Practical tips for balancing spending habits...

[Princesca]

solution is to open an entirely separate no fee bank account that is in no way connected to overdraft from any of your other accounts. every month have a set amount transferred to that account from your household budget. your partner gets a debit card for that account and when they exhaust your mutually agreed upon monthly amount the card is going to get declined for the purchase so there's no going above the amount. anything that rolls over month to month they still have access to. it also can serve as a tool to make someone aware of how those small purchases add up when they see a monthly statement of solely their impulse purchases.

You know, this isn't a bad idea! If she just uses the credit card, it's too easy to go over, and I still see everything she's buying, which I don't like. Having a separate account would make it pretty seamless. I could just set up an auto-transfer to that account every month and be done with it. Also then she could use that for online spending, which she can't really do with cash.

 

[barkley]

just make SURE it doesn't have any overdraft to ANY of your other accounts. we learned when my oldest's debit card was stolen that unbeknownst to us our bank has an overdraft system that acts like a domino effect-since there was no money in the account we assumed was set up as overdraft for the stolen card the fraudulent purchases started trying to overdraft from every other account associated with it. thankfully there was little to nothing in any of them but it was a good lesson to teach us to tell the bank that when we say we don't want overdraft-it means on any and every associated account.

 

[nicolita3]

When my husband and I were first married he wanted to be in charge and it was a disaster. So I took over, but even after telling him we had x amount in the bank he'd spend and cause us to become overdraft. We would be hundreds of dollars overdraft every month. Finally we had a conversation and I mentioned that I wish he just wouldn't have access to the debit card. He asked if that would help, I said yes. He gave his card to me and I started giving him cash. He knew exactly how much he could spend on gas and fun money and that was it. This is not for everyone. We did this for about 2 years. Now we have savings and money in the checking account and he learned control. He has all the cards back and is more aware of his spending habits.

 

[iloveftwilderness]

...in a marriage?

Other than therapy and having an "agreed upon" budget, which we already do (note the air quotes around agreed upon though), what are some practical tips for peacefully coexisting when one person is a saver and the other is an impulse spender? The spender also has an amount of "mad money" they are able to spend each month at their discretion to give them some wiggle room to impulse spend.

4 bank accts-- one for your spending money, one for your significant other's spending, one for just bills and one for savings.

 

[HHMcG]

Two things we did:

1 - We each get a set amount direct transferred into our separate checking accounts. For what others are calling “mad money”. I can’t even see his account so don’t have to worry about how many times he goes out to lunch or whateer.

2 – As the saver, I always handled all the bill paying. (Assuming you do too?) When times were tighter and we had disagreements we decided to “pay the bills together”. I still balance the checkbook and check all the bills. Spouse goes onto online banking and actually pays the bills. Seeing how much was going out every month in set costs and how high the fluctuating cost can get was/is a nice monthly reminder for spouse.

4 bank accts-- one for your spending money, one for your significant other's spending, one for just bills and one for savings.

That is exactly what we do!

 

[kathy884]

Yours, mine, and ours checking accounts, investments in different names, agreement on how much money each puts in the joint checking account for the basic bills and who pays for what. I will say that it helps a lot to have more than less disposable income to have this work.