Can I vent about DH - he just doesn't get it!

[mrsklamc]

Do you guys have a monthly budget? Would it help if you could both see progress toward your goals?

 

[ICF]

$3000 would do a lot towards the purchase of a new house.

In the grand scheme of the price it may not, but what about if you need to do 'fix-ups' to the new place...curtains, carpet, appliances and the like. $3K would cover a lot of small things that might need to be done.

It sounds like the 2 of you are on different pages of what you want to do with your money in the next couple of years.

 

[mom2val]

I would just wait a while and then bring it up again. Sounds like your dh must be stressed about work and finances. Same story in our house.

 

[SaraJayne]

I tend to be a more middle of the road person when it comes to money. Yes, it is important to save and to have goals but it is also important to live. My mother was a penny pincher and never did anything her entire life but save, save, save. While I respect her commitment I refuse to live like that. I strive for balance. Financial security is important but so are memories with the family and enjoying one's life. Fortunately my husband respects and understands that about me.

Me, too. As a child, we never went on vacations because we never had the money (single mom, deadbeat dad).

Thankfully, I am not in that postion as a grown woman and my husband understands why vacations are so important to me. And like you, vacations are to other places besides Orlando.

We've done the same thing as you (piggy-backing on trips). Okay, we've only done it to Orlando, but still. My husband's company encouraged their employees to bring their families along, and most everyone did.

I hope you're able to figure out what's really bothering your husband, and that you're able to figure something out that works for both of you.

IMO, if he's worried about money, having you go with to Orlando would be a good compromise.

 

[Hannathy]

Do you have any savings in the bank? If you have credit card debt I'm wondering how much short term savings you have and in this economy of sudden firings and lay offs without notice and then not finding a job for a long time $3,000 would feed your kids a long time. If you don't have short term savings in the bank to pay your mortgage and eat for at least 6 months he is probably very worried to spend it on an expensive vacation. And even watching for discounts $3,000 is an expensive vacation. If you just want to make memories you could go camping for a week for far less than that and make memories.

 

[crisi]

$3000 is a lot of money towards a new house. Its possible he is thinking much longer term. But if you spend $3000 every year for Disney for the next five years - the time before you are working full time - that's $15,000 towards the downpayment.

We never had much money growing up either. And we lived away from family, so vacations were always to visit my grandparents. I still have great memories - they don't include Disney trips - they include fishing off the dock at a friend's cabin, baking cookies with my mom, the day trips we took to museums. Weekends in Duluth. A day spent on borrowed snowshoes or someone's jetski.

I have to live in my house every day. It needs to be a house I'm happy in every day. Vacation, those are experiences I live in short term. They are really nice, but if I have to choose between vacation and a house I'm happy with, I'd be saving for the house.

Vacations are nice, but Disney World is not necessary to create memories with your children.

 

[DawnM]

I hope you two can sit and talk about it and work it out.

DH and I argued about money until we both got on the same page.....4 years ago we took a class at church called Crown Financial and ever since then our attitudes towards money has changed. We now have the same goals and ideas about our money and how we want to spend it. We also TEACH the class and it helps us stay on target.

If you aren't church goers, you could also look at the Dave Ramsey program. He offers church programs but also non-church programs.

I just see our marriage so much stronger now.

We also do Disney on the cheap and do it for far less than most people feel comfortable with, but it ensures we do get to do things like Disney.

Dawn

 

[herdtoDisney]

Hmm, I can kind of see where both of you have good points. I don't have a definite solution, but I can share my experiences...

We also hoped to move from our first, small house (condo-type) for MANY years before we actually did (and then tried to relocate, which we ultimately could not do, causing us to rent for 3 more years, we have since purchased a home we love and feel so blessed!) so I can understand how frustrating it is to have to wait-like you guys, we had great credit and equity, but the market was high and we chose for me to SAHM for awhile. We 'put off' a lot of things, and it was for good, but we also found that time flies!!! Kids grow up so fast!

We are FINALLY taking the trip to Disney we always talked about doing 'someday'. Yes, I could totally use the $ to redo the kitchen countertops and backsplash. But I don't think when they are grown and gone, the kids will say, remember that time mom got a countertop? (I actually just painted the countertop, it looks better and only cost $20!) I mean, I will eventually do the kitchen. We probably won't go to Disney again for years. There will always be something for us to fix up in the house. I could put off Disney forever, with this thinking. But the kids are growing up.

With you guys having the chance to take DH's parents, that's another special thing for the kids. Who knows if you'd ever have that chance again. If your family's plan is for you to return to full-time employment in 5 years-lots can happen in that time. Your oldest would nearly be in HS, and it's harder to travel with school schedules as they get older (I have found). It just seems like a long time to put off family vacations. Could you look for a seasonal pt job for the holidays and put that towards the trip? Maybe it would be easier for dh to be on-board about the trip that way.

I'm not saying go every year. It's just that this trip you're planning sounds like a good deal, and with the grands being able to go-it sounds great for the kids. My dh wasn't raised with vacations either, and if I don't plan/book/pay for them, we'd never take any-but he loves them and enjoys the time with the kids. During the time we were not able to move or buy a home, he was hesitant, but in the end, he's glad we did stuff, because that time went by so fast and now our oldest is in college, and our second is a freshman in HS and all the others are in school!

 

[allison443]

Thanks for the replies. I still don't understand what really got him so mad last night, and I plan on talking to him last night.

It's frustrating because we have been talking about considering this trip IF OUR DEBT IS PAID OFF for some time. We actually started talking about it two years ago when it was annouced that his trip would be in Orlando again in 2010. His employer is actually very encouraging for us taking a family vacation along with his trip, so that's not the issue.

My only thought is that DH is feeling down about his job right now. Because of the economy, he's not seen any increases in quite some time. I know, he's lucky to have a job - and we are thankful that he has a good, steady job. But a few months ago, DH was talking to his brother and some friends, and they are all invery different situations - they all make really good money and can afford lots of things that we can't. It's not that DH is jealous of them - he's glad they are in good situations, but he admited to feeling like a bit of a failure because he can't provide more for his family.

We've been talking about moving for a few years, and it just isn't feasable with our income. We have great credit scores and excellent equity in our home, but we just can't qualify for a bigger mortgage unless we have more income.

I am back in school to complete my teaching certification so that I can go back to work when all the kids are in school. It will be nearly 5 years before I can get a job (can only take 2 classes a semester - no summer classes). I work a very part-time job which only really brings in spending money. I think my DH just hates the fact that he can't provide the things he wants to for the family.

In our arguement last night, he kept saying we should take the $3000 we'd spend on a vacation and put it away for a new house. I told him that $3000 really won't make a difference in terms of affording a new house, so I would rather let the kids have some fun while we're still living in the current house.

I think we need to just sit and talk. My DH doesn't fly off the handle too much, so something is going through his mind.

But we do disagree A LOT on the value of family vacations. His family only went on vacation 3 times when he was a child (Disneyland, Grand Canyon, a local beach) - and NOT because they couldn't afford it. They just dodn't do vacations. On the other hand, MY family vacationed every year. Often it was to Disney - or Orlando attractions. But other times we'd just go to Washington DC and enjoy the free monuments and museums, or go to the beach, or explore a city within a few hours of our home. But we always did something - and those are huge memories for me and my family.

BTW - in discussing a possible ORlando vacation for this summer, we've talked about inviting HIS parents with us for the week too. So we've really spent time thinking about this - it's not just my idea by any means.

Hopefully I'll have a better idea of what's going on tonight. I was just really frustrated by his reaction last night and needed to vent.

I'm glad you're going to talk to him about it.

Just to make two points: $3000 is a significant amount of money when you are trying to buy a new house, also you have credit card debt that you are paying off monthly, right? Maybe your husband is concerned also about retirement savings, emergency fund (like for whatever you charged on your card that you are paying off right now), saving for the kids' college?

Also, I will probably get flamed for this, but I agree vacations are great. I love to take vacations with my family. However, they are not the requirement for a happy family and happy memories. Do you understand that by saying how you need to have vacations while your kids are young, to make good memories, you are in a way devaluing your husband's family, because they didn't take vacations for whatever reason.
Maybe his reaction is an instinctive "I didn't have vacations and I turned out fine" type of thing.
I'm sure we all know dysfunctional families who take exciting vacations, and wonderful families who either don't take vacations or take inexpensive ones.

Anyway, I hope you guys can reach a resolution.

 

[allison443]

$3000 is a lot of money towards a new house. Its possible he is thinking much longer term. But if you spend $3000 every year for Disney for the next five years - the time before you are working full time - that's $15,000 towards the downpayment.

We never had much money growing up either. And we lived away from family, so vacations were always to visit my grandparents. I still have great memories - they don't include Disney trips - they include fishing off the dock at a friend's cabin, baking cookies with my mom, the day trips we took to museums. Weekends in Duluth. A day spent on borrowed snowshoes or someone's jetski.

I have to live in my house every day. It needs to be a house I'm happy in every day. Vacation, those are experiences I live in short term. They are really nice, but if I have to choose between vacation and a house I'm happy with, I'd be saving for the house.

Vacations are nice, but Disney World is not necessary to create memories with your children.

Great post.

 

[MrsPete]

I am so frustrated with my DH tonight.

The real issue here is communication. He may well be standing around the coffee pot saying, "My wife just doesn't get it. I'm so frustrated with her. Doesn't she see that we just splurged on Disney trips . . . now it's time to get serious about paying off that credit card debt and save for the new house!"

It's not for us to say that you're right to want another Disney trip.
It's not for us to say that he's right to want to focus on saving.​

The real issue is that you and he have to come to an agreement on your budget. How much can you afford to spend? How much do you need to save to keep track of your financial goals? Can you cut in other areas to make both happen?

The other thing that I notice about your post is that you say you have "a little bit" of credit card debt. Somehow that phrase strikes me oddly. Are you in denial about this problem?

 

[MrsPete]

I would definitely take his lead. For whatever reason, he does not want the family on this business trip.

I do agree with this. It may be that having the family on his last trip was more difficult than he's admitted to you -- and you've said you absolutely don't want to cause any problems with his job.

My husband has taken us on several business conferences (no problems doing that within his company), and it DOES make things a little harder for him. He has to be up and out the door early, and in the evenings he needs to make phone calls and go to business dinners. Having us running around talking about what we've done that day, wanting him to go to dinner with us, and just generally taking up space in the room/condo is hard on him.

 

[herdtoDisney]

I wonder if someone (a co-worker, dh's brothers, someone) said something to your DH about your housing situation that made him feel inadequate in some way-because before he was telling you to be happy, now he's wanting to save every penny for many years to move.

I know that, when we were in that situation, certain people said stupid stuff to us that would upset DH, who was typically very calm about the situation. For example, someone would say 'how do all 7 of you share that one bathroom?!' like it was a horror or something and sometimes it made DH feel bad, even though he was (and is) a hardworking, good provider.

Maybe someone said something to your dh and it set him off?

 

[bettymae1121]

I think the issue the OP is having is that she thought they were on the same page, she's doing trip research on a trip she thought they had BOTH agreed on, and out of nowhere he flies off the handle about it.

My DH can do the same thing sometimes, especially when it comes to how we spend our time off from work. We plan a week off to "go some place" and we both get the same week off, with the intent of, you know, going some place. I start to plan and think of ideas, DH nods and say "sure sounds good". I start getting some real details together and suddenly it's "I don't want to travel I just want to sit at home that week and relax!!!". Happens every time. Sometimes I talk him into a trip (like last April, but part of that trip was my brother's wedding and I told him we HAD to go to the wedding, so we may as well tack on a few real vacations days to the trip) and some times not (our vacation next month will involve us remodeling the downstairs bath rather than go see his mother in PA like we originally talked about).

With my DH I've gotten used to it. It sounds like with the OP, this is the first time the issue has come up.

 

[allison443]

Another thing I will mention is that here on the disboards quite often there are posters who go to WDW every year, or twice a year, or who are always looking ahead to plan their next trip. That's great because this is the DIS!

However, in real life, I know very few people who go to Disney that much. Most families I know visit Disney once or a few times, usually when their kids are young. People often go to other places to vacation, like the NJ, Maryland, or NC or SC beaches, Atlantis in the Bahamas (very popular), other islands, cruises, Europe. I know plenty of people that go to Florida and never go near Disney (gasp!)

So OP maybe your husband is thinking, we just went to Disney last year. Many people would find that sufficient. Also it's not like it's a totally free trip, it's still costing $3000.

 

[crisi]

Do you understand that by saying how you need to have vacations while your kids are young, to make good memories, you are in a way devaluing your husband's family, because they didn't take vacations for whatever reason.
Maybe his reaction is an instinctive "I didn't have vacations and I turned out fine" type of thing.

This strikes me as having truth to it. I know that I can get defensive around here when people say that vacations are so necessary to a wonderful childhood - since I didn't really get them - and you all are not my loved ones criticizing how I was raised (and I'm pretty good on the self awareness and self esteem front). If my husband was busy telling me that something I didn't have as a child was essential to having a good childhood, I might be driven to throw the china at his head (not really, of course).

Both of us are busy giving our kids things we didn't have - not just vacations, but sports. My husband, growing up with second hand clothes, cannot resist spoiling them with huge wardrobes of things they never wear, but showed interest in at the store (I don't let him shop with the kids much). But we do have to acknowledge that we grew up fine - and they would too - without the latest tennis shoes, yearly vacations, and ski lessons.

Especially if your husband's parents are aging and if he is having some guilt over not appreciating them enough. That is really the point, it seems, when you realize that your parents are mortal and were just doing the best they could, when the little conversational barbs really hurt - even when they aren't meant to.

 

[hambirg]

Well, just my gut reaction is that his flying off the handle probably doesn't have anything to do with the reasons he's giving you. I'm more inclined to agree with the PPs that think he just wants some family-free time. I have a friend that travels quite a bit for work and his convention stories can be pretty wild. When's the last time he's had a boys night out?

 

[NotUrsula]

Especially if your husband's parents are aging and if he is having some guilt over not appreciating them enough. That is really the point, it seems, when you realize that your parents are mortal and were just doing the best they could, when the little conversational barbs really hurt - even when they aren't meant to.

Or ... if his parents really just hate to travel and he's realizing that the rose-colored dream of taking them along is really not ever going to be a good idea. I lived this one a couple of years ago.

My late FIL always wanted to travel but never had the money, and my MIL always spoke wistfully of the trips they might have taken had he lived to retirement age. As it turns out, she was essentially just humoring his fantasy all along because it was a safe bet to do so; if he had lived they would not have traveled, because she actually hates travelling, and if the money had no longer been an effective deterrent she undoubtedly would have come up with some other reason not to go.

We go to Florida quite often, sometimes to theme parks but more often to beaches. All his life DS had been begging Grandma to go with us to WDW, and finally she agreed the year that DD was born; DS was 10 at the time.
We made it a point to take her just before Christmas, when the weather would be cool, though it cost us a fortune to go at high season. She hated it. She tried to act enthusiastic for DS' sake, but we could see her mentally counting pennies and wishing every single minute that she were home in her own comfort zone. (We paid for everything except one dinner that she insisted on hosting, so it wasn't that she was spending money she didn't have -- it was just the thought of the money being spent at all that bothered her.)

Some people are just not comfortable traveling for pleasure, for whatever reason. It sounds like the OP's husband might be one of them, or at least that his parents might well be.

With the added issue re: the house savings, I'd suspect one of two scenarios has happened out of the OP's hearing: either there is some kind of work issue bothering him and making him think that his job might be at risk, or he's recently gotten an earful from his parents about how frivolous and wasteful it is to travel for pleasure.

I'm pushing 50, and in my lifetime I've come to the conclusion that the human race is essentially divided into two camps when it comes to spending disposable income (what's left after paying the basic bills and putting aside needed savings, that is): there are people who put the highest value on experiences, and there are people who put the highest value on tangible objects, and most of the time, there is very little overlap between the two camps. When you have a marriage where the two parties are on opposite sides of this divide, most of the time one of them is going to gain the upper hand and keep it for as long as they are married, and IME, most of the time the one who gains the upper hand is the one who prefers to use money to acquire tangible objects, especially if he or she can make a case for the practicality of those objects.

 

[erinmomof2]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this, but could you guys compromise on the vacation. Maybe go to Orlando with him, but do it much cheaper. $3,000 is a lot of money. Perhaps you could just do Sea World or something this trip, you can get really good deals on tickets there, plus if you buy a 1 day ticket you get to go again for free. You could go to Sea World 2 days, hang out at the hotel pool, go to the zoo, ect. And it would be a lot less than $3,000 and still give your family time away.

Just a thought.
Erin

 

[tlbwriter]

It's frustrating because we have been talking about considering this trip IF OUR DEBT IS PAID OFF for some time. We actually started talking about it two years ago when it was annouced that his trip would be in Orlando again in 2010.

I wonder if this was kind of a "pie in the sky" conversation for him. Kind of like when I talk about what I'd do if I won the lottery. Because he didn't expect your debt to be paid off, and it's not, and he knows that, so the trip was always a fantasy for him. Just a thought.

In our arguement last night, he kept saying we should take the $3000 we'd spend on a vacation and put it away for a new house. I told him that $3000 really won't make a difference in terms of affording a new house, so I would rather let the kids have some fun while we're still living in the current house.

Actually, $3000 makes a big difference. It could probably make a big difference to your CC debt as well.

I think we need to just sit and talk. My DH doesn't fly off the handle too much, so something is going through his mind.

I agree. There's something going on that you're not aware of.

But we do disagree A LOT on the value of family vacations. His family only went on vacation 3 times when he was a child (Disneyland, Grand Canyon, a local beach) - and NOT because they couldn't afford it. They just dodn't do vacations. On the other hand, MY family vacationed every year. Often it was to Disney - or Orlando attractions. But other times we'd just go to Washington DC and enjoy the free monuments and museums, or go to the beach, or explore a city within a few hours of our home. But we always did something - and those are huge memories for me and my family.

So why not take one of those less expensive vacations this year? It would be a good compromise - you'd get some fun family time, and he wouldn't feel like you're blowing a big wad of money that could be used elsewhere.