The Last Leg; 6 years later, debt free in 2021

greensalad

Yeah I think I just fell into the trap thinking I'm the bad one with money which means he should be fine. He's definitely less frivolous than me, but also less accepting of lifestyle change. We went joint because it really gave us both the boost to be able to align goals for buying a house. We're now able to better plan which debts to address first and whatnot. Plus things like holidays, I would always set aside my portion each month running up to the trip but he would just worry about it the month-of, which stressed me out a lot but worked for him because he was a high earner. Now his salary dropped a little with a new role in April so it just made sense to bring everything together. Plus I'm a control freak, so I like being able to know exactly how much we're setting aside for holiday and not having to rely on him promising to do the same which he obviously isn't doing!

I don't think his erroneous spending is in anyway malicious, he's just not good at having to actively think about money. 

Hopefully this won't happen again. If it does I think I will just say I don't think he should be spending on a credit card at all, even if he proclaims to pay it off in full every month, and he'll just have to stick with the £200 in his bank account and nothing more!

Kakiste

I think your take on it is completely reasonable. 
£200 is still a lot of money to be able to spend just on himself. It's a luxury that many adults can't afford- yes it is rubbish if he can't afford things but he could always not spend anything one month to have double the following payday. 

greensalad

I think because I've been on the YNAB train for so long I see spending as something I have to plan in advance for. Whereas my boyfriend sees it as "but if a spend comes up, and I've already spent all my money, how can I afford it?" and the answer is you can't 

Kakiste

Completely agree. We're away camping this weekend Which has been paid for and meals budgeted for. We've just been invited to go down to our friends in Cardiff over the bank holiday weekend which wasn't in my monthly budget so I'm doing a lot of sewing this week and next to make sure I've got enough money to be able to pay for fuel/cheap meals out. 

greensalad

Boyfriend is making a big batch of tomato pasta sauce today from everything I picked over the last few days. I'd say we've got several more crops to come in. But this pasta sauce should be enough for two meals.

My plan for Christmas this year is to do entirely homemade hampers for family gifts. I want to make tomato chilli chutney so will need to keep back enough tomatoes to do that. Also hopefully we can pick some sloes to do sloe gin with, and I want to perfect baking some decorated biscuits and maybe some sort of savoury cheesy bread of sorts. Package it all up with as much recycled bits as I can and have a hamper that will be relatively cheap to put together. Maybe if I'm lucky my blackberry harvest will come in well and I can do some blackberry jam too.

Baileys_Babe

Have you explained to your boyfriend how you put the money aside to pay for your credit card spends?

Many years ago in the early years of our relationship, my OH was the same as your boyfriend, he was well paid and didn't feel the need to budget as he could cover his annual bills and holidays from his monthly pay, I, on the other hand, was in a much lower paid job which meant I needed to budget monthly for future spends. Over the years he has improved his ways and many years ago he asked for me to take the lead in managing our finances. When we decided to save up a deposit to buy a house he couldn't believe how quickly it built up all without too many major changes to our lifestyle and after 2 years we had a large lump sum to overpay the mortgage and we had bought a car outright, had holidays etc

greensalad

Baileys_Babe said:

Have you explained to your boyfriend how you put the money aside to pay for your credit card spends?

Many years ago in the early years of our relationship, my OH was the same as your boyfriend, he was well paid and didn't feel the need to budget as he could cover his annual bills and holidays from his monthly pay, I, on the other hand, was in a much lower paid job which meant I needed to budget monthly for future spends. Over the years he has improved his ways and many years ago he asked for me to take the lead in managing our finances. When we decided to save up a deposit to buy a house he couldn't believe how quickly it built up all without too many major changes to our lifestyle and after 2 years we had a large lump sum to overpay the mortgage and we had bought a car outright, had holidays etc

I thought I had but obviously not well enough! Well, it was really up to him, he knew the credit card bill would be due and he knew he only had his pocket money to spend on it yet somehow these two facts coming together seemed to have escaped him. I think he's just not used to having to moderate his cash flow.

I've already promised that I'm comfortable with us putting bigger spends aside when needed. For example, he gets invited on a lot of stag dos and I'm not going to say that has to come out of his pocket money as I know the cost would be prohibitive. At the same time there are likely going to be things crop up that I may need to take a bit more cash for, for example it's my 30th next year and for his last year we had a big party which came with a high cost. I'm not sure I need a big party but I have got my eyes on a really nice camera I'd like as a gift and it's likely we're going to have to put a bit more cash aside that month to cover that. So I just hope he realises now that he can't spend on the CC and not worry about how it will be paid off. Let's hope. We have a joint pot to put the set-aside cash in so I should be able to see. If lots of Amazon parcels show up and there's no deposit in the pot to account for it I shall quiz him!

Baileys_Babe

Are his personal spends being reduced over the next few months to pay back this month's overspend?

greensalad

No, I haven't this time because I think he'll just end up struggling and I'd rather not push someone into a vicious cycle of overspending beyond their means because their income is reduced. We'll just chalk this one up experience!

greensalad

Just picked the second tomato harvest. They're coming in thick and fast! 
Going to pulp up this lot and freeze them for use in curries and pasta sauces etc. I am going to wait until I get one really big glut come in at once and do my chutney. I'm going to need over a kilo for making enough chutney but that should be fine if I wait for the biggest crop.