Dh spending lots on daily lunches & coffees

[Ohitspastagainisit]

Do your Dh’s take lunch to work or eat at cafes/restaurant’s for their lunch?

Dh stops at a cafe in the morning before work for a coffee and breakfast/snack, then he either stops at a cafe/restaurant for lunch or Burger king type place or buys lunch from a supermarket-sandwiches, drink, crisps and so on.
Sadly, he smokes, but is trying hard to give up, so often buys a pack every couple of days.
Sometimes after work, he’ll go for a couple of beers at a beach cafe

We aren’t in the uk, so cigarettes are cheaper, but also wages are a lot lower where we are.

I’d say the average he spends (from seeing the account) is €6.50 at the morning cafe, €7 for lunch, €5 for cigarettes every other day and €10 every other day for drinks after work.

I’m finding the supermarket shop to be getting harder, plus the rise of everything else. I don’t want to control what he spends and he does work hard, but does anyone else find this excessive? Starting to feel resentful that i’m adding everything up as I go around the supermarket and having a crap tuna sandwich at home and jar coffee for my lunch.
We’ve tried before to do lunches taken from home, but the large lunch boxes I buy go missing or it just ends up going back this way. I also feel sad because it’s money we could all have (Dh, me and dd) as a coffee and breakfast treat at the weekend maybe once a week

This has really become a problem for someone I know. They have young children and they are struggling. We are talking about the same
level of spending as OP’s DH. My friend’s DH is a tradesman, self employed. She is working to set up her own small business. Their income is considered a joint/family income. When you have
young children I don’t get this ‘his money/
my money’. When he saw the accountants figures and all of his food expenses, cigarettes and beer to unwind after a hard days work, going through the business account he was shamefaced. They are struggling to pay their bills because he is spending it all in this way. She is brilliant with money and budgets and
saves but he is just throwing all her hard work away. They are talking and he is slowly learning, so there is hope. He says he was never taught to
manage money whereas she was.

I used to work with males who spent approx £15 per day on food to eat at work.
In contrast I would take a home made packed lunch or left overs.
I also buy yellow sticker food from the supermarkets

So does everyone. Doesn't mean he or you can afford to spend 450 a month on eating out, take away drinks, and cigarettes ... over 5k a year!

Put the maths on paper and hand it to him.

That is really a lot. DH & I are not coffee people and drinking after work isn't such a thing here. Our system is generally 4 days packed/homemade lunch (we both have WFH days) and 1 day we can get something from a café or such. 1 morning a week I treat myself to a pastry from the nice bakery.

Splitting finances sounds like a good idea, but in the end, the pot is only so big. Will he realise how much he is spending? Will he transfer the appropriate amount to you for child & house expenses?

Exactly the same here and if there’s less, I have to make pasta dinners most nights and buy less of the food i’d like to for us as a family

Personally I don’t think eating lunch out every work day is a problem in and of itself. However the fact that he doesn’t seem to ‘buy-in’ to the family budget is a big issue.

My husband goes out for lunch every work day, he doesn’t like the term ‘networking’ but that’s basically what it is, he usually invites one or more colleagues and finds it really useful to keep up with what’s going on in the company, I suspect it has contributed to his success at work and I’d therefore consider it a ‘work cost’ rather than discretionary spending (which is academic as I’m a SAHP atm and we just have a joint account).

I know a few PP have mentioned they think it’s wasteful to eat out so much even if you can afford it but in our case it balances out; my DH is more frugal in other ways (barely drinks alcohol, has cheap hobbies, spends minimally on clothes & haircuts, drives a small 20+ year old car). When I worked I always took leftovers (I was a teacher so no time to eat out!) but I spent more on other things.

I think in general adults should be able to allocate their budget as they see fit - the problem isn’t that your husband is eating lunch out it’s that he’s not stepping up to set and stick to a joint family budget that’s fair to everyone.

I can’t imagine telling my partner what he can or can’t spend his money on. I also wouldn’t like being told how to spend my money.
if he’s contributing a fair share to family finances I don’t think you should control whet lunch / snacks he buys.

My DP used to spend an absolute fortune on coffees,snacks, lunches etc when out for work. But at least that was pre COL crisis and we had more disposable income.
I don't think he would do that now - but he works from home now and the temptation isn't there, fortunately!

OP good luck showing him how much he is taking out of the family budget - in addition to all the other great advice on here, I know you're not in the UK but if you can look on Facebook or Instagram, check out The Batch Lady - she started doing easy batching to reclaim time in her life and it's grown and grown over the last few years - she now has a tv show on channel 4 called Batch From Scratch - and several cookery books,

The last episode I watched the family was just like this and loads of their income was going on takeaways and food treats for individuals within the family. They managed to come in, show how much they were spending (in time and money terms) and show how unhealthy they were too - plus they manage to help them sort out their kitchen / life/relationship etc and save lots of money and time in the process as well as all end up happier and healthier.

There are lots of little changes that you can do to start - so sorting out the kids breakfasts or lunches for example to make it easier in the mornings, so there's something just to grab and eat without needing to think about it. or a lunch you can grab from the freezer to take with you. Even if he could do this 3 x a week it would be a start and get him into good habits.

I'd' definitely be tempted to split off the family food budget before his treat money eats and ensure that he can have all the treats he wants for breakfast, coffee, lunch, smokes, beers etc - but that it can only come out of his spending money once the family have got enough to eat (reasonably!), pay bills, get new clothes for kids as they get older and so on.

The Batch Lady's website with plenty of ideas on!

It seems he thinks his money is not all family money.
The only way can see is to write down all the spending, include everything extra and include dance classes or trips out with Dd and clothes/ shoes for dd, see if wages cover it .

Its his problem too.

Can't he have breakfast at home? Or take a coffee and bap to eat on the way in?

If you work full time, do you have to put on more to cover his spend on snacks?

Dump any joint accounts, so when he has spent all the money he can't dip into more money set aside.

I got a lunch box as I’d often put in what we’d had the night before-lasagna, curry etc

the Money Savings Expert demotivator is quite helpful for seeing how seemingly little things add up.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/demotivator

I am a bit bad for this too - I love to walk down to the local shops and buy a sandwich for lunch. It's (sadly) one of the highlights of my day. DH makes himself a fancy packed lunch and thinks I'm mad for preferring a sandwich to this.

As a family, we have a joint account for joint expenses, but generally speaking buying lunch comes out of my current account from my own discretionary spending money.

At the moment I'm at peace with this (although I'm not spending £20 a day!), but I do go through periods of wanting to be more economical and then make my own sandwich.

Ask him to opt for one thing daily and to take enough food from home to avoid being hungry. So solely the pub one day and another day the cafe and a different day solely breakfast, nothing more.

Redo your finances. You both get X amount for personal spending and that includes cigarettes, snacks and coffees out etc. Food shop comes out of joint money.

I’ve got really nice coffee and breakfasts at home to avoid this.

Exactly the same! Ex is now heavily in debt and although he’s an alright guy and we get along, it annoys me the lengths I went to in order to prevent his habits stopping us from buying a house. He’s unlikely to ever own again because of frivolous spending on coffees and snacks! It’s Bananas!

I mean, yes, it’s a bit ridiculous. Dh and I pretty much always make lunch at home or bring coffee with us in a flask if not wfh. When I used to commute regularly to London, I’d pack my coffee in a flask, breakfast, lunch AND dinner because I wasn’t home before 8pm.

But as long as it’s coming out of his personal spending money, sure, fine, dumb but his choice. It should not be coming out of joint money as joint household money is not for treats. This, btw, is why we maintain our own accounts. Dh has bought a surprise motorbike before, and I’ve had too many wines and bought a horse. 😂 But because our personal money is always separate from the money that pays the mortgage and bills, it doesn’t really matter as long as we keep our joint commitments.

I used to do this before wfh. I could afford it but was still shocked at how easy it was to rack up £100+ per week on breakfast, lunch and coffee at the office. It doesn't mean he is being extravagant so I would go easy on him in that sense, but obviously if you are on a budget there needs to be a better solution. I would suggest taking food in and keeping the spend on drinks after work because socialising is important and you can't bring your own from home! Won't comment on the cigarettes because obviously they would ideally go altogether.

@Ohitspastagainisit and coffee has a 1000% mark up!!! get him an insulated mug and he can make a mug of coffee or even just have his coffee out of a jar at home like the rest of us!!

I used to spend about £12 a day on lunch etc when I worked in an office every day. No idea what DP spent but neither of us have ever taken a packed lunch to work.

I am a massive coffee addict. At the start of the pandemic I bought an expensive barista-style coffee machine for home. It cost about £600 but I would estimate has paid for itself several times over now. Plus guests love it.

My office used to be on the outskirts of town so I never bought lunch but we moved into a town centre with a lovely independent cafe over the road...
We both pay in an agreed amount to the joint account for bills, mortgage, DS expenses and savings, slush fund, holiday pot and long term savings. We both get the same amount of fun money every month, so if either of us buys lunch it comes out of fun money, and doesn't impact bills or budget for food shopping etc. We always have food in to make lunches but I probably buy lunch or coffee and cake 2-3 times a month usually to get out of the office with a colleague. DH is similar.

This is what I was coming to say. We do this. It means I can go for coffee and chat with a colleague or treat myself to lunch, without hitting our joint food budget. We also have a 'going out' pot that we put money into each month for this sort of thing or meals out.
The real issue is getting him to stick to this though because I suspect it's culturally the done thing and he doesn't want his colleagues to think he can't afford it?

Do you just have a joint account, or personal accounts as well? If you don't have personal accs I'd set up personal revolut accounts. Then put your agreed monthly spending money into your revolut's