I need your help! My husband and I both work, and we have great incomes. I am always broke because my husband requires every "toy" known to man. He has guns, a four-wheeler, a drag racing car, model airplanes, you name it. I make most of the income, and I feel guilty buying new socks because we don't have money because of him. I don't know what to do. What do you think about separate checking accounts? I don't know how to budget him. He says he grew up so poor that he couldn't have things, and now he can. I just want to get out of debt. We have $20,000 in credit card debtl. Help!

Yes Seperate checking accts! I have one seperate from dh because we were having this problem as well. I sat down with him and we had a money chat, but he just didn't get it. He is NOW finnally getting it. Can you possilby give him an allowance so he doesn't continue to overspend?

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I would agree. So the fight stop different account. Let him know that he will have to get his lunch and personal stuff with the money you give him. Maybe hlf of one of his checks. the rest goes to bills.

Does he do or help do the bills? Does he realize what debt you both are in??? I would defintly sit him down and show him every single bill including utilities? Yes maybe the seperate checking accounts would work but I would first have the BIG talk.

ohhhhhh another racecar family!!! (where are you from?) I try to be as frugal as possible and dh keeps telling me we are not poor and can go out and get $20 of chinese takeout. My thinking is that money was a big box of diapers! We've got 2 four wheelers, 2 racecar trailers, just got a big screen tv and new living room suite but I work parttime and stuggle to pay bills. He'd rather eat crab legs then replace the bathroom faucet that leaks. He works his butt off to come up with some "side jobs" to make bills, as long as he has all the best stuff. We have the same interests but are total opposites. I can not get him to be frugal in the least bit. But the only plus side of all this is the only debt we have is a $5K truck loan, $1k personal loan, never more than $500 visa and our house. Financially we will be better in Sept. when my 5yo goes off to kindergarten. I always try and get him do the bills but it never works, but that's my suggestion.

Welcome to the club! My husband had a brain injury that makes impulse control difficult. He takes medication, which helps, but I can always tell when the medication isn't working because suddenly the credit card balances start to increase. It IS hard to control, especially after the fact, when the charges have already hit the credit card.

When I try to talk to my husband about his selfish spending, his reply is, "Well, why don't you go out and spend $XXX on something you want?" And all I can say is, "Because you already spent $XXX on something you wanted so now we don't have that kind of money in the budget!" He doesn't 'get' that the limbs of the money tree are starting to fall off.

My suggestion - and the ONLY thing that has helped for us (in addition to good psychiatric care) - is to NOT talk about money. Instead, TOGETHER design the kind of lifestyle you want for you and your family. Once you have a clear vision of HOW you want to be living it will be easier for him to curb the spending on diversions that don't fit that dream.

I call your husband's behavior 'buying a lifestyle'. He thinks because he owns all these toys then he'll have a ton of fun. Instead, you both end up working harder to make ends meet and there is no time to play. Even if he is out there 4-wheeling on his newest toy, you may not be with him because there is no money left in the budget for you finding a babysitter or for you and the family to travel with him. You end up sitting at home steaming, he ends up acting even more selfish, and the marriage starts to go downhill. It is so much better if you can both get on the same page of what fun things you can do TOGETHER or as a family.

You can also emphasize the desire to not spend so much money on "stuff" and instead spend money on "building memories". Now that he has his toys, you both can spend money on maintaining those toys, fueling them, and enjoying them.

I know people who have all sorts of toys: race cars, boats, RVs, 4x4s, etc. They aren't rich, but they do make a conscious decision to afford those activities in exchange for other choices in life. It can be done. It would just be nice if you two were in agreement as to what those choices will be.

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"I've been rich and I've been poor but independently wealthy is where it is at."

I can relate to you. While my husband doesn't buy toys and gadgets, he does buy things we don't need and likes to eat out. I am in charge of our finances because before we were married, he was terrible with paying his bills on time and had poor spending habits, so he had a poor credit rating. We had to use my credit to purchase our home. I tell him he has an allowance, which he says "makes him feel like a child", but this is the only way to get him to attempt to stop his spending. This usually doesn't work anyway and at the end of the month, he can't figure out where all of our money went. I don't know what to do because we end up arguing about it everytime I bring it up. I even had to borrow money from my parents a couple of months ago which made him upset, but he didn't change his ways even after that.

WELL SAID!!

My husband and I had high cc debt (about 10k) by the time we graduated college. For years we argued about money bouncing it back and forth between us, but now we have finally clicked.

What helped us was making a lit of our goals which were 1) Get rid of the cc debt 2) Buy a house and a lot more. We talked a lot about how to make it happen, but understood that it took a lot of work to make it happen. He liked to spend a little here and there, but never big ticket items. Even though he wasn't spending a lot it was killing our budget so I made an Excel workbook with a sheet for each month and filled it in with all of our expenses. That way it was easy to show him how his spending affected our living. All I had to do was change a number from $60 to $300 and it showed him that if he bought a TV (or whatever toy it was) that we wouldn't be able to pay the electric bill. That's when it really started to hit him. So what we do now is set aside money each week for misc. things (dry cleaning, doctor co-pays, etc). Right now it's set at $60. That includes if we want to order pizza or go out to lunch. It's taken us 3 years but we've paid off 10k in cc debt.

I don't think that getting him a seperate account is going to help anything. He may keep over drawing it or just using the cc. It has to be a team effort, but getting him to play fair might take some time.

Let me know if you want my Excel book and good luck!

I don't think separate checking accounts is going to help much. He'll just charge it to the credit card and somehow it needs to be paid. Personally, I think your husband needs some credit counseling, but knowing that most people aren't open to that (especially if they're unable to deny themselves anything they want)....perhaps you could find a book about how damaging his spending habits have become. It's a really lame excuse too that because he grew up without that he now has to go overboard and have everything. Immediate gratification is a disease in our society, and it's why credit debt has gotten so out of control.