So I have to split this into two because /r/relationships doesn't care about financial advice, and /r/personalfinance doesn't care about the relationship part, haha.
You can check my history for the financial part of it, but long story short - I take home $6,400/month, we have monthly expenses (including debt minimums) of $3,290/month, leaving $3,100/month for entertainment (lol) and paying down debt. We have ~$36,500 in debt between CCs and two cars. Not counting mortgage currently.
Wife currently has no income but is looking. She brought in $1,900/month up until last month with a seasonal job.
If we paid $2,500/month we'd be fully paid off by the beginning of 2021 and be 100% debt free outside of the mortgage which sounds like a dream to me.
My perspective:
I'm pretty reasonable with our cars - a Camry and a Highlander, while most of my colleagues drive $60k+ cars - and I plan on keeping them for as long as they're considered safe (personal safety is important). But they don't need to be flashy, as much as I'd love a fast luxury car, I just don't drive enough to make it worth it.
I want to pay down everything ASAP, while leaving enough money to 'enjoy life' a bit. Go out to dinner w/ friends a couple times a month, buy a video game or two, etc.
I want no car payments, I don't want to buy things on credit and carry that debt forward (which is one of the reasons we're here now - spending $4k on a couch we don't really need, for example, which has survived two transfer cards).
Our spending is out of control. Our restaurant spending is stupid, over $1200 last month. My wife spent $500 at Ulta last month. She had a get together at a friends and went out and spent another $200 on a new shirt, pants, and some makeup and stuff. I'm definitely not innocent, I spend just as much on useless shit. We are just pissing money away like it's nothing.
I'm 34 years old and I want to retire comfortably. Time is ticking.
My wife's perspective:
Don't pay off the cars early, work on the CC debt only, and just "stop spending as much" with no plan around it. She seems very resistant to a budget.
She wants us to fly to Japan early next year with some friends, I'm looking at our debt and balking at it.
I'm like... really close to just saying "I'll cover the house, food, insurance, etc, but if you want to do anything else you need to pay for it yourself", but it feels weird because we are married.
But even that doesn't feel fair, because I would be spending all of my income on our debt. But if I'm making $120k/year and she's only making $25k/year, I don't think it's fair to her to just split our expenses 50/50 because 50% of our expenses and minimums would be more ~85% of her take home.
Any tips on how to get my wife on board without just bluntly saying "Look I make all of the money so this is how it's gonna be done".
TL;DR I want to budget fairly strictly for a year to remove all our debt, wife does not want to
Submitted September 22, 2019 at 11:43AM by GulGarak https://ift.tt/2OdMmKj
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