Spill the beans... What's your partner's worst MoneySaving habit?

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Hmmmm....

BF 1: Parking two and a half miles away from anywhere because it's free there. Driving for 2 hours and 100 miles, just to turn around and drive back home again because the free parking spaces were taken. Buying a 3kg slab of cheese on the grounds that it would save having to go back to the shop - and eating it within 5 days. Driving 65 miles to do the shopping, only to do it in ASDA because it's free parking. Charging a 79 year old and her two friends a tenner each to drive them to her brother's funeral three miles away. Invoicing me at the end of our relationship for the petrol costs for him picking me up from home to go to college 4 years previously. Dismantling the bed as I slept in it because he had paid £50 towards it, so it was 'his'. Removing the fridge that was given free by one of his Mum's friends because that meant it was his and not mine. Then scrapping it because his mum said he couldn't keep a fridge in his bedroom as it would keep her awake.

And the best? Buying a barely running VW camper van for £750 and then leaving it on his Mum's driveway untouched, ignoring the people who have offered him £1200 - £ £1450 in the time 'because it'll be worth twenty thousand if it's not fiddled with' and ignoring the fact that it has spent 17 years rotting away to nothing. It's now worth nothing as there are more holes than vehicle, the axles snapped, the floorpan is absent across 75% of the vehicle and the electrical system gave off funny burning smells in 1995. So glad that by this point it was some other poor cow's wages he was spending (has never worked as he wanted to be a housewife. His words. Mine were Bail out! Bail out!).


BF 2. Smoking and meals in the greasy spoon every day. How he's still alive, I have no idea. He's a tubby little so and so now though - when I was with him, he was very fit and muscular


BF 3. Beer, fags, spliff, and refusing to eat anything that grew on a plant or in the ground. Throwing away all but about three ounces of meat from a shoulder of lamb because the meat looked fatty. Oh, and getting cash advances on his credit card to buy a £12,000 car :eek: It was only a Peugeot 406/minicab mobile type motor, anyway. Then there was the Alfa, as he was too good to have a cheap car as soon as his ex girlfriend had one.


BF 4. Beer and fags. Oh, and using enough food for 5 meals all in one go and then throwing it all away as he was full up. Or eating himself stupid, then buying more beer and drinking so much he would throw the food back up again, get hungry and go and empty the fridge some more. Or decide he didn't fancy the look of anything and refuse to eat anything but takeaways every day for a fortnight, then complain there wasn't any money for fags.

Worst moneysaving of all there was saving the butts and using them to roll new cigarettes. [heave]



My faults? I make everyone I am shopping with do the maths to work out if something is cheaper or not. It apparently feels like a mobile maths test combined with a crash course in marketing and psychology. Plus refusing to pay the extra to get 2 for £4 when we only need one at £2.50, as that means I'm not wasting £1.50 on buying more than is necessary, oh and grumbling 'BOGOF? I'd rather have just the one for half price'

Oh, and I spend a lot of money on music. Lessons, funding travel and drinks at jam sessions, gadgets, tools, books, some other instrument every few months or so, plus clothes, hair, piercings, tattoos, makeup and the like to look the part onstage. Bet it's still less than any of them ever spent on fags, though.

aliasojo

CL wrote: »

Never checks the use by date on food, so we end up throwing out stuff that doesn't get used.

Always checks the use by date on food and chucks it out if it's on or past it's date even if it's still perfectly edible.

Throws out things like whole peppers that have a small rubbery bit starting on them, when he could just have cut that bit off and used the rest.

Wits_end_3

We have a joint account and due to both been long term ill, only have benefits. He always draws out his money and mine and leaves me with nothing!!!! Sometimes allows me to transfer some to pay DD and SO`s. Getting so fed up with it now :-(

Percy1983

I ask this question to those who are married and have these problems, where they like that before you got married?

I ask this as me and my finacee only have minor niggles with finances but overall do have the same ideas and the core of our thinking is the same. But could this change?

I also ask on the basis of I had an ex who was useless with money and to the point I would never have married her due it (one of the many reasons she's an ex).

SueC_2

Percy1983 wrote: »

I also ask on the basis of I had an ex who was useless with money and to the point I would never have married her due it (one of the many reasons she's an ex).

I think that's an interesting point, and often find myself wondering how annoying someone's financial habits would have to be before they spelled the end of the relationship.

On the other hand, how shallow is it to judge someone on their financial habits? If someone is caring, considerate, and all round lovely, but nevertheless financially incompetent, what does that say about the person deciding that pursuing the relationship isn't worthwhile?

Percy1983

SueC wrote: »

I think that's an interesting point, and often find myself wondering how annoying someone's financial habits would have to be before they spelled the end of the relationship.

On the other hand, how shallow is it to judge someone on their financial habits? If someone is caring, considerate, and all round lovely, but nevertheless financially incompetent, what does that say about the person deciding that pursuing the relationship isn't worthwhile?

Interesting point, with that I would class a different outlook on finance as a different outlook on many other things.

I know a couple where he just saves and she just spends, then his saving bail her out and the process continues, now personally I see that as a complete lack of respect which is enough to end a relationship.

By all means small niggles are fine as is a little give and take, but some of the things I have read on this thread does make me question why be with somebody like that.

louise3965

He's convinced that we will all die from salmonella if we eat things even a day over the sell by date. He goes through the fridge and chucks stuff away and I feel myself actually hyperventilating....

MandM90

She turns off ALL sockets and plugs. When we first met I went on a trip to the US and left her in bed at my flat that morning. When I came back the freezer had defrosted and leaked and everything in the fridge was off because she'd turned everything off 'to prevent fire' not realising the random switches on the kitchen island linked to the fridge and freezer. So annoying! Also I keep plugging my phone on charge only to realise an hour later (when I need to leave) the phone isn't charged as the plug has been mysteriously turned off.

Also buying reduced fish from the supermarket. I don't mind eating lentils/beans/tinned goods to save money but if it's fresh fish I can't stand the thought of something that's been sitting there until the day before it's due to be thrown out. Why does she buy it when I won't eat it!?

That's about it I think. I have a friend who dated a girl for years who earned a six figure salary and was the tightest person EVER! She once kicked up a big fuss infront of all our friends as my friend had ordered an extra at a restaurant which cost - wait for it - £1 more...even though she wasn't footing the bill! :rotfl:

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Wits_end wrote: »

We have a joint account and due to both been long term ill, only have benefits. He always draws out his money and mine and leaves me with nothing!!!! Sometimes allows me to transfer some to pay DD and SO`s. Getting so fed up with it now :-(

No, that is plain wrong. In every single sense of the word.

I would suggest that you set up your own separate account and get your money paid to you.

Keeping you without income and you have to get permission to pay bills, never mind spend your own money as you see fit? That's dangerously close to one of the markers for domestic abuse.

If that rings any bells with you, then I would direct you to the Women's Aid thread and website and see what you think.

If not, and he's being a wally, go postal at him and get it sorted out so that you have your money in your hand.

Margaret52129

I had a cousin who never emptied his pockets of small change so when my aunty washed his clothes she kept all this small change in a pot - then she gave him a microwave when he moved into his own home. He was really pleased with it, but concerned that his mum had bought something so expensive - till she told him he'd bought it himself with the money he left in his pockets!!!!