Dh and I not on same page

[Welshby]

Hi,
I’m trying to get dh and I onto a budget, but failing miserably!

we both work in decent jobs and have just finished a 6 month project of decorating right through the house. We now have no savings which I’m uncomfortable with.

after all of our essential bills, food and fuel we are left with about £1800 between us. In the last two months he has frittered his half of this away on non-essentials- 2x coffees a day, clothes, drinks out, spending 6-7 Quid a day on extra food.

im quite keen for us to save a proportion of this spare cash and to each have a set amount for personal spends. I do want us to have some luxuries, but to spend £900 on shit is out of order imo

Dh thinks I’m being unreasonable and that £900, or £225 a week as he puts it, is not a huge amount to have as discretionary spends

AIBU?

DH and I each get personal spends of £500 per month. I use mine for clothes, meals out and breaks away with friends. £900 is a ridiculous amount for anyone to fritter away on takeaway coffees and lunches monthly.
Suggest you start having separate personal accounts with monthly fun money. If you go for £500 per month like us, that would give you £800 a month savings which is a great amount.

£900 is a ridiculous amount to fritter away! Especially as you have no savings. I have £500 left after bills/food etc. £250 goes straight in savings, leaving £250 for treats, meals out, family days out etc.

Opposites attract... such as a spender and a saver.

You won't change a spender into a saver. You can agree on the same life goals, dreams. Focus on the goal... on the Why.

Why do you want to save x per month, what is it for? Give it a name, a timescale.

£900ish of free spending money a month seems high... but look at percentage of income. It may still be high and when presented with 40% of income is going on your free spending... offer some alternatives which keep some free spending, maybe 20% and have the other 20% going towards goals on which you are in agreement.

I think it is a lot and worse again if you have no savings. I would say half as personal spend/half as savings is more than reasonable.

How did you build up savings to do the renovation if this has been his attitude?

How will you go on holiday or make any large purchases in the future without saving? What is his plan for that? What is his plan of one of you loses you job?

I do feel for you because my DH would spend every last penny if left to his own devices but thankfully he listens to me when I put ideas forward.

Is he not concerned you have no savings?

Mind you another thing I would say from your OP, is that I would never leave myself in the position of having no savings just so I could decorate the house.

Our house is showing its age somewhat, but most discretionary spending goes on holidays so at least we have some fun. I can see that if you aren't having holidays to look forward to how it might make more sense to want to get extra enjoyment out of daily living. From my personal spends it's a lot easier to not buy the £3.50 coffee when I know it can go towards an air fare somewhere.

So when you're sitting down to work out a budget that's something to consider too.

Perfectly put
I was spluttering into my tea reading about his profligacy

We have £400 personal spends a month each. So in your case we'd be saving £1k a month.

It's not loads but we dip in to savings if we need to for big purchases

Thanks for the posts. We didn’t plan to wipe out all of our savings but we approached the end of out renovation with some unfinished jobs, so if Just sort of happened 🤦‍♂️

I think the issue comes from us having different mindsets regarding our budget. I’m like “ wow, we have £1800 disposable” whereas he’s more like “ we only have £900 a month each spare?”

I think that this is due to is being brought up in very different financial circumstances. His parents were quite successful but money was spent freely with an ‘easy come easy go’ approach, whereas my parents were/are very cautious

Set up a direct debit straight into a savings account after payday. Just like rent, mortgage, council tax this is a non negotiable expense. Once this has been taken into account then you can split the rest of the money.

Where did the money come from for the renovations. How were you able to save for that. Do you not want a holiday? What if the washing machine breaks down?

YANBU! £900 spends is utterly wasteful.

You need a very thorough conversation.

How frustrating.

You say 'after all of our essential bills, food and fuel we are left with about £1800 between us'. Does that mean including annual and irregular costs, eg insurance, car running costs, holidays, Christmas, school uniforms if you have DC, that sort of thing? Are these costs accounted for, or will they need to come out of the £1800?

If not, you need to put money by for those things for a start. Then you need to consider things like car replacement or else you'll need to borrow when you need to buy new cars, which is utterly stupid when you have a decent income.

Then what happens if one of you loses your job or becomes ill? How will you cope when thousands of pounds that could have been saved to cover your bills has been spent on food and drink mostly?

Has he always spent like this or has he gone a bit crazy because he's not used to having spending money? But in any case, surely he can see that having over £200 a week to spend on not very much is a huge amount of money.

Yeah that's a ridiculous sum to be fluttering with no safety net. FWIW DH and I each get £200pm to spend on purely what we want.

I'm with you, we have each had a section of personal spends (equal no matter who has been earning more) since we got married, it's increased as we've earned more over the years. It's saved a lot of arguments, it's just agreeing the amount that is the tricky bit!

I always get really annoyed when you hear all that 'people these days have no money because they can't give up avocado toast and Netflix' guff, which massively hand-waves away all kinds of structural issues that make saving impossible in many circumstances... but this dude is basically proposing to spend £11k a year on coffee and shoes, or whatever. That is obviously ridiculous, especially if you don't have savings.

Op can you agree to him spending a little less and both have septate joint saving account with figure in mind
Once that's he can spend more again?

Also is here snigger goal, how did you shave for renovation?does he want to to gp too Thailand or somewhere else?

Wow we have £450 a month between us which is ample! Our spare savings at £800pm mainly go on holidays but we’re saving up for a new car.

£900 a month on coffee, drinks and clothes is utterly wasteful in my opinion.

However, people can spend their spare cash on whatever they want, but if you aren’t on the same page about spending and saving and money priorities then that’s a long term problem.