Yung and I used to fight about money constantly. We both had and still have different styles and ideas about how to spend our money and since we got married until recently, it's been the number one subject we argued about. To give you an example, I love to buy people gifts and I like to be spontaneous about it and not worry about the price. Yung worries about the price and would rather spend time with the person than buy something for them. I also like to spend money on clothes for myself. Yung, on the other hand, doesn't care about what he wears. I have to throw away his old t-shirts for him because even if there are holes in them he will keep wearing them if I don't. About a year ago I told him I wanted to buy a new pair of jeans since I only had one other pair and he asked me "Don't you have a pair already?" I had to explain to him that I needed a second pair, you know, in case one was dirty.
Christmas is my favorite holiday because I find so much joy in buying gifts for people and watching them open them. I look forward to Christmas shopping and have no problems spending hundreds of dollars on the holiday. Yung thinks that buying gifts for Christmas is a waste of money because he feels that most the time the gifts aren't things that people actually want and he doesn't like shopping anyway. In the past, Christmas shopping would stress him out and when I volunteered to do the shopping alone it stressed him more out because he didn't trust my spending or the gifts that I picked. We used to fight about that a lot. On the other hand, I couldn't understand why he would get mad at me for spending 300-400 hundred dollars on gifts when he put a grand into the stock market at the risk of losing it all. I felt like I was trying so hard to be frugal and not buy another pair of jeans only to have him gamble with our hard earned savings. He said he was working on our financial future and I appreciate that now, but at the time it felt like he wasn't allowing me to enjoy the present.
Using the Money Management system helped us find middle ground because now I use the "Give Account" to buy the Christmas gifts and Yung doesn't have to worry about whether I am spending too much because I can only use what is in the account and that's it. If I want to buy more gifts we need to make more money. I love the "Play Account" because we can use it for going out and having fun. I can also use it to buy the clothes that I want, even if Yung doesn't think I need them. Yung is only allowed to use the money in the "Financial Freedom Account" to invest in the stock market so that makes me feel comfortable about whatever investments he wants to make. Soooo finally, when it comes to money we can talk about it like civilized human beings.
We actually learned this system at a different seminar of Peak's. Because people were asking me about it I am putting it on the blog. Since we found out about this system and started putting it to use, we haven't fought at all about money.
3 comments:
Robin, this is awesome! I think your testimony of how you and Yung figured out how to deal with money together is extremely valuable and can help a lot of couples deal with money issues. You should definitely share this experience and the money system at some couples wksp or something. For those couples who have issues with money - as most do - this can save a lot of arguments. Good Job!!!
thanks kot
Hey Robin: I'm not sure if this blog is still active, or if you'll get this message, but I heard that you looked into money management for couples, or something, and so I googled your name and saw your post. How inspiring and touching. I really enjoyed reading your blog. I'm trying to put together a money management seminar for WFWP and so that's why I was curious about your money management thing. If you can please email me at hkawamura@gmail.com
I would love to get some tips from you.
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