Dh spending lots on daily lunches & coffees

I’ve got really nice coffee and breakfasts at home to avoid this.

Redo your finances. You both get X amount for personal spending and that includes cigarettes, snacks and coffees out etc. Food shop comes out of joint money.

Ask him to opt for one thing daily and to take enough food from home to avoid being hungry. So solely the pub one day and another day the cafe and a different day solely breakfast, nothing more.

I am a bit bad for this too - I love to walk down to the local shops and buy a sandwich for lunch. It's (sadly) one of the highlights of my day. DH makes himself a fancy packed lunch and thinks I'm mad for preferring a sandwich to this.

As a family, we have a joint account for joint expenses, but generally speaking buying lunch comes out of my current account from my own discretionary spending money.

At the moment I'm at peace with this (although I'm not spending £20 a day!), but I do go through periods of wanting to be more economical and then make my own sandwich.

the Money Savings Expert demotivator is quite helpful for seeing how seemingly little things add up.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/demotivator

It seems he thinks his money is not all family money.
The only way can see is to write down all the spending, include everything extra and include dance classes or trips out with Dd and clothes/ shoes for dd, see if wages cover it .

Its his problem too.

Can't he have breakfast at home? Or take a coffee and bap to eat on the way in?

If you work full time, do you have to put on more to cover his spend on snacks?

Dump any joint accounts, so when he has spent all the money he can't dip into more money set aside.

OP good luck showing him how much he is taking out of the family budget - in addition to all the other great advice on here, I know you're not in the UK but if you can look on Facebook or Instagram, check out The Batch Lady - she started doing easy batching to reclaim time in her life and it's grown and grown over the last few years - she now has a tv show on channel 4 called Batch From Scratch - and several cookery books,

The last episode I watched the family was just like this and loads of their income was going on takeaways and food treats for individuals within the family. They managed to come in, show how much they were spending (in time and money terms) and show how unhealthy they were too - plus they manage to help them sort out their kitchen / life/relationship etc and save lots of money and time in the process as well as all end up happier and healthier.

There are lots of little changes that you can do to start - so sorting out the kids breakfasts or lunches for example to make it easier in the mornings, so there's something just to grab and eat without needing to think about it. or a lunch you can grab from the freezer to take with you. Even if he could do this 3 x a week it would be a start and get him into good habits.

I'd' definitely be tempted to split off the family food budget before his treat money eats and ensure that he can have all the treats he wants for breakfast, coffee, lunch, smokes, beers etc - but that it can only come out of his spending money once the family have got enough to eat (reasonably!), pay bills, get new clothes for kids as they get older and so on.

The Batch Lady's website with plenty of ideas on!

My DP used to spend an absolute fortune on coffees,snacks, lunches etc when out for work. But at least that was pre COL crisis and we had more disposable income.
I don't think he would do that now - but he works from home now and the temptation isn't there, fortunately!

I can’t imagine telling my partner what he can or can’t spend his money on. I also wouldn’t like being told how to spend my money.
if he’s contributing a fair share to family finances I don’t think you should control whet lunch / snacks he buys.

Personally I don’t think eating lunch out every work day is a problem in and of itself. However the fact that he doesn’t seem to ‘buy-in’ to the family budget is a big issue.

My husband goes out for lunch every work day, he doesn’t like the term ‘networking’ but that’s basically what it is, he usually invites one or more colleagues and finds it really useful to keep up with what’s going on in the company, I suspect it has contributed to his success at work and I’d therefore consider it a ‘work cost’ rather than discretionary spending (which is academic as I’m a SAHP atm and we just have a joint account).

I know a few PP have mentioned they think it’s wasteful to eat out so much even if you can afford it but in our case it balances out; my DH is more frugal in other ways (barely drinks alcohol, has cheap hobbies, spends minimally on clothes & haircuts, drives a small 20+ year old car). When I worked I always took leftovers (I was a teacher so no time to eat out!) but I spent more on other things.

I think in general adults should be able to allocate their budget as they see fit - the problem isn’t that your husband is eating lunch out it’s that he’s not stepping up to set and stick to a joint family budget that’s fair to everyone.

That is really a lot. DH & I are not coffee people and drinking after work isn't such a thing here. Our system is generally 4 days packed/homemade lunch (we both have WFH days) and 1 day we can get something from a café or such. 1 morning a week I treat myself to a pastry from the nice bakery.

Splitting finances sounds like a good idea, but in the end, the pot is only so big. Will he realise how much he is spending? Will he transfer the appropriate amount to you for child & house expenses?

I used to work with males who spent approx £15 per day on food to eat at work.
In contrast I would take a home made packed lunch or left overs.
I also buy yellow sticker food from the supermarkets

So does everyone. Doesn't mean he or you can afford to spend 450 a month on eating out, take away drinks, and cigarettes ... over 5k a year!

Put the maths on paper and hand it to him.

This has really become a problem for someone I know. They have young children and they are struggling. We are talking about the same
level of spending as OP’s DH. My friend’s DH is a tradesman, self employed. She is working to set up her own small business. Their income is considered a joint/family income. When you have
young children I don’t get this ‘his money/
my money’. When he saw the accountants figures and all of his food expenses, cigarettes and beer to unwind after a hard days work, going through the business account he was shamefaced. They are struggling to pay their bills because he is spending it all in this way. She is brilliant with money and budgets and
saves but he is just throwing all her hard work away. They are talking and he is slowly learning, so there is hope. He says he was never taught to
manage money whereas she was.

Nice things for you and dd not music 😳

I went through a (very short) phase of buying a lot to get me through days before I copped on and decided on one treat day a week (even then what I bought was a fraction of what it had been). You feel like you deserve it because you’re just wrecked. I think maybe just tell him to start prioritising what he feels he needs to get him through the day and other than that, get making his own meals/ lunches instead

Talk to him about it.

He should be frugal as fuck with any other unnecessary extras if he's a smoker. You can't smoke and get coffee, cafe lunches and breakfasts and rounds of drinks in bars every day! He needs to see how much more he is spending than you on that stuff.

You could say 'that's the equivalent of me buying x amount of clothes, X amount of hobby equipment, x amount of beauty treatments, X amounts of meals out and bottles of wine...' just listing all the things you enjoy that you could've wasted it on.

And what is wrong with drinking a coffee at home and eating toast, then bringing in soup or a sandwich from home also? Does he claim he's too busy to make pack lunch? If so he's acting like a five year old!

And why not get a few cans from Aldi and sit in the park in the sun or go round your mates house if you want to drink alcohol and socialise? Even then not every single day!

I mean the fags are just a no from me.
it certainly would t be coming out of joint money… it would need to come from his discretionary spends.

the food is also a no from me.
My husband doesn’t do this and we make good money and if he did I’d be raging it’s very wasteful

breakfast - is at home or he has a bowl of cereal in the office l. He keeps a box in his locker.
Coffee - he takes a cup of coffee from home to the office

lunch - on Monday he gets fruit, a multi pack of crisps and fancy cans of kombucha or seltzers from the supermarket. He’ll then buy a sandwich to go with that each day maybbbbeee he takes some leftovers in but not that often (0-2 x per week)

his lunch costs maybe £20 per week all in which is fine I think.
sometimes he’ll go get fancy street food on a Thursday or Friday which again is fine as a one off

Do you have a joint account? Can you trust him to use his own account for this sort of thing? if so split your accounts as pp have suggested
if not you get music for yours and dd’s lunches and it’s salad for dinner as that’s what you can afford if he spending€21/day.

BTW if you could save €5k/year that’s €50k in 10 years which is a decent chunk of mortgage and saved interest if you used it to overpay…..

if he’s open to it you could look at fakeaway recipes for lunches, as it hard to change habits or go cold turkey so a little help may be needed

Does he have his own spending money? I earn most here, we put month in the joint account for bills, food etc. and have the same amount to spend each month.

I'll often have money left at the end of the month while DH doesn't, because he buys chips, or drinks etc. at work. He does bring a packed lunch (which he makes himself), so any extras come from his spending money.

I only occasionally buy sandwiches. I take coffee bags to work etc. rather than buy coffee. But if I forget them or want something extra in the day then I would expect to be able to buy it without being policed precisely because if I am not at home I don't have the option of making another cup of coffee/sandwich

But I think his comments show some resentment that he is working full time and you aren't. It may be worth looking to increase your hours? That will give you more money to spend and maybe he will have less resentment.

the fact that you buy the lunch boxes that go missing implies that you end up making his lunches as well.
Maybe if he made his own he'd eat them and keep track of the boxes?

As PPs have said, look at what you're spending
Joint
You personal
Him personal
over the course of a month - discuss and agree fair budgets foe each