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?!

But it isn’t just £100 per year

It is £100 per year just on not putting his tax return in on time
it is not just the 40p savings on the meal deal it is also the the 3 extra points which double to 6p per day so making it £119.60 per year

Then there is the other times he doesn’t scan his card and misses the offers. Even if this only works out to £2.50 per week that is another £130 per year

Over the course of a year with this sort of attitude I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t wasting around £700-£1000 per year.

The attitude about such little bits of money being not worth saving is quite strange.
Would anyone go into Tesco each week and give them £2 as a donation.

Even if you don’t need the money you could give all these little amounts which add up over the year to a big amount to charity and save yourself the tax.

You might not need the money now and think everything is going to be great. But you never know what is around the corner

I know. I know. I just can't get my head around it.

This attitude baffles me! Just checked my receipt for my Tesco shop this week and using my Clubcard saved us £23 on a £130 shop. Who doesn’t want to save money when it is so easy to do so?!?

If DP is on his lunch break then hes probably in a rush TBH. I wouldnt be so concerned about that really.However the tax fine is scary! Surely £100 is not a small amount by anyones standards .

I have had money and still look at the price of the everything.

I might not buy the cheaper brand but I do still look and think that somethings are just not worth it.

Also it’s not like you have to hand over a coupon, you either scan the card/key fob or you have an app on your phone. You have to pay by using a card or an app so scanning another card or app is hardly an onerous task.

@Kennykenkencat Absolutely, I don't buy cheap shite. I'm happy to pay more for good quality stuff. But if I can get a deal on that good quality stuff, I always will.

I'm selective about store cards/ offers. The different rate of the meal deal does add up to a decent quantity of money by its frequency so is worth doing. Schemes that add up to a fiver off every few months and it's not worth the cost of data and holding the card.

I used to have a purse filled with loyalty cards, now I carry the essentials/ genuinely useful and the reduced bulk means that I don't need a seperate purse, and to lug bags around as it can just go in my pocket in the phone case. That simplifying is worth it to me.

BOGOFs depends on what it is. If it's a long life item that will be used in the couse of time like squash or bogroll, then that's useful. If it's something that will go off, get gratuitously consumed or become clutter, then I may decline. I had a spat over family-sized bag of crisps once. I wanted one bag for a picnic. I didn't need a second bag for 10p more, because the most likely outcome would be that they'd get grazed on just because they were there and sit on my hips for ever more The assistant really struggled to grasp why I didn't want to accept the offer. If I was likely to have needed the second bag in the course of the next few weeks and could be trusted to keep them, that would have been different, but they weren't of genuine use to me.

Running up fines with HMRC is lunacy, and the last people you want to mess with.

i know what you mean op-its just frustrating as he has his clubcard on him

they usually ask aswell so does he just say no i havent got one?

Agree with you OP, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

40p x 365 = £146.

Also you can load all the loyalty cards onto an iPhone wallet these days, so when you pull out your phone to pay, just scan the relevant card at the same time!

Another way to look at it... It takes 5 seconds max to swipe a Clubcard to save 40p. To not bother assumes one's time at that moment is valued in excess of £288/hr.

Yeah. I really don't want to compound my dickishness but...£700-£1000 a year, £60-80 a month...I don't care. And I do really apologise, and I recognise there's an extreme level of privilege in that.

I wouldn't make the tax fuck up but loyalty card points...I just don't care. And, going back to the original point, I would continue to be annoyed if my husband mentioned my lack of Clubcard usage.

(Although the OP seems extremely lovely and good-natured and her spendthrift husband is, I'm sure, lucky to have her)

With the Clubcard things etc - that wouldn't bother me at all. I would be just delighted he went to the shops and did the shopping, saved me having to do it . Remember its only a bargain if you actually need it . I detest food shopping though
The tax one though would seriously annoy me, not only by the fine but this is an important thing that needs to be done so should be prioritiesed and ensured that its done on time

I'm possibly not the first to say this but I'd be more aghast at £3.50 per day for food! ! ... but then I'm super tight and take my lunch to work every day

3.50 over a year is a lot of money. I would be thinking of it in 'that's part of a holiday' terms. The 40p would tip me over the edge

It would piss me off .ore than he was spending £20 a week on lunch. £90 a month's £1000 a year. Would be about £1.80 to replicate a meal deal.

You can get a Tesco credit card which doubles as your clubcard
Maybe get one and pay with that and when it says present your clubcard you put your credit card in and it adds your points then it is another tap to pay .
It takes seconds and you never miss out.

All those saying it isn’t worth doing the little things to save money because you can’t be bothered. How much do you earn per hour after tax and NI and all the other deductions and expenses you have to get yourself to and from work.

I would think you are working at least 1-3 days per year just to give those days earning away to big companies

Would you give a days pay to Tesco out of the goodness of your heart because they haven’t got enough money? Because that is what you are doing

You might not need the money now and think everything is going to be great. But you never know what is around the corner

this from @Kennykenkencat sums it up for me. I too could afford to not notice 40p a day. But there’s been times in my life where i could not afford it, and there may be times again in the future if I lose my job or when I retire. So I’d rather have it in my pocket than Tescos. I can then choose what to do with it.

lucky for me, DH had a similar upbringing and loves getting the vouchers for “free money”.

Well, are there any other seemingly easy little things you 'should' do that you just can't be bothered to do?

Separate whites from coloureds?
Eat 5 a day?
30 minutes exercise a day?
Go to bed on time?

I don't know....maybe if you think of an example not to do with money, where you fall short for no good reason other than you can't be bothered it might help you understand.

Or maybe you don't have any things in which case hats off to you, because I have loads!!

It's £92 a year extra on lunches - assuming he only buys it on workdays, and he gets 6wks holiday a year (stat minimum inc. bank holidays is 5.6wks, and I'd expect someone in a well paid job to get more leave than that).

But you know what would save even more money? Making your own lunches. I'm willing to bet that the reason you don't make your own lunches is because you cba. That's fine, it's your choice, but that has a cost too.

You are criticising him for not making the effort to save money, but ignoring the ways in which you choose not to save money.

The fine is different, and worse because (a) it's a statutory obligation, not something you can decide not to bother with, and (b) if he hasn't filed it yet, the fines will rack up even further after 3 months, along with interest on the tax due. It'll probably cost a lot more than £100.

i think the whole point with the deals are that they do need it. Maybe not this week but the next.

£155 a month on unused gym memberships??!! 😯 That would piss me right off 😂

I’d be annoyed too - it’s the little things but they add up. My DH has a similarly annoying habit of buying a bottle of coke or lucozade or getting a sandwich /sausage roll every day or every other day because he can’t be bothered to take something from home. That’s fine but it adds up over the week to £10 or whatever - however if I spend £10 on a t-shirt etc once a week then he will start commenting about wasting money. He can’t see the hypocrisy 😡

I honestly only mentioned the Clubcard once because I was confused that it was £3.90 but when I buy Tesco lunch its £3.50. Me and DP work in different cities so when he said the £3.90 was his lunch I thought Tesco was pricier where he was 😅

I absolutely don't berate DP. If he misses an offer while we're shopping, I'll say "Look, this is on offer" and stick another one in. This will happen several times on a shopping trip. I just silently think to myself "What the fuck is wrong with you, you absolute melon?!"

I don't get BOGOF for things that'll go off or that we'll just use more if we have more. I mean for things like loo roll, shampoo, squash etc. that can be stored, will be needed and won't go off.

Like you, we can afford waste several thousands of pounds per year. But just because we can, doesn't - for me - mean we should

And, yes, DP is very lucky to have me. LOL 😇😂

His Tesco meal deal habit is a whole other thread waiting to happen 😬

Interesting that the amount he would save in clubcard points - £100, is the amount he pays as a fine to the tax office. And yet some people say that the clubcard points don't matter, but the tax fine is wasteful. What's the difference? It's still £100 in money wasted. So, yes, I am with you on this. And there is no need to go around the supermarket adding up what you might potentially save. The clubcard discounts are applied automatically. It really is as simple as taking two seconds to scan your card.

The difference between the Clubcard price and the ordinary price can be significant. The wine I buy is £1 a bottle cheaper with my Clubcard, and the moisturiser I use was half-price the other day. Full price is £13, so that is quite a saving. And for non-perishables that get used regularly, I'll always stock up when there's a multi-buy. Why pay £5 for something next week when you could have got it for £4 this week?

It's a bit out of character, in a way, as I love spending money on fun things, but these small savings add up and leave more money for fun things.

The penalty for not doing a tax return is just foolish imo, and it would make me cross, but if it's his money rather than joint money, I guess it's not really affecting you.