@OliveOil: If your marriage is working the best it can the way things are, don't change a thing. My wife and I are weird.
A few things: We typically describe it as a 50/50 relationship. But if you think about it, it should never be 50/50. It should just be 100. No dividing, just 100. We both have our individual strengths and weaknesses, our uniquenesses that we bring to the marriage table. What we both bring, though, we bring TOGETHER. There's no dividing line. It's just US, 2 people in ONE marriage unit.
Overall I think that's the best philosophy. We don't have MY money or HER money…it's all OUR money. She earns most of the household income. We don't believe in allowances. If I need something, we talk about it first, decide whether it's in the budget, decide whether it's a real need, and only THEN am I able to get it. I rarely make purchases for myself (no need to). Oh, and if she needs something, same thing. Doesn't matter who makes all the money. It's money that's there to support US, and ALL of us. So everyone gets a say in budget decisions. The only money I hold out on is gig money and piano lessons because I'm hardly making anything these days. That money has two purposes: 1) I'm trying to make more money in music, which is hard, and I have equipment to buy and maintain; hanging on to <$2k a year keeps me going, and 2) Doubles as emergency fund; we used my gig money from last year to pay doctor bills, and we're coming up short on tuition for the kids come August; with the emergency fund, BOTH of our school-aged kids get to go to school for another year, ALL paid IN CASH, UP FRONT, and we have no private school expenses to worry about afterwards…oh, AND we get a significant discount.
The "who does what" bit has to do with individual strengths. I reject the idea that just because men and women are treated as equals that they are exactly the same. No, men and women are NOT the same. We are different. If you are good at being domestic, then be domestic. If you're good at "bringing home the bacon," then bring home the bacon. There's no point in criticizing anyone in the relationship because they lack the ability to pull as big a load in one area of the relationship as the other. Relationships are built on two people who complement each other, like two pieces of a puzzle. If you want to look at your relationship as 50/50, you might find it's closer to 50/50 than you might have thought.
As to actual advice, I'm afraid I don't have much. I do think men, if they do nothing else, should "man up." If we can't hold jobs or lead people outside the home, we should at least be leaders in our own homes. It's a controversial idea here, I know, but that's how I feel. You mentioned having trouble with creditors--my wife and I break out with allergic reactions when the topic of debt comes up. There are probably one or two bad spots on our credit report we should probably try to clear up; not out of fear of creditors (last few times they called, we just laughed at them), but just because it's the right thing to do. We're really embarrassed about our student loans. But we don't pay a mortgage or rent, and both vehicles are paid for. We've taken our driving down to a single vehicle with my old car as a backup. Money squabbles are among the top killers of marriages.
The way a lot of relationships work, one partner tends to be more emotional about spending while the other is more logical and nerdy. Nerds like math, and emotional people freak out when they see numbers. So when you write it all down, make some bar charts, and other nerdy stuff like that, show him the money situation, he's going to FREAK OUT. And don't let him have a debit card. Make yourselves (both of you) pay cash ONLY. There's just something about handing someone cash that hurts a little bit, a pain you don't get with plastic when you don't actually see the money. So if he's holding half the money you have left after paying all the bills and he goes shopping for man-stuff, he's going to break down in tears when he actually SEES the money leave his wallet.
Quick story and I'm outta here--For the last few months, my wife has been buying gasoline with the debit card. Two years we ended up in a, um, "situation" in which she maxed out her revolving line of credit at the bank where she works. When I found out about it, I think she was scared I was about to murder her. We did everything we could to clear that up and it was gone within months. We have NOT gone there since. So two weeks ago she used the debit card to fill up the van. No problem, it was in the budget. Except the gas station put a pre-authorization charge on it to the tune of $125. She about SCREAMED when she saw it. I was aware they did this, but they were dragging their feet in removing the charge. Eventually it did go away. Ok…maybe it's a fluke. And then they did the same thing again a week later. All I heard for an entire weekend was how pi$$ed she was about having that pre-auth which put our account in the red. Eventually, again, the charge fell off and we didn't go into the LOC. But she absolutely refuses to use the debit card at the pump ever again.
29 Jun 2015, 2:24 pm
