Husband overspending - ideas?

c_is_skint

I don't want to be doom & gloom but I've been in your position & a bit worse with my ex husband (says it all) He gambled it away.
He stuck his head in the sand & had a terrible mantra for I can see money in the account so there is money to spend! until he full realises & accepts he is spend happy u won't full solve it.
Meal planning,online shopping, giving both of you a monthly allowance & looking @ what you have spent/saved at the end might help, also take half the extra money out the account so it's not there to be spent.
Good luck debt is rotten but I do believe if you work away @ it it will happen. My new partner has adopted my saving ways so we can full our house deposit fund

dmptofreedom

I use cash - It's so easy to spend when I know I have extra in my account. It's simple and makes you think. Well it works for me anyway

heartbreak_star

Other way round for me - I use debit card because if I have cash I think "oh it's not coming out of the account it's OK".

HBS x

Avon2001

To be honest it looks like there's a combination of three issues at play here. One is that your husband appears not to realize the seriousness of your debt situation, one is the fact that you're buying little and often at the supermarket, which makes it hard for you to keep track of what you're spending and the other is your husband's desire to “keep up appearances” at work.

To deal with the first point. I'm guessing you get paid monthly. You think you should have about £500 per month left over to pay off debts. I'd suggest that as soon as your pay packet comes in, you take that £400 off straight away. I don't know what bank you're with but some banks let you sub-divide your account into “pots” of money (I love Nationwide for this). This goes into a pot marked “Emergency Fund” and it needs to be kept away from your main funds – well away!

The reason you are going to put this aside for the first month is twofold. Firstly, as others have mentioned, you need to verify that your expectations are reasonable and secondly you need to have an emergency fund in place for when you have an emergency.

Next step is to get organized with your shopping. I'd suggest that you and OH go through your cupboards for food and groceries and itemize what you actually have (this often surprizes many people). Get it organized and keep a list on each cupboard door (or wherever) of what is there and update it when you take stuff out. By cupboard I include the fridge, the freezer and anywhere else you keep household items. Now you need to stock up on the basics you need to cook meals from scratch at home, rice, pasta, baked beans etc... You need to have a fully-stocked store cupboard, with enough in it that you could make a decent meal out of its contents if you had to. Going forward you should just be replenishing your store cupboard and buying fresh food. Ideally you should be actively looking for special offers, particularly reduced for quick sale and building your cooking around that. Give your OH a daily budget for the evening shopping, ideally in cash and take the receipt from you OH each day and keep it. The reason for giving your OH the budget in cash is so that he has to stick to it. The reason for keeping the receipt is that seeing where your money is going will help you to budget. If there is change left over from any trip, put it into a jar and keep it away from your husband. It will be there if you need it. I suspect you're both going to have to rework your ideas about cooking and eating. Basically instead of planning meals ahead, you're going to be looking for special offers and buying and cooking around them.

With regards to your OH's lunches I do actually understand this point and I suggest it needs to be handled with a little care. I don't know what your OH's job is but in some places appearances matter a lot. I'd suggest you ease into an acceptable compromise. I think you're going to have to accept your OH having a business lunch, for want of a better term at least one day a week, maybe two. For the other 3//4 days a week, he can take a packed lunch. If he needs an acceptable excuse for this, then I'd suggest he (at least nominally) takes up a lunchtime activity, e.g. walking. Try persuading him to take a packed lunch one day a week and build up from there.

I'd also suggest you look at any or all of:

The Takeaway Secret: How to Cook Your Favourite Fast-food at Home
More Takeaway Secrets
How to Cook Your Favourite Takeaways at Home: The Food You Like to Eat When You Want to Eat it - at Less Cost and with More Goodness

which come in at between £4 and £6 on Amazon and will help you to indulge your takeaway cravings without the cost.

If you absolutely need to you can dip into the emergency fund, but it should only be done in case of dire need. To begin with, unless you already have one, I'd suggest you concentrate on building one up. Then take off your intended debt repayment at the start of each month and keep it until your next payday. If you really need to use it do so. Otherwise, off to your creditors it goes.

Good luck!

hairypitz

My OH used to be a magnet for corner shops and mars bars. Money used to slide through his fingers, a coffee here, a doughnut there. His lightbulb moment came, and this is cruel, after he spent half term home alone with no cash and I went skiing with my friends for the week. He didn't even have the money to see a pal in Scotland and I didn't offer it. When I came home he said he understood why I had money and he didn't and since then has been a changed man.
What works for us is that we have our own money, what's mine is mine and what's his is his. When we buy shopping we go to Lidl and Aldi, buy the super six fruit and veg and always try to buy meat on offer or value cuts where we can make it last a couple of nights. If there's a bargain we shove it in the freezer. My OH does the cooking around what we've got and that revolves around what's cheap or good value. Treats have to be good value too, like this weekend chocolate was reduced in Lidl so we got a big bar to share. We are both now on the same wavelength as we pay 50:50 towards food and I moan if he buys overpriced stuff. Luckily it's hard to do that in Lidl and Aldi as long as you stick to stuff you can make a solid meal from.
I also sort out holidays, insurance, rent, bills and all those financial things you want to get the best deal from so money goes further. I tell him to drive more economically if he revs up the car, I tell him to turn lights off in the study and I help him save money in general. He doesn't get annoyed at me when I do these things as he knows I'm good with money and if he listens and follows my advice he'll have a better quality of life because he can buy really nice things when he needs or wants them, eat well, take good holidays, drive a nice car and do fun things rather than just fritter it on crap and have nothing to show for it.
Maybe chat to your OH about you taking control. Do the shopping at Aldi or Lidl together weekly, get your toiletries in Home Bargains, get on the best energy tariffs, buy petrol cheaply with petrol prices.com, hunt around for insurance, holidays etc and when you've spent on all the necessities put a big chunk aside for debt and split the rest as your spending money. He'll understand when you get something nice or do something's fun with your half and he can't as he spent his on coffee and keeping up ith the boys at work that you can't have everything and may learn to prioritise and spend smarter instead.
Sorry to sound a little mean and heartless but tough love worked for me.

nashly

It can be a real problem when one person is a saver and the other a spender. I've saved all my life my husband hasn't and after nearly 25 years i don't think he will change. Unfortunately as someone (me) has always been there to bail him out he has never learnt his lesson and i've not been willing to let him take the full consequences as it would have impacted detrimentally upon me and the children. The children have a healthy attitude and will save up if they want to buy anything, they also save their money rather than just spend it for the sake of it but the husband just cannot/will not learn the lesson, going through budgets, money in envelopes etc are all great ideas but the bottom line is he has to want to do it.