Dear Abigail,
My wife and I have known each other for 20 years, and for 20 years, we’ve been unable to talk about money without fighting. She wants to spend without regard for our budget, and I want to save. We have two daughters, who are in second and third grade, and I worry about paying for college, camp, cars, everything. We share a bank account and credit card, but for some reason (I think her mom’s advice) my wife has always insisted on also having her own separate bank account and credit card. I think she doesn’t want me bitching about her buying shoes and facial products, and she’s probably right, because I’m sure I would bitch about that.
My wife’s salary is about half of mine—I also get bonuses if work’s going well, but they’re not guaranteed, which adds to my anxiety—but I made a deal with her: I’m fine with her keeping her own account as long as she puts roughly half her paycheck into our joint account to help pay for our family’s expenses, and so I can keep track of whether we are saving money or losing money.
For years she’s played games with this, randomly transferring money from our joint account to hers without telling me what it is for, or not adding the full amount we agreed upon. Any time I ask her about this, we get into a huge fight. She thinks I’m cheap and crazy about money and I think she doesn’t care about the future.
Over the past six months, she has stopped contributing about 25 percent of the amount we agreed to, which is really affecting our budget. I brought this up a few months ago, and she said she would fix it. I looked at our account today: She is still not adding the money she promised. I sent her a text today about it, and she did not respond.
Meanwhile, she’s been on my case about taking our kids to Disney for the first time next year—which is something I’d love to do, but it annoys me that she wants to spend money on a trip when she hasn’t been helping with savings. Last month, our credit card bill was way over budget and she still decided to hire someone to fix our driveway. She feels: If it needs to get fixed, it needs to get fixed. She may be right about that. I once came home and flipped out when I saw she hired someone to cut down a bunch of trees—I would’ve waited until the trees were a day away from falling on the house—because I stress about spending money on things we need, too.
But at some point, when you spend more than you make, you eventually lose all your money.
—Mark, 41
Mark,
Public urinals—I am told—are plagued by a nasty feedback loop. The first man splashes on the urinal cake, creating a small dribble on the floor. The next man stands a little farther back, to avoid the wet tile. Because he’s farther away, he misses a bit, and the dribble expands to a puddle. The man after him stands still farther back, missing badly. Pretty soon, the puddle is huge and the bathroom is disgusting. This according to my husband, who is proud to have discovered what he believes to be the perfect example of a “vicious cycle.”
You and your wife are stuck in one, dear Mark. (Not a urinal—a cycle.) Things are getting worse between you and your wife because they’ve gotten worse.
