[Berlin_Freeper]

I recently won the biggest battle of my life. I thought I was bad with money, and I was, but I finally overcame it through necessity and the wisdom of age. But my wife is 10 times worse. Now finally after years of discussions, I will be the sole manager of our money starting November.

I will be the wallet. Nothing gets spent except through me. This is a good thing.

[Tunehead54]

You’ll want to learn to sleep with one eye open ... ;-)

[Cronos]

How did you do this?

I'm kind of stingy - and my wife was moderately careful to easy going with her money and is now thrift.

We still have a large mortgage debt on two houses, but this is halved since 2010 and we plan on halving it again next year (selling off one place and pre-paying again on a second).

Our way was to:

• Think small -- the "free-spending" budget we have is: total income - mortgage payments - investments - 40% kept for savings and charity
• No credit card debt
• No car (it's possible for me in a city with good public transportation -- that's not for everyone)
• Cook at home and take the food -- and I'm healthier for this
• Cut meat to 2 to 3 days a week - again, slightly lower cost, but healthier
• Fast food, soft drinks, takeaway coffee eliminated - the first two are empty calories and all three are not needed
• Alcohol minimized - only wine for guests
• eating out minimized
• You get some real gems for clothes at the used clothes store.
• Eliminate cable and TV - we use the net, but no netflicks. We have DVDs that we watch when we want to. But we can spend the days, evenings and nights to do other things besides sitting in front of a screen

We don't scrimp on health or education or giving our child experiences (and surprisingly the best ones are free!)

What do you do? I'd like to learn new ways

[uncitizen]

I’ve recently starting to listen to Dave Ramsey’s podcasts. They really inspire me to want to budget. You might try this for your wife.