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.

@Crazykatie I don’t have a credit card! I know, ridiculous.

Stop online shopping. Take out £100 cash each pay day and that can be your treat fund, and only buy if you're in a shop and using cash. You'll think 100x more before you make these purchases than clicking buttons online.

I stopped online shopping about 4 years ago and saved a fortune. I saved so much that I've been able to stop working to allow me to have a family. I quit in February and have barely eaten into my savings. I don't buy myself make up or outfits unless I need to. I'm currently pregnant and where before I'd have gone and bought a whole new wardrobe, I've bought a couple of essentials and accepted a bag of 2nd hand maternity clothes from my sister in law, which has done the job pretty well! I don't miss any of it at all, I feel so much freer.

Nobody knows if the make up on your face cost £200 or £20. Once you cut down you'll be sickened by the amount of stuff you have and spending you did, and you'll have so much you won't need to buy another thing for years 🤣

Agree with everything you’ve said, not a pile on.

Absolutely this!!
finances don't just work themselves out. You're the one that is in charge of your finances, burying your head in the sand won't change them, as you have seen. Make it up to him by changing. He shouldn't have to subsidise your lifestyle when you earn more

We worry about our children ending up like the OP. DH and I are from poor backgrounds, so always knew that we’d Ned to take proper responsibility for our finances, and that we’d need good careers to become wealthy. I’ve some cousins who were given whatever they wanted, including money long after they had left home, and it’s no surprise that they are now struggling and have never got a proper career going.

I Amy have very little but not paying for smoking week etc means one day when my dark times are finished I’ll be quids on. Already saving for new home bits bed fridge etc.

I have to save up for taxes and to put money into pension at the end of the financial year (I don't do it as I go along in case I lose my job) you just need to set up a seperate account for whatever you need to contribute towards this partnership, ie a savings account, set up a standing order and that money gets paid each month straight after pay day.

You can def sell unopened makeup on selling sites like Vinted (there are no selling fees, so I’d recommend it over EBay). I sell a lot of clothes on there too. You won’t make loads, but it’s better than nothing.

I find going through my statement and actually adding up all the books, coffees, treats makes me rather more reticent with my spending!

For the time being, curb all none essential spending for three months. Use that time to give yourself a spending detox, and send 1500 his way across the months.

Once the three months is up, sit and work out what your share of the bills are, how much you want to save, and set up a direct payment out to separate places for those. Then with whats left, think about how you want to start managing it moving forward.

If you enjoy make up shopping, then start a notebook page in your phone of all the items you see you are interested in, and their price. Then once a quarter, sit and sort through your make up, see what you have, what gaps, replacements needed etc and order the things from the list you need/still want.

In other words, sleep on any purchase. For a good 90 days.

i do, but then I’d transfer bits and bobs back when I wanted something and said I’d save the extra next month, and it just hasn’t all balanced out.

Well yes, obviously it will only balance out if you also have months where you save more than the norm. It sounds like you set an unrealistic goal for someone with your level of spending discipline

Oh. Cmon; unless you are about to drip feed you have additional needs. You knew you were doing it and you knew he’d make it up so you selfishly spent what you fancied and used him.

I think it’s possible to change but you have to be quite committed about it. I used to be a person who shopped as a hobby and I consider that to be quite an embarrassing admission. I’ve had to work quite consistently to stop casual spending on nonsense - I’m not perfect but I’m a lot better. I paid attention to where my money was going to - all the usual suspects clothes, make-up, coffees out etc and I responded to those temptations individually. I unsubscribed from emails and stopped with fashion magazines. I unsubscribed from an SM influencers who used the word “haul” and concentrated on finding those involved in slow fashion / minimalist wardrobes etc. I stopped mooching around the shops just because I had time. I ventured into second hand clothes and sold some unwanted items. I consciously looked at cheaper skincare like The Ordinary or brands at Aldi /Lidl and would make myself use up a product before repurchasing. I did the same with shampoo etc. Took my lunch into work…. All the usual advice. Eventually finding my favourite product cheaper in TK Maxx became more fun than buying full price in a department store. Or finding a gem in a charity shop. But overall the aim is being happy as you are without the need for another lipstick or shoes.

I think there’s a lot going on here and you could probably do with some counseling or just a bit of space with a friend who can be kind but also robustly candid with you to sort some of it out.

You have been able to save in the past. But now, with a savings goal for a wedding ahead of you, you started spending a small fortune on stuff you aren’t really getting much out of. You say “I’d transfer bits and bobs back when I wanted something and said I’d save the extra next month, and it just hasn’t all balanced out” so you must have known, deep down, each month when you were doing this that it couldn’t “balance out” because you were never doing the balancing, you were only ever taking cribs and drabs. But you kept doing it. It’s a bit of a teenage - sticking your head in the sand - approach. And the question that springs to mind for me is - what are you actually trying to avoid? You don’t need what you’re buying, you don’t even use a lot of it. So what were you getting out of buying it. And what were you getting out of jeopardizing your wedding rather than actively trying to make it happen?

Is the wedding something you don’t really want? You said it was your fiancé’s baby, but were you coerced into it? Or have you suppressed your own needs around it yourself? Was the savings plan unrealistic? Did you have as much say as your fiancé about how much and over what time frame?

The point about canceling the wedding over this isn’t that you don’t have the money to pay for it - it’s that it’s an indication that the two of you shouldn’t be increasing your legal and financial entanglement until you’ve sorted out your issues. For his sake, because if you don’t get a grip he could pay a heavy price down the line, both financially and in terms of years of worry and anxiety. And for your sake, because your behaviour screams not really being comfortable with where you’re heading in life.

I think you need to understand why you buy these things. It sounds more emotional to me. I say this because despite this being a one off saving up occasion and you setting up systems to save you still broke those systems because you couldn't resist. What makes it a compulsion for you to buy things?

Having recently saved for a wedding- put the money in savings in payday. Have a monzo or chase card you can put a specific amount on for day to day. Don’t shop as a hobby, and unsubscribe from all emails from online shops!

Very little I buy is for (good value investment in our happiness) whereas most of what he spends his money on is. We need to work on that together

Ouch
Considering you know he comes from a background where this would worry him, that's a pretty hurtful position to have taken

Working on things together is usually good, but in his shoes I'd be wondering how great your commitment to a shared future is ... and in yours I'd do everything I could to replace that £1500 and assure him that he doesn't have to wonder any more because you've taken full ownership of this

Following up previous comment with a more constructive reply.
On pay day, set aside rent/mortgage, bills, debts, genuine expenses, and savings. These are the things you need to prioritise so you look at them first.
What is leftover is what you have to spend on yourself - and this is the part you are not prioritising, it's for frivolous, fun, social, non-critical. From this you can work out what you have to spend per day or per week, whatever works best for you.
Then either withdraw the cash and spend it so you can literally see the amount decreasing or keep a notebook with you where you can keep a tally of what you are spending.
Final suggestion - stick a post-it note to your debit card with writing in big red letter saying "do I really need this?!" Every time you go to pay for something you will see it.

You can make it up to him by making it up to him.

Stop spending ANY non essential money and save, hard, until you can pay it back in the shortest time possible. Want a coffee? Tough. Need a haircut? Do without. Fancy a new anything? Don't buy it. Save every penny until you can give him that £1500.

I just wanted to say that I've been you. I sort of still am, but I have a husband who I'm completely open with about being useless with money and he's brilliant with it.

I still don't 100% trust myself to ever be good with money, despite best intentions. I send him 95% of my salary to pay my share of the bills and then the rest goes into our savings, and then I have a reasonable amount for spending on little things and treats. It's good because he has complete visibility over both of our finances, I do too but I can't just transfer a little bit extra every time I see something and get that fleeting desire to buy it!

It's hard, but you ARE making those first steps. You can't stop here, I'll echo the other posters who've said you need to repay the £1500 to show you are committed to changing, even if it is just repaying it to the savings. You need to do this to prove you don't think he'll bail you out every time and to show you're growing from this.

On a side note - the Sali Hughes Facebook group is AMAZING for selling make up and fragrance, they're lovely and supportive in there and will be happy to offer more advice as well as relieve you of some of your beauty goodies!

you need 4 bank accounts

1. a joint one for bills mortgage insurance utilities etc, food budget, this is just direct debits you can't use it to pay bills no cards
2. a second account with same bank with debit cards for food car fuel transport household expenses etc
3. savings account with a different bank you transfer into this the same day as you are paid you don't have online banking so you can't just transfer money back maybe telephoone banking or a rule that you have to wait 48 hours to transfer that wait might be long enough for the urge to splurge to pass
4. a personal spends account again a third bank so you can't move money from accounts 1 and 2 into it, you transfer a set amount in at beginning of month you can spend it on make up or whatever but when it is gone it's gone until next payday the sum you agree with DH and he has a similar account; couples should have equal free spends even if earnings have a disparity this is the account you must buy presents for DH and your friends from

you might want to add a fifth joint savings account for holidays christmas a new car etc with the rule that neither of you can use the money without the other's agreement

at some point you will need long term savings for extra pension etc

unsubscribe from all beauty fashion influencers emails youtube tiktok etc if you need to be informed of it's existence you don't need it; you know already what you need

try a no buy 3 months to reset your habits where you buy nothing bar essentials if you run out of shampoo or foundation or tights etc you can buy a new one but not if you have an unopened one in the cupboard
if you don't sell your unused makeup make yourself use it up by not buying another one until it is finished
good luck... life style creep can make you poor

OP your DF loves you and you are getting married. This is a happy joyous time. It is good you have recognised that your spending needs some adjustment but please don't let it overshadow this truly happy event. In my marriage, we never separated finances but many of my friends do. Set up a standing order to pay DF back and let that be the end of it. Enjoy your big day and congratulations.

How do you feel about saving money for the type of wedding you wouldn't have chosen yourself?

You need a budget! Literally... There's an app called that (YNAB for short). You keep your money in there "virtually" (it doesn't leave your back account), and you put it in digital envelopes each time you get paid for everything you need.
If there's no money in the "makeup" section, and you want to buy something you need to move it from somewhere else. Makes you think about what's really important.
I've saved so much money since starting it, it's really amazing! You can get a months free to see how you get on.

Personally I wouldn't marry you until you'd proven you could change.

If I were you I would do Dave Ramsey with your fiancé. It’s really important you are open and honest with each other regarding how you best manage your money. Once you are married you are a team and it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you have clearly defined roles.

Its ok to spend £200 or £1500 on make up if you can afford it. Reality is you can’t afford it when you have obligations regarding your wedding and a mortgage.

Just wait until you have children. My money runs out of my account faster than Linford Christie.