To have massively messed up our finances

[moneymortified]

My fiancé and I have been saving for our wedding for a year. I earn more than him but I’ve always been a spender. Never in debt or beyond my means but I’m not a big saver. We’ve been saving our money separately and have now come to pool it all together and I’m £1500 short. I don’t know how it’s happened. I just overspent every month and hoped it would all work itself out and now it’s come to it and I just haven’t saved enough. I honestly don’t even know what I’ve spent it on, just frittered on expensive skincare and make-up and stuff.

We have enough money to make up the shortfall but it means eating into our normal savings and my fiancé will cover it, like he always does, because he’s dependable and reliable and I’m useless.

He’s upset and disappointed but being quite nice about it. He grew up with a lot of debt in his family so gets worried about people keeping secrets with money because he doesn’t want me to end up hiding things and getting depressed and desperate etc. I’m just so embarrassed. How can I make it up to him? I never used to be so reckless, just lifestyle creep once my salary started going up.

Sell stuff. It’s unacceptable to expect or accept him making up the shortfall. If you can’t get the money together you’ll have to postpone the wedding.

He must be incredibly gutted. It looks, because it is, like you prioritising expensive fripperies over your wedding. If you think about how that must feel to him maybe you’ll stop minimising what’s happened.

If he enables you now you’ll both just settle into that unhealthy dynamic.

You make a budget on an excel or Google sheets data base and you limit what you spend. What's spending money and what's saving money or bills money. Once you have a weekly budget then wveey thing comes out of that- Keep a record or take the budget in cash out each week and only use that. If you shop for extras online then keep a clear record and if in doubt don't buy it.

Once you start to monitor closely you'll see what you spend and what is unnecessary spending. Your DP sounds lovely and patient . It's never too late to learn to start budgeting -'s sticking to your budget. It's a great life lesson

Hell no. If you put it all into a joint account you'll just start spending his. Better to create a separate spending account for you. Once's it's spent for the month it's spent. You may learn to budget

@AnneLovesGilbert Honestly, what sort of things do I sell? I literally have no idea what people would buy of mine second hand of any substantial value. Do people buy unopened skincare and make-up secondhand? A lot of the expensive things I have are used.

I think that delaying or downsizing your wedding would be a good idea. It’d show you the effect of your decisions.

@deedledeedledum sorry, I meant an account he could see and check on me on. Not an account he would put his money into.

@JenJones5 we’re not really in a position to do that. It’s 6 weeks away and we’re paying final balances, most is paid for. We want to get married and this isn’t a situation where we need to go into debt to make up the shortfall. It’s more it goes into money we’d set aside specifically for general other savings. It’s bad but not thank god something we need to cancel the wedding over.

You need to set up an automatic payment for the day you get paid to a savings account.
What ever amount you have agreed on with your partner you should increase it by at least £100 so you have more of a cushion.

I used to pay mortgage and bills first, then set aside an amount for savings that came out 3rd into savings account- then and only then came extras and spending money working out my weekly budget.

Cancel anything unnecessary whilst you are saving for house deposit. Don't buy online extras. You don't need this extra stuff. We could all buy thousands of £s of makeup and clothes and treats each month if we let ourselves. You just gotta stick to your budget and there's nothing like a spreadsheet to show you how little spare money you really have!!

I used to be you! Someone above mentioned YNAB. I used it to totally turn my finances and attitude to money around - it doesn’t mean you can’t spend money but when you do, it forces you to confront the fact that if you spend this money on a new lipstick you don’t need, you have to take it from your wedding fund. Make it up to him by saving the extra £1500 and replenishing the savings account.

You say it's thoughtless spending, but there are thoughts. They might be 'oh it won't matter' or suchlike. Try a bit of mindfulness meditation daily for 10 mins, so you can get a bit of distance from your thoughts and see what thoughts get you reaching for the debit card. Also, don't make things easy for yourself so culling social media accounts is a good idea. Set yourself a £50 a month budget for beauty buys say, and have a rule that you can put things in the basket but you won't buy until the next day.

This
You can cut back and repay the shortfall over the next year. That's £120 a month extra savings you have to make up

Do you have a car, an iPhone or iPad, or any jewellery?

At the moment you seem to want to do absolutely zero to fix the problem, other than expecting your partner to pay for you.

Can you get an evening or weekend job? Could you do food delivery, or find bar or restaurant work?

1. pay yourself first - direct debit to savings as soon as you're paid (Zopa do decent interest ones which you can open which need 7 or 31 days notice...you choose). Maybe if you can't get at the money immediately you might not spend it?
2. start tracking what you spend. I use YNAB but modern banking apps like Starling can do it reasonably well if you're good at tagging your spending. Then sit down and analyse. Where does your money go? Does it align with your goals and values? In 20 years what will you have valued more...nights out, makeup, holidays, a car or house? It's ok if you're answer is makeup...if it truly brings you joy. But just make sure your spending reflects what really makes you happy.

Also look at a savings account that isn’t linked to your main bank, so it’s harder to shuffle money over to your current account.

Set up the savings account with a standing order but don’t register for online banking with the savings bank.

You can keep track of the balance with paper statements, and go into the branch to move money, but won’t be able to dip into it for spending

Making it up nto him consists of repaying him the £1500 he has to cover for you, and to then stick to future savings agreements.

In terms of change, set a budget up and stick to it. Do things that make impulse buying harder, like deleting your card details from autofiling on your phone so you can't just click and buy, you have to get out your wallet and put in your card details. Set up a monzo account and put away the rest of your cards so you can only access your spending money. If you really can't control yourself from taking money out of savings, ask your DF to set up a savings account for your savings so you can't withdraw it at a whim. There are loads of things you can do if you really want to change.

You could cancel the service, and just have a registry office service. You’d save money that way.

Or, of course, just plough on, spending more of your partner’s money and starting off married life having shown him clearly where he comes in your priorities.

Either way works I suppose.

I do this too. I need to know how much I have for me. And it always goes by the end of week 3. I'm crap that way.
But if something comes up in week 4, well I can't do it, or buy it. Its my own fault.

See I don’t think this is taking responsibility.

‘it all just hasn’t balanced out’ it never will if you keep dipping into savings and spending more than you can afford. That sentence sounds like ‘I don’t know how it happened’ as though this happened to you, when it was a succession of conciliation choices.

You agreed to save a certain amount. But kept dipping into it. Because you couldn’t afford it out of the money you had left after savings.

You could have been honest earlier. Told him this before it was the deadline.

Have you posted about you wanting to spend and him wanting to save before? This seems familiar.

Also, did you grow up poor by any chance?

And don't ask your DF for a joint account before you can control your spending, that's massively unfair on him as you will soon go back to your old ways and start spending his money.

I also recommend YNAB. It really makes you think before spending.

Don't suggest he checks on your account to help curb your spending. That's forcing him into a 'boring adult ' role having to monitor and stop you spending, instead of you taking responsibility and acting like an adult. This isn't conducive to future happiness, especially if he gets stressed about debt and feels he is now responsible for you not getting into debt in the future.

Sell clothes on ebay - any brands with a following will sell. There are loads of makeup groups on FB. Find one you can sell in

@Hearthnhome No, never posted about this before. I didn’t grow up poor, I actually come from a really well-off background. My Father was excellent at trying to teach us how to save money and I used to be great at it. It’s all just slipped. I’ve never been short of money and I’ve always known there’s a safety net which I think is the biggest problem at this point.

@TeaMoreToast Thanks for that, you’re so right about forcing him into that role. I don’t want to do that.

Really appreciate all the advice, thank you!