[isbjorn16]

#4 misses some other cases. My spouse and I are firmly in this category, but we also have different spending habits for sure! They buy a lot of little stuff that I don't see as particularly useful, while I don't buy anything at all for months on end, until I spend a whole hell of a lot all at once.

Should be a recipe for disaster, right?

Except it isn't. We just accept that this is who we are, and we're comfortable with that.

The author correctly notes that things can change over time, but they seem to ignore the most important thing to this entire process working: we use our words and talk about things before they become an actual problem.

Since my spouse and I have accepted this scenario as being perfectly fine for us now, our normal doesn't frustrate either of us, even though we are wildly different in our spending approaches. And when things change, we're both comfortable making changes to accommodate those changes.

Some of you might be saying "but yes, averaged out over the year you probably spend the same", and the answer is no. Not even close. I may spend 600$ on a gaming monitor with a 6 month gap on either side, but my spouse ends up spending more like 4000$ on little bits and bobs throughout that same year period. Guess what? This inequality doesn't bother either of us. Why should it? We're in this together and both of us need to be happy with what we're doing. I don't need 6.6667 gaming monitors, and the point isn't to try to equalize our expenditures. Buy what you need to make your life better, and then buy no more.

Or, at least, that has worked for us for the last 15 years. Things could change! Things can always change. But I'm not even remotely worried about that; because that's when we make dinner and sit in front of a couple laptops with a bottle of wine and work out a much more strict budget and emphasize a more restrained approach toward both of our spending patterns. It's happened before, it may happen again, but we'll be fine because we come to a consensus on our financial goals and priorities and neither of us have ever acted in bad faith with regards to achieving those goals and priorities. And if that changes? Well, a more fundamental thing has changed, and maybe we SHOULD have marital strife. And that's okay too.

[skrebbel]

The case #4 missed is "yay we have so much disposable income that really it doesn't matter, and this entire article is academic". That might be common on Bay Area-dominated HN, but not in most of the world, where I suppose this article is targeted at. I guess wealthy people don't need advice on how to combine finances :-)

Personally I find "she spends $4000 a year on stuff I don't see the value of but I'm fine with that" nearly unimaginable. I could only see myself have that attitude if we really had thousands of dollars (or euros, in our case) of net disposable income every month, after retirement savings and everything.

[kelnos]

I don't think that's particularly fair; I think you just have to scale it to your own situation to see how you feel about it. For you, jointly spending $4600 a year on fun stuff sounds ridiculous. That's totally fine, but it's missing the point. (The parent might be ok with $4k a year but not $8k a year. Everyone has limits, and it could be a source of conflict if his spouse wants to expand her spending.)

$4000/$600 is 6.67. Let's say you spend $50 a year on your own fun purchases. Would you be ok (both financially and emotionally) with your spouse spending $333 a year on their own fun purchases? I'm of course making up the $50 number, so set that to whatever's reality for you, do the math, and see how you feel.

Maybe it works out that you're only comfortable with your spouse spending 4x what you do, or 3x, or 2x. Or maybe it's the reverse, and you're the bigger spender, and you need to find out what your spouse is comfortable with That's fine. The point of this is to negotiate with your spouse to get to a point where you're not anxious or constantly arguing about spending levels.

[skrebbel]

No, my whole argument is that that factor (your 4x, 3x, 2x) example becomes irrelevant once you're wealthy enough. Other stuff starts to matter more. My theory is that the GGP is in this position.

But when her buying 2000 euros worth of shoes means I can't get a new pair of jeans anymore then we have a problem.

[isbjorn16]

I'm sorry if my intention wasn't clear enough!

You're absolutely right that right now, we are wealthy enough to be able to spend 4600$ on various "things" without either of us really batting an eye. That isn't really the important bit; when we first got started, I was making 42k USD in total comp, and she was making 26k in total comp. Our first house was 54,000 USD and our mortgage was 456$ per month.

We were not wealthy, but we were _okay_. And at that point in our lives, we still had a joint account as our only account. We didn't buy fun stuff or convenience stuff without a discussion first, and we had to discuss these things pretty much every week. That worked for us, because we still communicated, and the important thing - the thing most vital to my previous comment even working - is that we put our family first and ourselves second.

Now that my new home cost me 12 times what my previous cost me, and now that I'm bringing in about a quarter million USD a year, you're absolutely right that we are wealthy and the 4600$ isn't a major problem to us. But if for some reason it ever did happen - say, I lost my job and we relied only on my spouse's income, neither of us would be spending any money at all that wasn't absolutely required.

What I was trying to drive home with #4 is that if you and your spouse are always on the same page about what comes first; your personal desires - or your family's needs, goals, and then desires (in that order), then it works really well.

I know plenty of couples where one or more of the spouses is an incredibly selfish person by nature. Perhaps one of the other bullets in this article would accommodate that well enough, and I doubt #4 would even remotely work for them.

But for my family unit, a single joint account with both incomes going into it still works for us, even if we have very different spending habits between us - and it works for both of us really well. From our early days straight out of college making relatively low income until now where we make entirely too much, this way has worked solely since both of us are able to modulate and restrain our spending when times require it, especially since we put our family before ourselves. #4, as in the article, didn't allow for any wiggle room like that. That's okay, though, since it was hardly purporting to be an exhaustive listing and description of income:spending strategies! I just wanted to share that #4 can absolutely work even for couples without the same spending patterns, as long as they're willing to put family over self.

[isbjorn16]

Maybe another way to put it: #4 works as long as neither party is overly selfish. That doesn't mean that both will spend the same, though. Equality of expenditure isn't as important as equality of happiness/contentedness. Prizing the latter more than the former is the real goal, so really - however you get there? As long as it works for you and your family, go with it!

[sgt101]

Think of it as an investment, think of what you get in return. If you didn't have her how would your evenings and weekends be? What would you be willing to pay for that?

If the answer isn't "whooo, a whole lot more than $4k" then you have massive problems with your relationship.

[cm2012]

Pretty much every sentence of your comment is true for my wife and I. What's "fair" is whatever everyone is happy with. I can't imagine being upset because my wife spent more money than me in the abstract.

[isbjorn16]

Personally, I feel like trying to keep track of every last expenditure would just cause more and more strife between us.

As long as all our long term financial goals are being met, I'm content with what we're doing. And since they are, I am very much so content.