My wife and I have been married for 11+ years and, to put it mildly, we have had extreme differences with money management from the beginning. The first few years, she went crazy with our credit cards and maxed them all out, some of which are now in collections, which is killing my/our credit. The last few years, she's been constantly squirreling back money for bi-annual trips to Walt Disney World, which is causing us pain in our budget and routinely forcing us to put off some bills (i.e. school fees, medical bills) until they're late and, in some cases, in collections. We have a five person household and spending nearly $1000 in groceries every month despite the fact that our pantry and refrigerator are bulging with more food than we can all eat every other week. The last few years she has been involved with Girl Scouts and claims that she has to take out $60/month in dues and then takes out even more money on a regular basis for girl scout activities, snack clubs, buying movies, etc. We just started paying for my stepdaughter to be in therapy and seems to be expecting that we pay for her to start transitioning (FTM). In short, we go through our entire paychecks (and sometimes) over in two short weeks when regular bills are factored in. She gets defensive when I question her about her spending habits, often refuses to sit down and budget/plan ahead ("crunch numbers"). She feels like she's entitled to do what she does because, after all, she's working too and is entitled to have some our money (she read a money book a few years ago that told her to "pay herself first" and now treats that as a non-negotiable). I feel like fuming and verbally protesting is the only thing that I can do to deal with our money problems- except it doesn't really do much other than get us fighting. She refuses to go with me to a counselor because "they don't help". I am at the point where, if I thought that it would do any good, I'd just as soon file for divorce but I don't really want to but then I'm not sure how much longer I can deal with the stress of having to manage our finances over which I have little or no control. Sometimes, I feel like threatening it because I'm so upset but I'm not sure I would be ready to follow through with it. Does anybody have any suggestions short of divorce that I might try to rein things in? I feel like I'm at the end of my rope here.
Submitted April 21, 2015 at 09:16AM by dbutlerjr http://ift.tt/1aMCwrc relationship_advice
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