Who is the "saver" in your family?

[purpledisneyprncess]

For those families that are very money conscious, and for lack of a better word, "Frugal"- it is just you with this mentality or are your S/O, kids, etc on the same page with saving?

I've been with my husband for almost 10 years, & in the beginning he was not conscious with finances the way I was. A few years into our relationship, he definitely became more like me and started saving too. The only "Issthat he likes to carry cash and I think we should not- I like to use the credit card for everything- to earn (Disney) reward dollars and pay it off each month.

Are you and your significant other/spouses both savers or even, both spenders?

PS- I also don't think I'm too "Frugal" since this will be our 3rd consecutive year we are heading to Disney. Our favorite family vacation spot!!

 

[Pigeon]

Dh and I are both savers. He's not so practical about it though, so I handle the investments and most of the money. He'll get on a kick where he'll have an impractically large chunk of his salary deposited in savings instead of our checking account and then we have to undo that because we don't have enough for daily expenses. I keep telling him slow and steady is the way to go. He'll freak out periodically that we won't have enough for retirement without looking at what we're actually doing, which has us saving well more than we should need.

The kids think money grows on trees. They don't want to understand why we won't throw huge sweet sixteen parties, buy them cars and send them on school trips abroad. I think they will change their minds when they go through college debt free.

 

[Princess on the Run]

In the beginning, I was a total cheapskate who watched every penny and he spent like money was going out of style. Over the years we've met more in the middle. I absolutely hate debt and refuse to have credit cards or finance anything. We do have a mortgage and I have student loans and to me, that's more than enough debt for anyone. Once I forced him to start using cash and stop swiping that card, he got a real feel for what he was spending. Now I am less cheap and he's less spendy. We like having nice things but we also get excited about paying cash for them.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

DH is the spender and I am the saver. However, he is the one with the best retirement account. Figure that one out.

I have slowly converted him to the saver side of things - we now have a healthy rainy day fund, and so long as he can see it everytime he logs onto to see our checking account balance, he is all excited about adding to it - he's turned it into a sort of game and his "score" is how much money we've socked away into it. He was going to buy a FEMA trailer, but couldn't find one he really liked at the price he was willing to pay and recently told me how glad he was he hadn't bought it when he saw the nice balance on our savings account.

I haven't mentioned to him that his next big outage (OT galore) and our Income Tax return money will be dumped in there (both were mutual decisions) in the next few months so even if he had bought it, we'd still be on the okay front, but I figure, hopefully, he'll be so happy when he sees the "score" go up that it won't get mentioned until he finds a trailer he wants at a price he wants.

 

[lisaross]

My husband and i met about 22 years ago. When i met him he owned a good few thousand dollars in credit cards. To his defense he was living alone - not making much $$ etc. Anyway - i told him he must pay off that debt so he called the creditors got the payment down - borrowed $ from his dad that got rid of all his debt.

I have always been a saver - My parents were savers also, as is my brother - must be in the blood LOL.

We are now married 18 years! I am in charge of ALL the money - i love handling the bills etc.

My husband just goes along with me....I use credit cards for certain things - i have different savings accounts etc.

I pretty much set the goals and he just goes along with me...we each get a certain amount of spending $ per month - small items we'll also charge. All in All i'm happy with our finances - i am frugal with some things but over all not - we go out to eat 1 or 2x a week go on vacations - kids go to day camp BUT i pay off my credit cards each month - if i want new furniture i save for it before buying - I just bought a new car - i also drove my old car 12 years!

My kids are 12 and 10 - i always talk about money with them - buying more if things are on sale etc etc. In the summer for camp this past year i gave them a certain amount to spend - they could pretty much split it up how they want. They both had extra money at the end of the summer so now this summer they will have extra to spend or roll it over again -

 

[Luv Bunnies]

We are both savers. In fact, I don't think we've ever argued about money (having our 25th anniversary in May). If we need something, we shop around for the best price and buy it. If we want something that we don't necessarily need, we discuss it first. We both try to hold costs down as much as possible. Any extra money goes directly to savings and stays there. I've been booking a Disney trip for August. I ran the cost of the airline tickets by him before I booked. As long as we both know what is being spent, it's all good!

 

[njmom47]

I am the saver, he is the spender.
When we first met (I was a single mom of 2, he was still living at home but making very good money), it was obvious our monetary styles were different!
He is less "spendy" than he used to be, but I am still the saver.

 

[eliza61]

My dh was definitely better at it. That man could set a goal and stick to it like nobody's business. LOL. I'm a forced saver. If you get it out of my greedy little hands I have no issues but I do like to shop.

I'm the better shopper though. Dh did not know the meaning of the sale, basically he went into a store and the first and easiest thing he saw that's what he brought.

Same thing with vacations. I comparison shop, find bargains and deals. Dh, he would go into a TA plucks down a deposit and calls it a day.

 

[PHXscuba]

I am more frugal than DH but he sleeps better at night with a big emergency fund, so it's easy to remind/convince him that money should be going into there instead of a hobby. He is getting better about shopping sales, price matching when he picks up milk at Walmart, and even uses a coupon occasionally!

DS16 is good at saving money; DD13 still blows a lot on clothes but has been saving for an iTouch lately.

PHXscuba

 

[SaraJayne]

DH is a saver, I am a spender.

Over our 17 years together, he has learned to loosen the wallet a bit and I have learned to keep mine shut more often.

We have found a balance that keeps both of us happy.

 

[Snoozan]

We're both savers in this household.He has a pretty good balance in his 401K but I'm really good at saving $ into our ING account from our paychecks. It's like a game for me to see how much of our paychecks we can save each month. Not that we don't spend, but we limit it to mainly Christmas. I swear I never buy any gift at full price and am not afraid to buy generic products.

 

[*JoGo*]

I'm the saver, he is the spender. He basically says we'll get more money.

He's not awful. For several years we didn't have extra money but we have always managed to live within our means (one car!) and pay off credit cards monthly. We had a particularly rough 2-3 years and the credit cards were higher than I liked (less than $5g but I was losing sleep over it), and we paid it off as soon as we were able.

I actually hoard money. My dh eventually found out about my stash and it's now a joke - he sometimes asks if I'm socking it away again. I have a terrible fear of not having money AND of having debt. I take care of all the bills. We are now trying to live on one paycheck a month and saving the other. We have come a loooong way in the past few years and he is making significantly more money while our living expenses have stayed the same or, in some cases, lowered. We have the goal of buying a different house and want a really good down payment. We also want to pay for movers!

 

[scbelleatheart]

We are both savers but we save differently. He never knows how much I have and owes me a lot of money. He borrows from me and keeps track of what he owes me. If he ever pays me back for the 34 years I'll be loaded.
I do carry several hundred dollars with me all the times, less now that I use my debit cards. kind of a safety net thing. I don't use credit cards though.

 

[DisneyATlast]

I'm the saver and he's the spender. He's rubbed off on me more than I've rubbed off on him, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. When we met, I was a total cheap skate but mostly because I had to be. I was so focused on being able to buy a house, but after a few years of being together, he inherited his grandparents (very modest) house, but a house all the same....so I've eased up a bit. Now I'm all about saving for the future. Although the retirement account is nowhere near what I'd like, I'm not quite 30 yet so I have time. He likes to remind me that in reality we both probably won't live as long as what I say we need to plan for! Talk about optimistic!

He's right though. I like to save money, but I'm not going to save for tomorrow at the expense of today. There has to be a balance.

 

[ilovemk76]

We are both spenders and savers. We have our retirement plan in place and we save for that. We have large purchases we want to make and we save for them. We also live for today too.

 

[Colleen27]

I'm the saver, but DH isn't much of a spender since he hates to shop. He's not a good shopper - when he does need something he wants to go to the closest store and pay whatever they're asking for it - but since he dislikes shopping to begin with he has no problem leaving that part of life to me. And I'm far from a super-focused saver - I have a serious weakness for books and vacations, though frustration with clutter helps me rein in the former and limits on how often we can get away put a ceiling on the latter.

For us it goes more in phases than by personality. When we were working on buying a house we were both savers. When we were finally mortgage free we were both spenders. Then we decided to send two of our kids to private school and the pendulum swung back to saving and frugality. We have long-term goals on the "idiot proof" plan (direct withdrawals, we never see that money so there's zero temptation to spend it) and tend to ebb and flow on our shorter term habits based on what is going on in our lives at any given time.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

DH is the spender, though he's not as bad as he used to be. He now knows if he wants to buy something, he has to ask me first.

 

[scbelleatheart]

DH is the spender, though he's not as bad as he used to be. He now knows if he wants to buy something, he has to ask me first.

 

[scootch]

Both dh and I are savers... i am better at it than him Our 10 year has followed in my footsteps, although she can be extreme. She many times won't even get ice cream or a treat becasue she doesn't want me to spend the money... now my 13 year old dd..... she hasn't quite caught the savings bug unfortunately..... still working on her.

 

[DisneyATlast]

Both dh and I are savers... i am better at it than him Our 10 year has followed in my footsteps, although she can be extreme. She many times won't even get ice cream or a treat becasue she doesn't want me to spend the money... now my 13 year old dd..... she hasn't quite caught the savings bug unfortunately..... still working on her.

My daughter is the same way. She offered to give me her money one day (maybe $2) and said, "I want you to have more money!"

It made me feel bad. Of course I didn't take her money nor do I need it, but it made me realize I probably talk about money a tad too much!

I told my husband he needs to stop saying, "We don't have the money" because our poor kids are probably going to school talking like we're poor!