stressful for her.

I've been married 35 years. My husband has always out-earned me and it is his money - he's worked hard for it! He has contributed more than I have to joint expenses, so I have benefited, but I would never dream of telling him how he should spend what he has earned.