My Wife’s Wild Relationship to Money Is Giving Me Whiplash

Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena and Elizabeth here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Pay Dirt,

My spouse is an amazing, justice-seeking, do-good-in-the world professional who makes a surprisingly decent living considering the good she does. And she is absolutely murder on our finances. So much of my life consists of asking her to put her earnings in our joint account (she has a private practice, so it’s not a direct deposit situation), asking her to do her billing, begging her not to use the credit card we agreed not to use (or at least to tell me if she’s using it), paying parking tickets she’s incurred—the list goes on. All this is part of a broader struggle she has getting certain important things in their life and mine done that has financially torpedoed us at regular intervals. I can’t remember the last time she saw a doctor. Years ago, she forgot to sign up for her free university health insurance, and only realized it after our first baby was on the way. It was a mess.

These days we both make about the same amount, which is fantastic. But I only recently found that out when spouse did her bills for the entire year, realizing that there were tens of thousands of dollars that should have gone to our family income. I have been scrimping, juggling credit card balances, and certainly not contributing to my own pension because I had no idea that money was there. Because my spouse has clients, there are times when less income will come in, or she’ll part ways entirely with them. Since finances are completely my job, I’ve begged her to let me know how much money to expect, or to sit down together to plan. So far, no dice.

I am at the end of my rope. I love this person. We’ve worked towards having a great relationship after a long journey (not least because of these issues), and in many ways it’s there, but this is just killing me. I’ve thought about what it might look like to split our finances, but I’m worried that that might actually occasion even more labor on my end—cajoling her to pay, contribute, etc. I currently pay and coordinate all our bills. She takes the lead on taxes, largely because the most complicated part is her practice. I also hate doing them, and am not great at it.

I think I’ve got her to finally sign onto the idea of a budget (I used to have one; she thought they were ridiculous), but it’s going to be me looking after things. Is there any way of reducing the sheer amount of work that I have to put into this, and the friction between us that results? It makes me feel awful psychologically, and nervous financially. How can I make sure our financial future isn’t a magic eight ball?

—Till Death Do Us Part, and This Might Kill Me

Dear Till Death Do Us Part,

You probably don’t need me to tell you that fights about money are a major reason why people go into couples counseling, but they are is, and counseling can help. If nothing else, it will help you talk through the ways that her failure to take responsibility on this front is causing friction in the marriage and stressing you out.

Your spouse’s struggle with managing her money may be a function of attentional problems, which often manifest as things like being disorganized with administrative tasks, a lack of attention to detail, procrastination on arranging occasional, but important, medical appointments—a lot of the issues you describe in your letter. (ADHD in women is harder to diagnose than in men, because women are  less likely to have hyperactivity as a symptom.) If you think that might be the case, it might also be helpful for her to be screened for it, because there are specific strategies that help people with attentional problems function better in areas like managing money.

Lastly, there are plenty of systems that allow for automatic payments, including recurring payments from one bank account to another. Many consumer banks offer these things as features of online banking services. Most bills can also be automated. Not everything can be (parking tickets, for example) but there are tools that can help you centralize and organize this process so you don’t have to do as much of the heavy lifting. Personal finance software (like Quicken or Mint) can also help with this.

I wish I could say that you can have one magic bullet talk with your spouse and she’ll turn things around, but it sounds like her behavior on this front is habitual and something she struggles with, so I think finding out whether she needs treatment is important. In the meantime, it might be worth spending a little money to use a personal bookkeeping service that will stay on top of these things for you and take some of the pressure off.

Dear Pay Dirt,

My mother and I live together. Neither of us absolutely need to, but we would each struggle and not have as good of a quality of life if we didn’t live together. Most of the time this is fine. We split most of the bills, including food and we take turns cooking.

The problem comes when my sister comes into town. She’s always had expensive taste and ended up marrying a man from a rich family. My mother now has a very strong case of “keeping up with the Joneses” when they are here. We can’t go out to eat at any of the hole-in-the-wall places we love to eat, we have to go to the restaurants that easily cost 3x more and my mom always insists on paying. I once took my brother-in-law to one of those hole-in-the-wall places and he actually loved it, but my sister, who is definitely spoiled by his family, stops any attempt at going to these places. Neither my sister nor brother-in-law ever offer to pay even though they come here for at least a week at a time and get free housing and free food.

Then, after they leave, my mom starts whining to me about money. She doesn’t have enough for her share of the groceries, or we can only have spaghetti with butter because she’s run out of money. She even complains when I go out to eat with friends because she misses going out with her friends.

I know my mom is worried that my sister will stop visiting if we don’t treat her like her in-laws do (I don’t think she will), and my father used shame as a control tactic when we were younger, so I don’t know how to bring this up with her. Do you have any ideas? After two failed, and unexpectedly expensive, attempts to rent a room from other people in the past, I am simply not willing to put myself in that position anymore. I really need to figure out a way to discuss this with my mother.

—Stop With the Keeping Up of the Joneses

Dear Stop With the Keeping Up,

I can’t tell from your letter how often your sister visits, but if it’s a week or two a year, I’m not sure it’s worth bringing up. I say that because your mother’s desire to pick up the check may be more a matter of wanting to treat your sister and brother-in-law as guests, rather than wanting to demonstrate that she, too, can eat at fancy restaurants.

If this is happening more often, and putting a real strain on your finances, you should talk to your sister about it, and explain the problem. Even if your sister has been “spoiled” by her wealthier lifestyle, I assume she has no desire to put you and your mother in a situation where you’re experiencing food insecurity. Tell her that your mother can’t afford to pick up the check every time they visit. Your sister may not be offering to pay, but that shouldn’t stop you from asking. And you should have this conversation with her before she visits again, so it doesn’t take anybody by surprise.

Dear Pay Dirt,

I have a work logistics question. I’m 29 years old and changing careers. I’ve worked in finance since graduating and have always deeply hated it. Next month, I’m finally biting the bullet and going to graduate school to be part of a niche area of healthcare. This is absolutely the right decision for me and I’m very happy to be making the change. No need for advice regarding the decision itself! But, the graduate program I’m going to is designed for working adults. It’s a two-year masters program. The first year I’m planning on continuing my accounting job as usual, and my second year I’ll need to change things up to accommodate clinical rotations.

My question is—should I tell my manager that I’m going to grad school, and for what? I imagine doing graduate level coursework will require some level of work accommodation at some point. But I also don’t want my boss thinking that because I’ll be quitting in a year that he can add me to the top of the list if there are ever layoffs. When do you think would be the best time to tell him?

—Career Changer

Dear Career Changer,

I don’t think you’re obligated to volunteer your long-term career plans, or mention the line of work you’re going into, unless someone asks you directly. Most people understand that at your age, going back to graduate school is fairly common, and I doubt your boss is going to take it personally that you don’t want to be an accountant long-term.

As for when to tell him you need new accommodations for the second year, or are leaving entirely, give him as much notice as you’d want if you were in his situation. Lots of people leave jobs and can only afford the usual two weeks’ notice, but if you have a good relationship with your boss and want to potentially work during the second year, with accommodations, you should give him as much time as you think he needs to plan for the transition.

Dear Pay Dirt,

My (he/him) wife and I have different plans for the rest of our pre-retirement years. We’re in our early 40s. If we both keep working until we’re 60, we can retire at that point, and that’s my ideal. However, my wife wants to retire in the next couple years. She has always worked stressful, public-facing jobs. Meanwhile, my career is low-stress, somewhat flexible hours, no overtime, work-from-home, and I make over 3 times what she makes. The math works out that, if she does retire 15 extra years early, I’d only need to work about five extra years—until 65—to put us in the same financial position.

I can see how this is a more efficient use of our combined time, but I also feel a bit resentful about the idea of having to work 20 years after she retires. My job may be low-stress, but it’s still a job and not what I’d want to be doing with my free time. There are things in our past (e.g. infidelity) that have me on guard about being taken advantage of. Is this a case of that? Or does her idea just make sense?

—One Income or Two?

Dear One Income or Two,

When one person decides to drop out of the work force in a two-income family, it’s often a recipe for tension if both parties don’t agree to the terms. Surely there is some compromise where she retires later and it takes some of the pressure off of you. It sounds like there are several variables that are not fixed that you could modify to get you both to a place you want—her retiring next year and you continuing to work until you’re 65 is probably not the only option. Look at which variables you can change. It could be establishing different goals for retirement savings that create more parity between you, or having your wife look for a job that’s less stressful and putting off her retirement for a bit.

A lot of things can happen between now and when you retire, so it’s good to plan financially for those too, and make sure you have a cushion before either of you retire. Your work may slow down, one of you may have an illness, and so on. It’s possible that your wife hasn’t considered what might happen if she drops out of the work force and then needs to re-enter it. If you’re very tightly budgeted and something unexpected happens, it might be a necessity.

I doubt your wife is trying to take advantage of you (and I wouldn’t conflate this with any prior infidelity, though I’m sorry you experienced that), but I think it’s very important that you’re on the same page about this. You’re both responsible for getting yourselves to where you want to be on the retirement front, and she should know that it’s not fair to you to make you take that on by yourself or to unilaterally decide for both of you.

Since there is some distrust stemming from prior unrelated episodes, you need to work that out, either among yourselves or with a marriage counselor. Otherwise, it may bleed into other parts of your life, and cause you to engage in a kind of scorekeeping about who has an advantage, resulting in even more tension than you’re already experiencing.

My husband used to be pretty nervous in bed. Now, he’s much more sexually adventurous, and wants me to dominate him. That’s great, but life has me so exhausted! I don’t want to be in charge…