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A question for the Nons that have a poor spender PWBPD.  Did you get any backlash from taking over the finances or was it an actual relief(for you and them).  I fear that my tight budgeting will trigger my dBPDw and cause her to think all sorts of craziness.

Secondly do you ever get the feeling that running poorish books is a control mechanism for the BPD so that you have no other option but to stay?  Every time I think that it is too much for me to handle and I want to leave I always say "I cant afford to leave"  just on the merrits of living seperately and the subsequent loss of retirement, alimony and child support.

So for our entire marriage(17+yrs) my dBPDw has taken care of the fiinances, and when I mean take care of she pays the bills.  There is rarely any long term strategic planning just short "oh ___ its november what are we going to buy the kids for christmas"  which ends up getting put on credit and further makes our situation worse to deal with.

We have enough to pay our bills and live just never enough to plan long term.  I have gotten fed up with her complaints that it is soo stressful and that I never help with the financess.  I have and it is usually because of crisis like two flat tires or an unexected expense.  I get us out of it and hand her back the books when it is all fixed.  Our finances are not that complex we get paid and money moves from one account to another.

Enter our current situation.  We have a bunch of debt I found out my wife is paying some of the utility bills with the credit cards.  I also retire in about 14-15 months when I retire from the military.  I am taking over the finances full stop  and putting us on the strict budget that I have always wanted us to be on and at times I thought that we were on.

 

Hi reluctanthubs,

Great topic! Thanks for raising this. Until this year my h seemed to do okay on finances, but this year he's gone off the rails a bit. I think this has added to a lot of his stress and his erratic behavior in the past half year. He even owes me a little money now. I can't believe I gave him a loan as erratic as he's been, but I have a soft heart. It's not the end of the world if I don't get it back, but I don't see him getting out of debt soon... .this complicates and adds stress to the notion of us potentially divorcing this year, so it's a big, big deal.

How are you doing? Are you able to get things under total control in this regard?

warmly, pearl.

So she has worked from time to time over the years just because we are millitary and moving happens.  She is not averse to working and I actually like having a smidge more wiggle room. The problem with her working is that she is ABSOLUTELY terible with task management and suffers from analysis paralysis.  She excells in jobs where the work is defined but cannot shift gears well or think in non ideal situations(Both I do exceptionaly well).  She also gets "Exausted" easily so if she has a hard day it's not "Oh well lets get it done" its "I just cant even".  So its a trade off more money for less effectiveness in her main roles as house wife and homeshcool teacher.

The two problems that have always plagued us was 1. whenever our income went up our standard of living always rose as well.  So we have never realy had excess income to invest or save.  Whenever we have winfalls(taxes, home sales) they are gone almost immediately mostly to bills(which gave us some wiggle room) and or some small-to medium needed expenditure (braces, Glasses, Auto work etc).

2. Impulse spending (RARELY happens with me almost never).  Just this last christmas she purchased a $500 used Macbook for school that she didn't need, a new big screen MAC for the homechool room Which we didnt need and a new big screen for the living room which we really didnt need.  Almost all of those purchases were on credit.

The biggest issue I have right now is do I keep being angry that she is sucking at the finances and have only her to blame OR do I fully take over the finances do a tight budget and get us back on track?  My worry is that she is going to feel too controlled by my actual management and budget and buck.  There is also the issue of her job that she will be getting soon how am I going to avoid having to deal with the "Its my money" attitude you dont get to control "My Money".  All funds have been family funds and we dont have seperate bank accounts. I have already told her she is not going to get to play with any of her pay check.  most of it is going to go to bills with a small percentage 15% going to saving for various expenditures like car maintenance, Christmas etc.

Aditionaly I am pretty pissed I have to do this in the first place as she KNOWS how to budget but never does it.

Any other members out there with more experience on this topic that can help us here a bit? :)

I know I've seen members who have taken control in this area... .not sure how they got there though!

 Reluctanthubs
My STBX couldn’t handle money at all. I’m the end, it led to the breakup of our relationship.
TMD

What a coincidence

I had exactly the same conversation with my uBPDgf today

I want to take control of the finances as her spending is leaving me without, it is my money as she doesn't work at present

this was not received positively, and may spell the beginnings of a permanent breakup, as im not going to budge, enough is enough... .

time will tell

Can you make this a win win.

Its not about what you do... .its about how she feels about it.

These are both certainly options.

I can tell you from experience that the first option, where you hold on to your anger, will probably lead to deep resentments and problems down the line. Also from experience, the second option where you just take everything over is likely going to trigger a resentful and highly emotional response, and in a way just shifts the anger off of you and on to her.

As Skip suggested, maybe there are some other options you can think of that would benefit both of you? Can you suggest working together once a week / once a payday and paying bills together? Automatic deductions for things like the utilities to avoid putting them on credit? Automatic deductions into a savings account?

I like the solution of trying to do it together. Wish I could get my husband to agree and follow through. I took over the finances very early in the relationship because we was so deeply in debt. Now more than 20 years later, I am the sole income and find myself constantly "raining on his parade" regarding spending. He has -- as I'm sure many BPDs do -- no impulse control when it comes to spending. Between his constant "small" purchases, like books, t-shirts and restaurant food, and large purchases, like a very expensive bike for my birthday that I neither wanted nor have time to use or the latest iWatch ("You can consider it your Valentine present to me.", we have almost no savings left and are back in credit card debt. Worst part is, our child sees it, also expects instant gratification, and I am always the bad guy, saying no or wait to things, only to have him "gift" her with whatever. He truly seems unable to understand where all the money goes, but won't agree to sit down and go through the month's bills. Love to know how you got your BPD person to do it!

It’s very difficult. To get my pwBPD to actually sit and focus on the finances together is the first step. For the most part we were able to overcome the initial hesitation. Then, her stress levels skyrocket as soon as we start. It’s an almost constant argument, and at the very least it’s a huge walking on eggshells moment. She’ll say “this vacation is non negotiable” and I’ll point out we’re falling short of paying all the bills. She’ll say “well what are you going to do about it?”

The key is calm consistency on the part of the non. At first it’s just about awareness, and depending on who has been doing most of the leg work, the dynamic will be stressful and maybe even a little hostile. But if you’ve decided to share the finances as part of your relationship and wish to continue to do so, I feel that the best approach is to have regular meetings to stay in sync.

On the other hand, moving from a situation where you’re sharing finances to a situation where you’re splitting them up, especially in a single earner / highly mismatched earnings situation, this can be very very triggering and may really escalate already high tensions. I feel like this should only be used as a last resort, and even then, you should try and find a path to discuss the shift ahead of time rather than simply announcing the shift.

I handle the finances in our family. I always have but my H used to have 0 say in how we budget. He would get very angry when he wanted to buy something and the money just wasn't there for it because I had allocated it elsewhere. I pay the bills, but my H is involved in making decisions about what to do with money that is left over after bills. We each also get an "allowance" that we can spend however we want, whenever we want, without question. My H spends his on weed and is out within a few days of getting his money.

Skip asked a really good question in how could you work out a way for you and your W that doesn't appear that you are being stingy with the money?

As for a pwBPD using money as a form of control, it would be difficult to say one way or the other. For my H it definitely would not be. He truly has no concept of money, saving, or planning for future expenses. I believe its partly the way he was raised but also one of the symptoms of BPD.

I'm a HUGE proponent of Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace. He explains that each couple has a free spirit and a nerd when it comes to money. The nerd is better at handling the finances but the free spirit needs a say in things too.

Discussing finances are always a « trigger » situation.
When we were 1st married (and I was earning more than my wife) we agreed on the following split:

-   Her: Mortgage (at about 5% interest rate) and 1/3 of the taxes
-   Me: Utilities, food and 2/3 of the taxes
-   Other: Health insurance, car loans, etc

Over time (and after 2 children) additional expenses kept getting added and my wife’s salary increased at a rate quicker than mine, but the split ended up being:
-   Her: Mortgage (at about 3 % interest rate) and 1/2 of the taxes
-   Me: Utilities (prices increasing year after year), food (2 more mouths to feed and prices increasing year after year), children health insurance, child care costs and 1/2 of the taxes

Keep in mind that every “crisis” moment because of unexpected costs, etc. were always “my problem”, except when it came to unexpected dental costs for her, problems with her car, etc.  These were of course “common” crisis points.  She “generously” offered to contribute during crisis moments, but never without a full discourse on how it was all my fault for bad planning, etc.

Fast forward to September 2017 where I decided that enough was enough and I created a spreadsheet with all of our costs.  As our salaries are now pretty much equal I split all common costs down the middle and showed her that it meant each of use was responsible for half the common costs.  The end result is about 2/3 of each of our salaries per month for common costs leaving 1/3 for our own remaining bills.

Her initial reaction was to totally reject the spreadsheet, saying that it wasn’t representative, that it wouldn’t leave her enough money for the things she wanted to do, etc.  It went back and forth for a few months (with many lovely discussions), but I held my ground and insisted that she was welcome to come up with her own spreadsheet if she doubted any of my figures.

The new “system” went into effect in January and I am still hearing the occasional grumble about it, but for now she seems to have accepted the new “borders” that I put in place.

Hi UserZer0,

Thanks a lot for sharing these insights! I am sure this will be helpful to many!

reluctanthubs, what do you think?

take care, pearl.