Banging head against a brick wall!!

tinalives

I feel really lucky, my OH is really good about the finances, he sticks to whatever plans I put in place, as well as being really supportive about my finances from before I met him.

x

elisebutt65

Gaaah - this all sounds so familiar - My ex-hubby ran up debt all over the place and whilst I was working - pre child - I had to bail him out at the end of the month.

After Danny was born - it was a nightmare - thank god he found another sucker to leach off of - It took me about 6 months to get straight after I kicked him out - getting bills in my own name, getting his bills forwarded to him and redirecting bailiffs etc.

Now I'm balancing running the house on my own with a student load and grant, IS in the holidays and housing benefit - I'm miles better off - I hardly ever use my student c/cards and have refused the bank overdraft. I only tend to use my debit card when I'm shopping so I know how much is in my bank ac at all times and am saving £30 a month - not a lot but it's all I can afford.

And I'm off to Barcelona thanks to airmiles from Tesco's - Yeay!!!

New BF earns plenty - saves plenty and takes me out plenty:D

bargainqueen_2

Yehaa am so grateful for this thread! I thought I was the obnly one feeling like this :wall: My beloved partner seems to only see the actual balance, and has not yet learned that d/d's have a habit of coming out without warning.... D'Oh! I want to strangle him sometimes, and if he didn't make such a LUSH Chili Con Carne I reckon I would've kicked him out by now
I am in the middle of persuading him to let me handle all the finances and just opening him a leisure account in which I pay a monthly sum that he can spend on whatever the hell he likes. His reply? "You're a bit anal!" Guess it's because we don't have any debts, but what he doesn't get is that if it weren't for me, we WOULD have debts (not singing my own praise or anything *g*). Blimey. That's off my chest. But does anyone have a solution???????

MissSunshine

OMG this was so Mr Sunshine, but have to admit he's a lot better now we've got children!! (not advocating that as a solution though!!)

Solution we use is an allowance of sorts. I don't physically give him x amount of money, but at the beginning of the month i tell him how much is left in a/c after bills for food, petrol, socialising etc and he lets me know when he's taken money out of the a/c. We don't have a debit card here, which i find a pain, but we have to leave big £'s in there for this privilege!! :eek:

Kantankrus_Mare

bargainqueen wrote:

" Guess it's because we don't have any debts, but what he doesn't get is that if it weren't for me, we WOULD have debts (not singing my own praise or anything *g*). Blimey. That's off my chest. But does anyone have a solution???????

God you sound just like me bargain queen! lol

We have no major debts either but seem to be permanently in the red on overdraft to the amount of £400/500 quid and it so annoys me that we are paying approx 4 quid a month ( not a huge amount i know) but nearly 50 quid a year! for the privelige.

He IS getting better now though and will shop around for stuff and ive even managed to get him to use money off vouchers when he does the weekly shop

Hes a good un really ,helps me round the house and is brill with the kids so I guess you cant have everything? Oh and he makes a mean chicken with cashews and hoi sin sauce! lol

bargainqueen_2

Kantankrus_Mare wrote:

We have no major debts either but seem to be permanently in the red on overdraft to the amount of £400/500 quid and it so annoys me that we are paying approx 4 quid a month ( not a huge amount i know) but nearly 50 quid a year! for the privelige.

Oh yeah that one sets me off everytime, too*g*


Hes a good un really ,helps me round the house and is brill with the kids so I guess you cant have everything? Oh and he makes a mean chicken with cashews and hoi sin sauce! lol

That's what I'm sayin', they have some uses but WHY OH WHY can they not be perfect? (Like us ) Aye, sure mine's alright too, if only..... *g*

westernpromise

I find this thread slightly surreal. I'm a bloke and pretty sharp with money on the whole. My other half is beyond clueless. Until she had the good fortune to fall in with me, she withdrew cash on credit cards, failed to pay them off, and didn't shop around for anything. She still wastes money on hugely expensive organic food, which is then thrown away because it goes off in 15 minutes, and that's further ahead than she's able to think.

She is paying off a bank loan at £170 a month, but she doesn't know how much it originally was, what she spent it on, what the interest rate is, or how long there is to go.

In her favour, she squanders less these days ever since I cancelled her cards and gave her supplementary cards on my own accounts. I inspect these online 2 or 3 times a week and want to know what everything was so I can track it in Microsoft Money. Most of what she spends she spends in supermarkets and stuff, so she has improved.

That said, I have been out with or otherwise known women who were a complete disaster, and my own experience is that this is very much the female norm, certainly among single women in their late teens to thirties.

Most women own dozens of pairs of shoes (and apaprently spend £32,000 over their lifetime on shoes). Why do women need so many shoes? you need 4 pairs: 2 for work and 2 others. They last 2 years so you need to spend about £30 to £50 every 6 months, ladies. And that's the truth.

Women own huge quantities of unworn clothes. Women also own huge quantities of face-paint, 90% of which is also never used. Most women are paying off a loan, but didn't buy anything with the loan; it's just a loan. Women do not own a decent TV, DVD player, PC, stereo, car, or indeed any major household appliance, item, or furniture. Even the iron will be the £15 job from Argos, which coincidentally is what many women will happily pay for a lipstick. *One* lipstick.

And if there's a sofa in her place, it'll be from a catalogue and nowhere near paid for.

Most go overdrawn during the month. So if they're ever repossessed for defaulting on the mortgage, they may not have a roof over their head but at least they'll have shoes on their feet, I suppose...

Very few women have ever been anywhere further afield than Spain or Greece on holiday. I have rarely encountered a single woman who's ever been on a high-end holiday to somewhere like Thailand, and in fact most women seem to spend a maximum of £300 on their holidays.

Only one of my exes ever had any savings. Even then, she didn't save it herself - her grandmother left her some money and she had left it in the bank while paying 27.8% APR to House of Fraser for the shoes she put on their storecard.

So is my experience completely atypical? I find all this stuff about us blokes being bad with money completely bizarre!

MATH

All these post have a familiar ring to them. Mrs MATH's not too bad but nowhere near as money savvy as I am. For years I planned and schemed to reduce our overdraft and save cash but the money just drained away in £5 and £2.50 drips. I nagged, she felt got at and deprived and the overdraft got bigger. The final soltution was for me to take control of the main account and set up a seperate account for Mrs MATH's slush fund. Although she is the wage earner and I am a SAHD she cannot lay a hand on a penny except for her slush money and when it's gone it's gone. Our overdraft has long since gone and we are actually saving money. I don't nag, Mrs MATH can buy what she likes until the money runs out and we are all happy. I wish we had done this 15yrs ago.

Turning_into_scrooge

Very few women have ever been anywhere further afield than Spain or Greece on holiday. I have rarely encountered a single woman who's ever been on a high-end holiday to somewhere like Thailand, and in fact most women seem to spend a maximum of £300 on their holidays.

![/QUOTE]

You have now, well sort of, i used to live in Thailand added to that i've hardley bought shoes or clothing since coming back as I haven't needed to, had them all made out there.

bargainqueen_2

Lol, guess it shows that everyone is different. I have to hold up my hand and say that I own a lot of shoes (mind you, only about 10 pairs, few compared to some people!) and I own clothes I never wear, and I have a bathroom full of Make-Up when I wear some once a month. Not kidding. BUT.... I saved long and hard to come to Australia, I have emigrated, set up a new home, bought a car, furniture, computer (top spec too!) and none of it on finance. In fact, I had money left which is now sitting in my savings account and we are living on one wage (thanks to my pushing) and saving the other. So...I have a lot of those womens faults BUT I can pay for them without suffering. Oh... and I do not own an iron