To not tell me wife about our financial situation

[confusedinlondon]

Long story but my wife and I are in a sorry financial situation. We have nothing left at the end of the month and we want to move to a house for the kids but we won’t be able to afford this due to our spending.
We make ok money but it’s the discretionary spending that is killing. After paying the mortgage and bills (council, energy, phone, internet) we have £1800 per month to spend and we spent it all…. If we have £400 left over one month it will be spent the next

It’s mainly my wife who is doing the spending.
I have spoken to her numerous times and she just won’t engage, she’ll claim everything she spends money on is essential. Any discussion where I suggest we spend less will result in her either crying or becoming engaged.
I just can’t be bother to have the same discussions again and again as she isn’t interested. I am partly minded to just set up separate accounts and just leave a set amount in there for her to spend as she pleases And just try sort out stuff myself.

120 pounds a month when you cant afford it-nope

We don't know enough about the op's circumstances. We don't know what each partner earns, what they do, commuting costs, number of children or their ages. We don't know if they are in a one bed flat or a three bed semi. We don't know what the £1800 has to cover. I find it hard to believe the op's partner has a car she needs to use only once a month if there are children. Who does drop offs, pick-ups, takes to activities, etc?

Are things like dentist, optician, children's haircuts, Christmas, birthdays, the never ending round of cards and presents for whole class parties, £2 charity donation here, cake sale there at school, school lunches, etc, all covered before or after this £1800.

We all have life stages - when I was 40 and a sahm when the children were tiny, I lived in jeans, leggings and jumpers, probably spending about £200 a year on clothes plus three haircuts and highlights a year. Lives change and going to work costs money if you have a professional job without a uniform.

You need to sit down with a few month's worth of bank statements and account for where the money is going. Armed with that you can then work out how to deal with it all - is the extra money really being frittered away or is it essential spending that you are just not budgeting for? It may be that you just are not aware of what things cost/ what is needed as much as it is your wife wasting it all. Until you have it all written out you can't discuss it meaningfully.

Wow £250 a week on food. How many are you shopping for? Making me think of the Micky Flanagan sketch “it tastes the same but it costs less”

Set up a monthly standing order of a certain amount to a savings account the day after payday. The less money there is in your current account, the less you likely to over spend. Well that's the plan anyway but it depends on you both cutting down on the luxuries.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/money-help/ Budget overhaul

www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/. Budgeting guides

Wow that's a lot of money to be wasting IF it's wasted money. Our mortgage, energy and council tax on paper come too £1000 a month but start adding on every other bill as are £2200 a month. However me and DH are very good with money and do manage to save and have virtually no debt despite having 3 kids and having to pay childcare etc. We dont have weekly takeaways, rarely have nights out and are quite careful about how much we spend on holidays. You do need to factor in clothes, food, hair cuts, kids activities, Christmas savings and holidays savings in my experience though then work out what's left then work out a budget.

Honestly cut right back on the food thats ridiculous amount of money on a monthly food shop

£1800 leftover when you haven't accounted for groceries, petrol, kids' activities, insurance, etc isn't a lot. I can see how it'll be easily gobbled up.

If you want to save up for a house then you need to have a detailed list of your outgoings and go through it as a couple too see where savings can be made.

To answer your question, yes you are being unreasonable not to discuss your financial situation with your wife.

Equally, she is being unreasonable not to take any responsibility for your finances.

Instead of just telling her she needs to cut her spending, why not create a quiet, uninterrupted 2 hours to come up with a plan for how much you need to be able to move and how you're going to come up with that money. A budget that you both agree on and stick to. That you review each month. That you both have control over.

I was in a similar situation, wife just used to call me at work and announce that the bank balance was about to go into the red.
Explaining and pleading got me nowhere. In frustration, I went out and bought two new suits and half a dozen shirts. This created an altogether different reaction - she pointed out that we couldn't both spend as there wasn't enough money.
Now, I give her £120 in cash each week for the shopping (only two of us in the house) and the joint account is for direct debits only. These £20 notes are real money and therefore different to plastic, particularly because when they're gone, they're gone.
Not entirely sorted, but a lot less stressful. Good luck.

Is it money wasted though or is stuff like clothing for you both/ children, toiletries,
cleaning supplies, diy stuff for mending or maintaining the home, vet or dentist bills, school trips, petrol or transport costs? My partner never accounts for these things when budgeting

I've heard similar coming from financially controlling i.e. abusive men. They criticise a takeaway once a week on the busiest day but won't take on the task of cooking and shopping for that day's meal. Anything they don't personally want or think or is a waste of money. They want no slack in any household system, no spare clothes, no choice in food, they see no value in family life, in outings or holidays or clubs for the children or a cleaner to help keep the home nice. If you aren't a man like this you need to talk to your wife. And if you are, I think she may be better off on her own with the children.

Thanks all for the comments.
I am going to come up with a budget that works. Currently we don’t have a budget with a set amount for food, bills and clothes each month we just spend.
the car has been the real killer, we only need one car and it’s too expensive to maintain two cars.

I use MS Money Sunset. I can download transactions from our bank’s and credit card’s website directly into it, to save all that inputting. I do have to enter transactions from another credit card myself, but there’s only a few of them. Ditto cash - I enter my own cash spending and just put DH’s to one account “cash withdrawals”, because he can’t remember what he spends in cash, but then it’s less than £30 a week.

It produces a report for the year, showing income and spending each month on each account heading like gas, electric, water, mobile phones, you name it, including savings, and whether you are in the black or red at the end of each month. There are pre set account headings, but you can edit those, to your own situation. You can set up a budget, and it shows you actual income and spending on each account against your budget each month, so you can see when things are going wrong.

The records stay there, so I have about 12 years records, and could print out each account for 12 years, for instance spending on every new piece of furniture or household decorating, if I wanted.

Use that, it’s way easier than setting up Excel spreadsheets.

@confusedinlondon Move your salary and savings into a personal account just for you. Only use the joint account for joint bills like the mortgage, utility bills, wifi etc. Do you split the bills 50:50?

If you both have separate bank accounts then she’ll soon realise the ridiculous money she’s spending each month as it will only be her money that she’s spending.

Be careful with the car thing. Is having only one car going to leave your wife stranded frequently while you’re off somewhere with the other car? It depends on where you live and what transport options are like (with kids in tow). If your wife says she must have a car available then perhaps you need a much cheaper one. Or one motor scooter and one car - so if one adult goes out with no kids at the weekend they take the scooter, leaving the car free for the other adult+kids. Of course if you leave in central London this is all irrelevant because the public transport is so well developed.

Set up a savings account for moving expenses and put a good chunk of money at the start of every month. Do tell your wife though. If she’s motivated to move house then she should be on board.
Suggest instead of takeaways you(as in you not her) will cook a super easy takeaway style meal at home - crumbed fish and oven chips, pizza (you can either buy ready to heat up or buy bases and put your own toppings on) filled ravioli, burgers plus salad or oven chips. It’s usually more expensive than cooking from scratch but cheaper than a takeaway.

If the second car is used so infrequently taxi’s or a hire car may be a viable alternative.

my wife and I have had similar difficult problems managing our money and it is a real stress on a relationship.

I think one of you needs to get a grip of this, and it sounds like that’s you.

i did it this year without finances. We now have a joint account on Monzo with budgets setup for monthly and annual spends, we have our own separate bank accounts for our personal spends (which is none of the others business), and a third bills account that covers household bills.

monzo is brilliant and really easy to use for the budgeting. We have a pot in it for food, entertain, for Xmas and birthdays, and our annual holiday.

We have never discussed how we split the bills it just goes from our joint current account.

My ex used to think I was spending too much but it turned out I was spending more because I was paying for ALL children related expenses (and don’t start me on his expensive hobbies…) but if you happen to be with someone who cannot keep an eye on their expenses, go back to separate accounts, don’t feel mean, that may be what saves the family but be fair, she may need to spend more than you because she is paying for the children so ensure your contribution for them matches hers.

I think you need to ask yourself some questions. Why do you think that only her decisions are wrong and to be questioned? Her car is the only one you don't need - the one you drive us obviously essential. She buys wrong things for silly reasons, but it appears clear that you absolve yourself of the responsibility for sorting out a fair amount of stuff. You do need to take a more open minded view and bear in mind that she is an adult who is entitled to make decisions, even if you would have done things differently.

I think a lot depends on the amount of children you have. If you have 4, for example, then 850 a month food doesn't seem too extraordinary. I do think 195 a month on hair and make up is ridiculous. It definitely sounds like you need to talk to her.

You need to talk about it and plan a monthly budget together. It can help if you have a common goal... talk about the future, what you want in terms of housing, where you see your children being in a few years time and where you see yourselves being career wise. What is important to you may not be important to her but you can find the common ground and focus on that.

Have a look at The Ramsey Show YouTube channel. It is American but their books, podcasts and YouTube videos have helped tens of thousands of people to manage their finances.