hubby just isnt interested

DancerSupreme

This whole budgetting and trying to save is impossible when one person isnt interested. He just says I am obsessed about it. I want to have a good future and a financially secure present. I have no real hobbies due to family a d money. I dont know what to do anymore. I feel incredibly alone. And i have tried discussing it with him. We either argue or it is not understood.

jenand8285

DancerSupreme wrote: »

This whole budgetting and trying to save is impossible when one person isnt interested. He just says I am obsessed about it. I want to have a good future and a financially secure present. I have no real hobbies due to family a d money. I dont know what to do anymore. I feel incredibly alone. And i have tried discussing it with him. We either argue or it is not understood.

My hubby used to be like this a few years ago when I decided we were going to start saving for a house deposit. He used to spend every penny of his wage and we had no savings.
So I set a weekly spending money limit. A few years later we had saved the deposit and got our first house.
He is now so pleased I did what I did. We have got used to not spending as much and now live a more comfortable life.

Just persevere, once good things start happing I am sure he will realise it was the best thing to do.

Good luck!

Tommelise

I have been reading your other treads, and think it might be a bit more complex than your post might indicate

Buying a house for the first time is scary and it does often come with a very tight budget in the start. Your budget does not allow for much extra.

did you work out the budgettogether?
Does your husband follow the bugdet or does he spend more than agreed?

If he follows the budget, then maybe you are a bit too focused on it, bringing it up daily? This is only a guess, but i can see that you have worked very hard to bring down debts, and have periods were you have been depressed. Please ignore if this is not relevant now.

I am sure others will be along with more advice, most of us have been there - i know we had some very tight years when we bought our first home 13 years ago, but it got better after a while

Morglin

DancerSupreme wrote: »

This whole budgetting and trying to save is impossible when one person isnt interested. He just says I am obsessed about it. I want to have a good future and a financially secure present. I have no real hobbies due to family a d money. I dont know what to do anymore. I feel incredibly alone. And i have tried discussing it with him. We either argue or it is not understood.

Perhaps just discuss it once a week?

It can be boring when one person gets fixated on things like that!

Looking at your signature, you have done well to clear your debt, and it must have been tough, so perhaps your partner wants to just not keep talking about money?

Unless you are debt trouble, there is very little point bashing budgeting to death - however well you plan, things happen, life changes and you have to adapt as you go.

Perhaps a hobby might be an idea?

Lin

good_advice

Hello Dancer, you are not alone.
It does sometimes take a wile to have OH onboard. My OH is still learning. He comes home sometimes with the silliest things from the shops.
He is getting better though!

You do not say if you have a house and mortgage or are renting?
I wish this forum was going when I first married. I have learn't such a lot.
No parents for guidance. What I learn't was through reading all I could.

Just slowly make changes on you own. It will take time.
It takes a full year to change some contracted bills and reduce or cancel.
Stop buying papers and magazines. Go YS shopping.

Hobbies can be anything to fill your time.
This time of year there is a lot of gardening to do.
Try recycling as a hobby. Read up on all the things you can reuse.
Do you knit or sew? Read free books on kindle?

Just off to put my washing on the line, I only use the dryer occasionally.
Best of luck.

getmore4less

A budget is just a plan of how you allocate your income.

lets face it, pretty boring stuff.

What bit is causing the problem.

if you present a plan will he keep to it?

if not why not?

if the issue is it all gets spent, then there needs to be a goal/objective that has a higher priorty than spending it all, do you have one of those.

PenguinOfDeath

Agree with the above, also started this when we looking to buy a house, it helps if you have a common goal - these being the the imperative words.

It has taken me 2/3 years to get to this point from starting to look at our collective finances to now where OH actively looks for good deals and encourages meal planning and frugal cooking.

In the meantime I never actually set a 'budget' as such, we aren't married so have some separate and some joint money, he spends money on hobbies but a lot less than he did before through his realisation that the money isn't never ending. I didn't want to down the 'nagging' route as I'd get bored of it as much as he would. I just use it as bit of a bribe ie why buy x, when you get y and get twice as much for the money. Also I mentions things like 'by shopping at aldi instead of sainsburys I've saved £20 so now we can have a take away as a treat on that money' paraphrasing here but you get what I mean.

BigAunty

If he's so hands off and uninterested, he won't mind if you separate out your finances so that you accrue all your own savings and investments which you then freely spend on yourself.

Insist on just a fair share of the domestic expenses going into the joint account from which all debits for food, energy, council tax, telecoms bills, etc, come out of.

trailingspouse

Time to take control. He's not interested, and you're just going to be hitting your head on a brick wall trying to get him interested. Make the decisions, and then tell him what you've done. OH just can't be bothered to hunt out the best interest rates, shop around for insurance, or check bank statements. But I can, so I do it - the trade off is that he has to take my word for it when I say money's a bit tight, or we can't afford something until next month etc.

This is fine if your OH is simply just not interested - but if you feel he is deliberately scuppering your plans (eg spending on something frivolous after you've said money was tight), that is a different matter entirely.

ThinkPink

Well done on paying of your debts for saving for a house.

Personally I think you need to get the right balance of saving but also of having a bit of a life and a bit of fun along the way. And I wonder if you've lost sight of the living part through your determination to save, whilst your oh still wants to do the living part and this is what is causing the arguments, if so you both need to compromise.

Im a spender and my husband is the saver in our relationship. Yes it causes the odd disagreement but we always take on board each others reasoning and find a way to compromise and agree- it can work having two people with different attitudes to money as long as you are willing to occasionally see their point of view (and this is on both sides!) and meet each other in the middle.

rachiibell

With my OH I am in charge of all the bills. He gets paid weekly and each month I tell him how much he needs to pay me each week for this month to cover rent, bills, and pay off the credit card (household spending).

I soon realised he'd spend everything he had left after this no matter how much he'd earned that week so I started rounding the amount up and I put a little bit into savings for him. Then once when he'd had to have a week off and had no money I could give him some out of the savings "he" had built up from saving around an extra fiver a month.

It's a slow process and he still needs to be prompted to think about savings himself but we're getting there. Basically my point is could you do something similar? If he knows he just needs to pay £X amount to household expenses it might be easier for him to get his head round that than paying expenses and saving on top. And make sure you take him out for a little treat occasionally so he can see how rewarding saving is!