Early-retirement wannabe

Mnd

My wife used to "lack financial discipline" as well, much better now. She has her own bank account with her lady money as we call it. I have nothing to do with that money at all. However,if she ever needs more for any reason at all, she has a debit or credit charge she can use without having to ask my permission!
I certainly wouldn't "challenge" her about unusual cash withdrawals.
She is supposed to let me know when the cards get used, but no judgement is made, just so I keep track.
She does fall down on this, and believed me when I said I had reported our credit card for unauthorised contractions in Mark's and Spencer's

JoeEngland

Slinky wrote: »

Given that she felt the need to try and squirrel away some money, it's perfectly obvious that your wife is NOT happy with the arrangement of you policing every spend of every penny.


I'd be squirreling a running away fund if you were my OH.

One of the weird things is that they have a £1k monthly entertainment budget but he got angry at her for buying a watch! You couldn't make it up.

OldMusicGuy

Without getting personal, it's an interesting debate, especially in retirement. While I was working and earning a good wage that more than covered all our outgoings and left plenty to save, we didn't worry too much about money. Our finances were largely separate, my wife had some of her own small income and a separate bank account but we had a joint credit card that either of us used to buy stuff. I just monitored overall spend on the credit card and unless it changed significantly I didn't bother with the detail.

Things have changed since I took early retirement. I earn nothing, my wife now "earns" more than me (about 6K from old DB pensions). However we have a lot of savings and my DC pot to live off. We decided to pool everything and now have mostly joint accounts (also to make it easy for the other to have access to funds when one of us dies). I am the detail nerd (ex-accountant) and manage the savings, investments and DC pot. I keep detailed track of expenditure and we are aiming to keep that within our "number" (which is a total of 32K to 36K per annum for everything).

To avoid me getting into an overtly controlling situation, we did a number of things. First, we agree a detailed annual budget. In that we include some "luxuries" that we both agree the other needs to enjoy their lives. For example, my wife likes to get her hair done in a London salon by a specific hairdresser. It's important to her, so we agreed to budget £150 every three months to cover the costs of the cut and a trip to London. There are a few other things (like my membership of some hobby societies) that we both agree should be budgeted for. That allowed us to have a discussion about how to reduce expenditure overall but still allow us to have some "fun" things without needing to "hide" that from the other party. We also joke quite a lot about "is it in the budget?" and we both take pleasure in pointing out if we did things that came in "under budget".

We also have built in a £250 cash allowance for each of us every month to spend any way we want. So there is a bit of leeway for clothes, hobby and other purchases that aren't budgeted. This also funds presents for each other (and our son).

If there's any expenditure that either of us wants that doesn't fit in the monthly allowance or hasn't been budgeted, then we discuss it in the context of our overall financial situation and decide together if we should go for it. An example here was the purchase of a Dyson rechargeable vac that we didn't urgently need but my wife was keen to get, and I have to say I love the thing now we have it.

It has been a quite a change for us to get to a situation where our finances are on a more shared basis without me (being an obsessive compulsive ex-finance person) getting into a completely controlling situation. Hopefully it's working out ok, but we've only been doing it 6 months.

My wife isn't into managing savings and investments but we did have a good discussion yesterday about our overall strategy and how our plans might be affected by (say) a disastrous Brexit or a change in government.

Given I have a corporate background, I guess I am Chief Finance Officer, she is Chief Operating Officer and together we are acting as the management team.

atush

As far as I remember a new sofa accounts for 3 times more carbon effect than eating steak every day for a year.

Oh dear, bought a new sofa this year. but the old one was falling apart and was nearly 20 years old. One reasdon I bouht it is I had 500 quids worth of tesco vouchers to spend before Tesco Direct closed. is that profligate? The one I am sitting on now is 15 years old.

MallyGirl

My DH has absolutely no knowledge of, or interest in, our finances. I do everything from the bills to the ISA investment choices to a little dabble in P2P. I occasionally ask him to take out a CC for stoozing but there is less to be made in that these days. I have moved my various old DC pensions to a SIPP which I manage - he has chosen to leave his where they are at the moment. It all gets fed into an overall Portfolio spreadsheet that I run. It is on the shared NAS drive so he could look at it at any time - but he never will.
All our finances are joint. We have sole credit cards but they come straight out of the joint account.
We would discuss purchases such as a new car, sending DD to Indie school for 6th form, and are debating whether a chimney needs rebuilding (big bucks and his preference for aesthetic reasons) or removing (less bucks and my preference). Anything else we just do what we want. We are lucky that we earn enough to not have to operate a tight budget and I guess that this behaviour may need modification when we retire, but our 'Number' is a lot bigger than most mentioned on here so hopefully not too much.
I am a control freak but that means I need to know our exact position. I do not want or need to know what he spends money on. Neither of us are into designer gear but both like our fruity gadgets. If our style of spending was unbalanced we might have more discussion but we are very similar people with very similar taste. We spend more on the dogs than on ourselves.

Bravepants

Each partner should have their own "pocket money" to spend as they wish, end of!


In my own relationship I am the one more able to retire early as y partner is a few years younger than me. But I keep a weather eye on my partner's needs too. Neither of us spend for the sake of spending, we don't buy each other huge gifts, but we DO stuff. For example I cook a nice meal for her birthday, or we go somewhere. This year we are going on holiday just before Christmas so we agreed no presents. My partner never wants me to buy her anything anyway...in fact I have had to send things back that I have bought her in the past...and yes I'm talking about a lap-top, which I thought she needed an upgrade!


I'm lucky that my partner is not a "material girl", and I'm not particularly materialistic myself. I have hobbies and I have stuff, but I use the things I have, there are no "status symbols".


But in addition to working on joint finances for early retirement it is only right that each partner has their own pool of money/investments AND an amount of cash to spend on themselves for whatever they want/need. I am budgeting our potential early retirement based on those needs.

k6chris

We too have a joint account for householdy things / holidays etc. We have our own accounts too, with some of our own savings from various sources. £250 a month each for self-oriented spending seems to work very well. I do think that retiring often throws up the issue of a change in the sources of money which may require a rethink of spending planning. Keeping a close eye on finances is a good thing, micro controlling individual expenditure seems very dubious to me.

Wednesday2000

I'm a woman and I do all the admin related to money in our household and make the majority of the decisions.

I check our bank balance daily and write lists of household stuff we need to do, he constantly forgets passwords to bank accounts and just generally isn't interested or careful.

I "let" my husband buy what he likes but he always checks with me first. I suppose that could be seen as controlling, but we have drastically improved our finances since I took over from him.

Last year my husband wanted to spend £1,000 on Bitcoin.:eek: I "let" him spend that, but I wouldn't want him making the decisions as he isn't really the best person to make solid financial decisions.

If he was on this forum he would agree with me!:rotfl:

Slinky

Bravepants wrote: »

Each partner should have their own "pocket money" to spend as they wish, end of!

We don't feel the need for 'pocket money' as such. Unless you count the few quid we both carry as cash for small purchases and which we both take out of the bank as we require it.


Almost all our spends go onto a joint card which OH sorts out monthly. He tracks our finances but would never question what I spend money on. I would never spend hundreds on something without discussing it first but he would never question my decision to spend £150 on my hair or buying new clothes occasionally. The first I know about his latest gadget is a knock on the door and an Amazon delivery.

Mnd

My wife has her money as I've said..I don't need pocket money, if I want something I know if we can afford it and just buy it