DP's attitude to small amounts of money - boils my piss. AIBU?

[MissMoneyBallBags]

Me and DP are on the same page about 'big' finances.

But our attitudes to small amounts of money don't tally, and it boils my piss.

Let me give you some examples:

• DP never ever scans his Clubcard at Tesco to get things at the lower price. We don't shop at Tesco for the big shop, so it's only really when he gets a meal deal for lunch at work. But why wouldn't you just scan your card?

• If there's a multi-buy offer on at the supermarket, DP won't get the additional items if we don't need the additional item that week. But this is stuff that we will probably need the following week or the week after. And we have room for it. So why not just get it while its on offer?

• DP has to do tax self-assessments. He missed the January deadline. He'll get fined £100 if its not done by end of April. But DP's away a lot over the next month so I don't see him getting around to it. So he'll just end up paying £100 to the government needlessly.

It's relatively small amounts of money. We can afford it. And its his money so his choice. So I know I'm kind of BU.

But I find it infuriating and wasteful.
I'm not advocating for him massively going out of his way to save a few pennies. I'm suggesting that things like bunging an extra bottle of squash in the basket when it's a 2-for-1 offer, or scanning your Clubcard at the self-service checkout aren't huge undertakings or impositions so why the hell wouldn't you do it?!
Please tell me you can see my perspective and I'm not being wholly U?!

40p per working day is almost a hundred quid a year!

His finances are also my finances. We have a joint account. I wasn't snooping, I was checking our money.

I'm not buying on this hill at all. Apart from that one conversation about the Clubcard, we've never talked about it.

When DP doesn't take advantage of an offer in the supermarket, I'll point it out to him. He'll be very "meh". I'll just get the offer. I don't argue. I don't ask why he didn't get the offer, I just shove the stuff in the trolley.

I worked at Halfords as a teenager and there was often a 3-for-2 deal on car cleaning products. Sometimes people would bring a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of dashboard cleaner or whatever over and I'd point out oh did you know you can get something free because of the deal. Usually they'd say thanks and go pick something else small out, even if just a demister sponge or a pack of windscreen wipes. But a few times the customer would say no I don't want anything, and I found it baffling. It's free! Just take it and keep something for when you next need it, or give it away to someone else in the car park, why turn down something free.

I'm a relentless money saver and bargain hunter so I found it mind-blowing someone would do that. Pointlessly wasting 40p because you can't be arsed to scan your clubcard is wild. I bloody hate Tesco's more expensive unless you use your clubcard policy.

I agree, can't understand how it's "mental load" just to scan a card, keyfob or wave your smart phone at the scanner! Especially for something you do nearly every day like buy a meal deal.

There are loads of ways in which all of us are not maximising the offers and savings available to us or wasting money in various ways.

If someone is having a go at me about wasting 40p a day of my own income, I would not be happy in the least.

I have plenty of stuff to think about. I don’t need to adopt someone else’s extremely minor preferences in how I buy my lunch.

why turn down something free

I quite often turn down my Ocado free gift if I don't want it. It's just clutter in my kitchen if I'm not going to use it and, while I could give it to a food bank, I'd rather donate cash to the food bank than drive there with one single solitary shit product they probably don't want either. I don't always get multi-buy offers unless I'm confident that buying more won't just mean we finish it more quickly (so washing powder yes, crisps no).

I definitely wouldn't get a free Halfords sponge or whatever and then stand around in the car park trying to give it to someone else who probably doesn't want it either. There's enough landfill as it is.

It’s an additional step you have to remember to do.

In fact, potentially several. You need to remember that there’s a club card deal for the particular thing you’re buying, remember the club card is on your keys, remember where you put your keys and then get your keys out to scan the stupid thing. This might involve digging around in a bag and checking several pockets.

Not everyone is going to choose to use their mental bandwidth up on that.

My dh is exactly the same with club cards or any shop cards but he refuses to have them. He also will buy coffee's at the local shop next to the house and buy kids bottles of water from the shop rather then fill water bottles at home. Drives me bonkers but its his spending money he uses and its up to him what he spends it on.

Without being a dick, and I apologise in advance, saving £100 a year wouldn't inspire me to do anything. It's £8 a month, it's really... it's not an amount I need to worry about.

To be fair, DP's a grown man in his mid-30s, not an 8-year old being sent on this first big boy errand to the shop for mummy.

Would be a LTB from me but I'm tighter than a gnat's arse.

The OP infers it's something that her OP does every day - surely that makes it more muscle memory to do it. It's not as if it's once a week or once a month, when you're points may be valid.

I know separate finances are viewed as odd on Mumsnet but this is exactly why I hold them so dear - I would lose my shit if my husband started commenting on my Clubcard usage or berating me for failing to buy BOGOFs. It's also why I've always worked full-time - I can see how it would be easy to fall into this pattern if you're financially reliant on the other person.

The tax return thing is different - I think most partners would be stressed about how this could escalate.

If I had to answer questions from my DH on why I’d spent £3.90 of my own money at Tescos and then be told off because it should have been 40p less I’d genuinely LTB. The tax return, I get you, but he’s not actually been fined yet and won’t be until April so you’re making a big presumption.

I get you totally. This is the point of contention really.

We don't need to worry about £100 per year.
So DP doesn't give it a second thought.
But I think "why wouldn't you save £100 if you could, even if you didn't need to?"

And that's £100 on the Clubcard thing. He's also going to cost us £100 by not doing his tax return. And he'll miss several offers in the supermarket each week that might add up to a couple of £100s per year.

So then the total is creeping up. And while we are fortunate enough that several thousand pounds going awry wouldn't matter, why would you choose to waste that much money?!

Like @Kazzyhoward I was brought up on the motto "look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves"

If I earned enough to be doing a tax return, I would most definitely resent being quizzed over not saving 40p

You don't need to earn much at all to do a tax return, you can make so little you don't owe anything to HMRC but you're still legally required to complete it if you're self-employed.

That's on lunches alone. Probably easily same again on can't be bothered for BOGOF or other multi buy offers. Probably same again for numerous other things he can't be bothered to shop around for or cancel s/o's and d/d's for things he no longer uses. All those "only a hundred" soon add up and turn into a thousand or more.

I'm sure all those who "don't care" about small amounts are also the ones who whinge endlessly about inflation and Amazon/Tesco etc making billions in profit! That's where the billions come from - huge numbers of people who can't be bothered to shop around, take discounts, etc. It's known as "mug pricing" where firms know that a proportion of their customers are "mugs" who don't care about pricing etc., so they charge them what they want, alongside providing a range of different kinds of offers to attract the customers who care about money, hence how those that are bothered can usually save a lot of money by shopping around for better deals on insurance, savings interest etc, whereas the ones who are too lazy end up with the poor deals.

I get why it's annoying.

But I am this person in my relationship. And at work.

And I have saved my companies 15-20% on operational costs every year for the past five years running. As well as generating similar amounts of new revenue in the same period at my last place.

I did it by using my energy to look after the pounds - because if you focus on the pennies, you will actually always be focusing on the pennies (I disagree with that aphorism intensely!).

You can only cut your expenses so far. Your income potential is unlimited. Choose where you direct your energy wisely!

I agree with this.

Personally I rarely use club points as I am uncomfortable with the amount of information I give to them for "free" (Actually I pay THEM) but doesn't sound like this is your dhs issue.

Is that money coming out of family money or his own personal spends?

I'd be pissed off if it's just coming out of joint funds. You could have a free weekend away or a really big-ticket family day out for the couple of hundred quid he's wasting with just those two examples.

If it's his money though it means he's got £200 less to spend on computer bits - that's his lookout.

@FlounderingFruitcake Oh I'm 100% sure the tax return won't be done by the end of April. He has a busy time at work coming up and then we're away for a while. I'd be very happy to be proven wrong. But I doubt I will be.

Agreed. We don't have separate finances but neither do we micromanage how the other one spends.

I think a lot of people are pretty ambivalent about loyalty cards anyway. I've signed up to one or two but don't really use them, my husband has none. They're there for the shop's benefit, not ours. Not scanning your card (or not having a card) is perfectly legit. Giving your shopping data away, the faff of the card- just so you can get some points to encourage you to come back to the same shop and spend even more money. Quite happy to opt out of that.

@namechange3394 All from a joint account.

He's already incurred the first £100 fine by not submitting it by the deadline at the end of January. The longer he leaves it, the more fines he'll face, plus interest and late payment surcharge on the tax he's not yet paid.