How to encourage partner to become a MSE??

kate5555

Primrose wrote: »

Longer term your partner!s inability to handle money as sensibly as you do may well become a problem in your relationship and I would strongly recommend you start setting up some cash savings in your own name by taking advantage of your annual cash ISA allowance. Have you both set up an emergency savings fund in case of illness, redundancy etc? You should be aiming for a minimum of three months expenditure and preferably six months . Get talking to him about this before any more money gets spent on consumer items or smoking.

Good advice, my mum has been telling me for years to make sure I take care of myself financially as after her divorce from my dad she found herself with few assets and no pension fund. While I have just said I'm not planning to leave him, should it happen I will make sure I have protected myself. he doesn't have an emergency fund but I don't know how to get him to see that it's important.

kate5555

Domayne wrote: »

Well questions I'd wonder are how he reacts when OP says that she thinks he should save more....Does he agree and have good intentions but has a tendency to just 'fritter' without even realizing what he is doing? Does he get angry and say It's my money and I'll spend it how and on what I like? Is there some kind of suggestions that have been given to him already....How about cutting down from £500 to £400 a month and saving an extra £100 - He still gets almost £100 a week to 'fritter' on his wants but they have an extra £1200 saved at the end of the year....Putting it as £1200 to him might sound better than £100 when he sees the bigger numbers?
How about taking lunch to work on Mon-Thurs and treating himself on the Friday to a shop bought one?
I'm really bad at money management. It's taken me years of trying to master it and that is me wanting to do it for myself - If you are trying to make someone else do it when they have no idea where to start and feel 'hard done by' or just plain don't want to be MSE, You'll have a much harder time on your hands trying to make them see your way and no, nagging will not help. In fact it will probably just have the opposite affect!

He agrees in principle that he should be saving but there is always one more night out that he HAS to go too, or just one last bag of weed. He takes lunch to work maybe 2 days a week, he means to do more but just isn't organised enough / too lazy to do it every day. I also suggested he cycles to work to save on the bus fare which he did last summer but with the weather we have up north it would be cruel to insist cycling through the winter too! As the weather is getting better I'll suggest he might like to start again. So yes I suppose there is some effort made on his part.
I will have a chat with him about what he really wants to spend money on long term and hopefully that will encourage him to save, rather than thinking of it as boring generic savings or an emergency fund which he won't need as he is going to win the lottery soon!

Person_one

kate5555 wrote: »

Exactly, I didn't start this thread for a discussion about whether I should be with him or not as I'm happy in the relationship so we can leave it at that.

My take home pay is around £2100, his is £1200 so he pays me £500 towards our roughly £1400 shared bills and I think that's fair, I am happy to pay a larger proportion relative to our incomes. I think I will suggest as per Domaynes later post that he might try and up his monthly savings from £200 to £300, and then try and bite my tongue about the rest of his spending. I probably spend close to £400 a month on unnecessary luxuries too so I shouldn't be judgemental about his spending.

You're engaged, is it time to start thinking about 'household' finances rather than two individuals?

You have 3300 coming in each month.
Your essential bills come to 1400, leaving you 1900.
You could jointly put 1100 into savings, leaving 800
You're left with 400 each spending money, to do with as you want.

I'm assuming that the 1400 covers basically everything, bills, food, petrol etc?

kate5555

Person_one wrote: »

You're engaged, is it time to start thinking about 'household' finances rather than two individuals?

You have 3300 coming in each month.
Your essential bills come to 1400, leaving you 1900.
You could jointly put 1100 into savings, leaving 800
You're left with 400 each spending money, to do with as you want.

I'm assuming that the 1400 covers basically everything, bills, food, petrol etc?

The 1400 covers everything except the car and petrol which i pay completely as i use it for work although he can use it too.

What you are essentially suggesting is that he puts £300 into our monthly savings and i put £800 but we both have equal rights over it. Do married couples tyoically share everything equally and keep no savings for themselves? How do they agree on what those joint savings should be spent on and what if one wants to spend more of the joint savings than the other? Seems to me like it could cause more problems than it solves?

Please note that Im not disagreeing with your idea that we should start thinking about us as a household rather than individuals, just that I'm genuinely interested as I have no idea what other couples do with their finances once they start living together or get married. Before i started this thread i thought it must be pretty common for one partner to be more money saving than the other and I wanted to know how they dealt with it so I could do the same, but from some of the responses I'm not so sure this is common now??

Pollycat

My OH & I have been on the same page regarding money saving pretty much for our life together (30+ years). When we met he had (to me at least) eye-watering credit card debt (maybe £2.5k) but was in a very well paid job. That was soon paid off.

We agreed not to have an expensive car (although we could afford it), just an ordinary new one. Talking top of the range Yaris here versus a Porsche or Audi.
We agreed not to stay in 5* spa hotels (although we could afford it), it isn't our style. Instead we had 3 holidays a year, Med & Far East.

We pooled our savings almost 25 years ago to take advantage of the off-set mortgages that were just being introduced.
It has saved us £thousands.

We both saved towards our retirement - me in a very good final salary occupational pension, he in a similar one, then a money purchase scheme when he changed jobs.

I took early retirement over 12 years ago, he joined me 9 years ago.
Since then, we have typically holidayed abroad 4 times a year.

We have never had disagreements about money, I tend to spend bits quite often, he'll spend a big amount occasionally to maybe rebuild one of his 3 PCs (it's his hobby).

We've had times when he's earned more than me and times when it's been the opposite.
I steadily climbed my career ladder, he had a period of unemployment and had to start again at the bottom.

It's suited us and worked very well for us.
If either of us had been spending £400+ a month each on 'stuff', we wouldn't be this comfortable now.
I have a friend who really does think we won some money on the lottery and kept it quiet. :rotfl:

My point is - I'm not sure where we'd be now if we each had the attitude to money that you and your partner have.

jackieblack

kate5555 wrote: »

Good advice, my mum has been telling me for years to make sure I take care of myself financially as after her divorce from my dad she found herself with few assets and no pension fund. While I have just said I'm not planning to leave him, should it happen I will make sure I have protected myself. he doesn't have an emergency fund but I don't know how to get him to see that it's important.

I'm not sure how you think you're going to 'protect yourself'.
Once you are married, everything you have, everything you have saved and everything you own will be classed as joint assets.
If your marriage survives your differences in attitude to finances then you've nothing to worry about, but don't underestimate the strain these differences can put on a relationship long term.
If not, unless you divorce within few enough years for it to be classed as a 'short marriage' you will be looking at a starting point of a 50/50 split of all assets, house, savings, pensions, everything - irrelevant of who paid for what and whose name things are in.

Not trying to be all 'doom and gloom' btw, just being realistic

jackieblack

kate5555 wrote: »

What you are essentially suggesting is that he puts £300 into our monthly savings and i put £800 but we both have equal rights over it. Do married couples tyoically share everything equally and keep no savings for themselves? How do they agree on what those joint savings should be spent on and what if one wants to spend more of the joint savings than the other? Seems to me like it could cause more problems than it solves?

There is no 'typically', every couple has to find a way that works for them and every couple has different circumstances and priorities.

But, if it was me, joint savings would be used for joint expenses, holidays, household purchases etc.
And the additional £400 each a month would be for for individual expenses or individual savings.

missbiggles1

kate5555 wrote: »

The 1400 covers everything except the car and petrol which i pay completely as i use it for work although he can use it too.

What you are essentially suggesting is that he puts £300 into our monthly savings and i put £800 but we both have equal rights over it. Do married couples tyoically share everything equally and keep no savings for themselves? How do they agree on what those joint savings should be spent on and what if one wants to spend more of the joint savings than the other? Seems to me like it could cause more problems than it solves?

Please note that Im not disagreeing with your idea that we should start thinking about us as a household rather than individuals, just that I'm genuinely interested as I have no idea what other couples do with their finances once they start living together or get married. Before i started this thread i thought it must be pretty common for one partner to be more money saving than the other and I wanted to know how they dealt with it so I could do the same, but from some of the responses I'm not so sure this is common now??

IME, you talk about it and you compromise, much the same strategy as you'd use in all the other areas of your marriage.

june89

kate5555 wrote: »

What you are essentially suggesting is that he puts £300 into our monthly savings and i put £800 but we both have equal rights over it. Do married couples tyoically share everything equally and keep no savings for themselves? How do they agree on what those joint savings should be spent on and what if one wants to spend more of the joint savings than the other? Seems to me like it could cause more problems than it solves?

There is no typical. DH and I have pooled our money since we started living together and have only had joint accounts since getting married. He has always been the higher earner, but that has varied from only a few thousand per year more to nearly double or even being the sole earner. It has made no difference on how we view our money, just how much is available. My in-laws on the other hand have never shared anything. They will even divide the weekly shopping bill to the penny based on what they will eat and pay their respective share. I think that amount of separation is insane, but it works for them.

As for joint savings, we technically have split savings because the bulk are in ISAs and there is no such thing as a joint one. But we consider all the accounts as ours, and we discuss any significant spending and come to an agreement about it. We don't have a fixed allowance per month (although that does work for some people) but we also don't discuss small spending (clothes, etc) as long as it's within reason. That all comes out of disposable income though, rather than savings. And that disposable amount is still considered joint, as I am still "allowed" to purchase things even when not working and therefore not financially contributing.

Also agree with PP that once you are married, you will have little protection over "your" assets as they become joint by default. So I would strongly advise that this needs to be discussed now. Money differences can cause a huge strain. I don't think you should dictate how he spends his disposable income but he needs to be on the same page regarding the long term plan.

BTW, based on your first post I thought you were much younger. My initial advice was that my DH used to be the same but grew out of it once he hit his mid-late 20s. I personally wouldn't expect that sort of behaviour to still go on at 40, although I'm sure it's more common than I think!

DivenParker

Good philosophy! I guess my boyfriend is a drug addict in denial too then