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.

I’m a (mostly reformed) habitual spender, it is a very difficult habit to break but can be done. I found the unsubscribing to as many marketing emails as possible helped a lot. Sticking little notes to yourself on your screens / in your purse e.g. ‘wedding’, ‘£1500’, as a deterrent- sounds silly but I’ve had success with this! I also had a thorough sort out of all of my ‘stuff’ - the sight of multiples of certain colours / styles of clothing, nail varnish, lipstick, etc, etc is eye opening (and shaming). As for making amends - is there anything you bought on impulse that you could return? Items that you could sell on eBay, etc to help make up the shortfall?

Talk with your fiance and pay him back your share so he knows you are serious.

Unless you have tons of unused stuff that you dont nees, I don't see the need to sell things since you are not realistically strapped for cashm borrow form other savings and pay it back. Selling stuff is not as easy as people say.

Transfer money into your savings on payday. Then it's out if sight. I dunno what is your plan with fiancé regarding joint finances but always transfer the money on payday so.you only have the "approved" spending loney on your card. My pay and my debit card go to different accounts so I have to transfer money if I need it.

I'm also a big fan of micro saving. Eveeytime I use contactless it automatically transfers £3 to my "holiday" account. So every purchase is actually £3 more expensive.

I'm not a budgeter but if you are then get an app or an excel sheet to visualize. There are several different money experts, if you are into that find one thay works for you. Ramsey that was mentioned is not for me but he has helped a lot of people. So do your reading.

Spending £200 in one month on make up is pretty disgusting tbh

It’s fine if you can afford it and it doesn’t impact on your general finances. Unfortunately it has in this instance. You don’t need to drop down to Aldi moisturiser @moneymortified but I bet a lot of your purchases are made on impulse and I also bet you don’t use them all up. I’d put an embargo on buying any cosmetics unless you need to replace a necessity, eg you’ve run out of mascara. I find it helpful to make myself have a cooling down period of a week, it’s amazing how many things you don’t really want a week later.

Look around your home and remind yourself "All of this stuff used to be money."

Pay yourself first. Make a standing order for as much as you can to go into savings, and force yourself to live within what's left over. Rather than the other way around.

Obviously, don't carry your credit cards or make them convenient for online shopping.

Sell some of your existing items on Vinted.

How much money did you actually save OP?

A lot of the replies here are very judgemental. You have been saving money and paying your way. You messed up and didn't hit your savings target for the wedding, it must be irritating for your partner when he managed it on a lower wage but it happens!

Same thing happened with my own wedding but we have completely joint finances and we're both spenders so in my case there was no way to know who was at fault (probably both of us).

Put yourself on a spending ban for all toiletries, make up, skincare and hair products until you've used up what you have (sell anything unopened on Vinted). I did this and didn't buy anything for months! I even used all the little sample bottles from hotels.

Ditto clothes. See it as a challenge to make new outfit combos from what you already have. Don't buy anything new until December.

Try to sit in your feelings about consuming. What it is about consuming that appeals to you? What hole are you trying to fill?

How bad a mess up this is kind of depends on context here surely? If it was £1500 short out of what was supposed to be, I dunno £10k, that's not so bad, just take some of the measures PPs have suggested. If you're £1500 short out of what was supposed to be £3500, that's more of an issue.

I was the saver in my relationship and my husband was the spender. it caused a lot of problems in our marriage (although not the only factor, we are now divorced). Although your fiance is being nice about it, don't underestimate how hurt he will be feeling that on less money he was able to save regularly and you prioritised other things. As others have said - this can be fixed by you taking responsibility right now and setting up a DD for your pay days going forward - first to quickly pay down the £1500 and then to continue adding to joint savings eahc month. The secret is for those payments to be made on or v soon after pay day, so you can't fritter them. That is my number one tip.

Don’t beat yourself up about it too much. You enjoyed your higher income. The money for the wedding is still there. Work on budgeting better but this isn’t a big deal, don’t let it overshadow this beautiful time in your life. You haven’t done anything terrible, you just splurged a bit (it would have been a lot worse if you went into credit for it)

She enjoyed her higher income at the expense of her lower earning partner who is not able to enjoy his income as much because he’s having to sub her contribution to their wedding. That’s not really something to brush under the carpet at the start of a marriage with a bit of a promise to try harder.

Make yourself your own shop. Put all the unopened items in a cupboard. Allow yourself something from the cupboard when the previous one is all used up. Don’t buy anymore of these things. It took me two years to use up all my shampoo! Saved me lots.

You now need to spend less on your wedding. Seriously - you do. You haven’t saved enough so you need to trim £1500 off the expenses. It’s not right that your partner saves but you don’t and don’t even realise until the last minute because you’re buying without budgeting and crossing your fingers. It’s not very responsible.

The people who are saying ‘it’s only £1500’ or ‘you aren’t in debt’ and think it’s not a huge deal, are partially correct. It’s not a huge shortfall. But hey are missing the point.

Its not about how much of a gap there was. It’s not about it being debt. It’s about them agreeing a plan, op not sticking to it despite the fact that she could have. It’s about her not telling him something that was impacting him, last month or the money before. These things cause huge issues in marriages in the long run, if it continues.

Having one person who thinks that ‘oh it will balance out in the end’ and ignoring it until it’s too late and needing the other person to balance it, gets very tiresome.

Op knows it’s an issue. She knows she has wasted the money. She knows she has a problem spending. She knows it could cause problems in her marriage if she doesn’t change. It’s not this £1500 that’s the huge problem. The problem is what happens when in 10 years he is absolutely fed up of this happening again and again and feeling like he is the only financially responsible one while op Sits with drawers and drawers of face cream and make up she doesn’t need and isn’t using.

If op was a man and he hadn’t saved as much as he said he was for a their wedding because he was sat with shit loads of equipment he wanted (but didn’t need or use) for his hobby and assumed it would all balance out, while his girlfriend has to plug the gap, everyone would think it was a really bad sign for the marriage.

And the ones saying ‘well he has been able to take it out of other savings so it’s fine’ are missing the point completely.

Luckily, op recognises it’s not really just about this £1500. It’s about attitudes to money, which can cause problems and she wants to change it. Sounds like she wants to change it for herself as well.

But OP has said that it means a lot for her fiancé to have a big wedding

so why should he be penalised by not having the wedding he wants because of her actions?

it makes absolutely no sense to suggest that

So appreciate everyone’s comments and thoughts on this. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your own experiences and also for the recommendations of books and podcasts and apps etc. - I’ve made a list and will look into them all.

My fiancé and I have had a long talk about how to rectify this and what we can do in the future to stop this happening again. The £1500 deficit is roughly the cost of our wedding rings, so we have decided to buy cheap placeholder rings and buy the actual ones when I have re-saved up the money, and exchange them on our first anniversary. My fiancé is obviously very sad about not exchanging our real rings on our wedding day and it’s making me feel even worse, but we don’t want to have a deficit really. As someone pointed out above, the wedding as it is has mostly been planned by him and he is very excited so making any cutbacks on the day itself would be a punishment to him rather than me and seems even more unfair to him.

I understand that you want to have better control of your finances - seems sensible. But keep having niggling feeling that you're paying half for an expensive wedding that he wanted and you didn't. I think if this was me i'd say to him, if you want an expensive wedding that i don't, you should be paying for more if of it.

There doesn't seem to be any compromise here - or only on your part! Hope it's not like this in other areas of your life together. Have you discussed finances for when you're married, if you have children etc etc? I'd iron these things out now.

How much is this £1500 in the scale of what he’s frittered on his party? I’ll bet that costs more that £2400 on your skincare …

This x10000

My DH was like you and I didn't realise for a while as he was very generous so I thought he earned a substantial salary. Turned out it was paid from credit cards. (I know you don't have cc's). I bailed him out a few times, but eventually went the joint account method - based on most of our salaries going into that by DD with a pot reserved in our own accounts to spend on treats. After the first year he was really surprised by just how much we had saved! it is fun then to choose how to spend the surplus together, and we have also added to our pension pots.
Good luck, and congratulations on your impending wedding. i am sure it will be a wonderful moment in your life, and that is in itself priceless.

I just wouldn't get into debt for a wedding.

You just need to cut back on it.

Often find best memories are from small bespoke unique weddings. .. going forward make a plan to have every penny going "somewhere".

Including fun!
But for me, every pay day every penny is assigned somewhere.
Whether that's my pot for children's extra curricular lessons or, our Xmas pot or holiday pot, savings, food...

Petrol allowance.. every penny does something.

Cut down on what you are planning to spend on your wedding (get a cheaper dress, or shoes or whatever). People spend far too much on weddings anyway! A good way to start economising.

The minute you get paid, you move your savings straight to another account. Set it up automatically and then there’s no temptation to spend what you don’t have! You should feel bad that he is having to bail you out because you couldn’t apply common sense, especially when you know you are saving for a reason and you’ve not got a great track record at saving!

How about offering to give up/downsize/scale
back some item of expense in the wedding that you wanted but he wasn’t fussed about?

It is a good demonstration to him that you are willing to cut your cloth according to your means and also willing to make a sacrifice so he doesn’t have to.

You can put the £1500 back after the wedding can’t you? Then just stop wasting your money u no what the problem is. It’s not unforgivable

Lots of good advice on here and I’d also say you should also take some credit for recognising the situation has got out of hand has to change.

I’d suggest you have a proper tidy up of your cupboards/drawers/hidey-holes. It’s amazing how a declutter can clear your head and remind you of what you have. You even get a bit of buzz at finding something you’d forgotten you had.

I’m good at budgeting but have found that my discipline slips when I have a big project on the go. It’s like the spending habit becomes too normal and it takes a lot of effort to rein it back in. I suspect with all the necessary extra wedding spending you’ve got into the wrong mindset and lost some perspective.