Mishandling family money matters, which do you blame, your partner?
By xxx737
@xxx737 (72)
Philippines
February 14, 2007 8:02pm CST
My sister worked as a pharmacist, she's got a regular pay which she will budget it for her family consumption, and her husband is working as seaman. Everytime her husband came home, they always heated up with an arguement about money matters. My brother in-law always blamed it for my sister's mismanagement of the money, and my sister always blamed it for her husband short of allotment. In which, overtime I kept hearing them blaming each other.
I am married ten years now. And even we (I and my wife) made a very bad decision over a money, we never came up blaming each other. And somehow, we manage to make it through rough times, and from lessons learned we kinda have strong and carefull decisions when spending it.
I tried to talked to my sister about their problem to help her build up good family, but somehow it didn't work.
Give opinion about this guys.
1 response
@zavebe (122)
• United States
15 Feb 07
I once heard a statistic that over 1/2 of all marriages end because of money disputes.
Because it isn't your relationship, it's harder to say what to do about it. It could just be a sign of a failing marriage. Or, they could be using money as a way of venting their anger at each other for something else. (Maybe his being away for so long? or something)
But I suppose that they should work out a budget together. If she has control of where money is spent while her husband is gone, perhaps when he returns she freaks out over the lack of control. And for him, he may not like coming home and having to watch what he spends, or have a dictator controlling his spending.
My fiance and I have an arrangement, where all the money we make is pooled together, and from that collection we pay bills, and keep basic grocery money. That sort of thing. Then, what's left gets divided between the two of us as our own personal cash. With that cash, we can do whatever we want with it. This way, it garantees that our bills get paid, and we get fed. It also gives us personal freedomm. That with our personal cash we can do whatever. And it doesn't matter who gets a bigger paycheck or not. It's a joint effort, because our relationship is a joint one.
Maybe you could suggest something like that for them? Something that gives them both some freedom with their spending money, but still pays the bills.
