I've got my journey, he has his. He was raised one way, I was raised another. So, to answer your question, yes, people need to be on the same page on many fronts, otherwise there are obviusly going to be major irreconcilable differences. His idea of what was valuable and worth spending on was different than mine. We were just too different. Incompatable.

we all have different attribute traits but I think, meaning in my opinion, that you can have different traits. That its more about being able to adapt or willing to be able to accept/live with it.

i have been lucky in the money department. i've never had a woman who mismanaged money or overspent. we thought very much alike about good priorities.

my ex, as a struggling single mother for years, had lousy credit, very high student loans, and no money saved. that was the price that she paid because her ex, the father of her children, seldom paid her child support over the years. she did a great job raising her kids alone on a shoestring.

I was the saver in the marriage and he was the spender. I noted recently how little stress I have in paying my bills now. When I was married, I was always stressed about money because he would just go out and blow money with no thought to a budget. He would come home with brand new tires on his truck, but not say anything about budgeting that in. Then I was left to scramble and find money to pay everything else. If we paid off a loan, there would be no breathing room--time to save a little money. Nope, he would figure out something to go borrow money for.

Yet he said I was the one who couldn't manage money, and he said that right up until he realized I'd spent 22 years saving in a 403b and he wanted a piece of the pie (he didn't get it).

Now he is in debt again--house, new cars, boat, vacations. I hear he and the skank ho/now wife do nothing but shop every weekend.

I am so much better off financially now that he is gone.

so just a question "hurting" did you approach that subject with him and argue about it or did you just stress out? I basically bailed my ex out when she got behind - thinking I was doing the right thing - and it just ruined the marriage because I kept the resentment inside. I learned the hard way that wasn't the right way to go about things.

and now that she's gone I can fix the house up. before I wanted to redo the bathroom into a laundry room but because I had to bail her out I never could. Now at least I can trust myself to manage my own money

Hmmmm, this is interesting because how do "bail someone out" financially if you're married and running a household together??? If there are children involved that have needs etc???

All of our money, including what we each had individually before our marriage, became "our" money. Ex had a comfortable home and assumed those expensive comfortable sheets just showed up at the front door and changed themselves, etc. Wonder if he's enjoying the bed in a bag he's living with now. There was always food in the house, and I'm not taking a bag of cheetos.

So IN a marriage, where there's a home to run, necessities to buy, etc. How do you "bail the other one out". You kept your money separate???

There's a scene in "The Joy Luck Club" where one of the husbands would separate the groceries and make her pay for her own food. it was insane. Tallied everything up and gave her a bill right down to the cat food for "her" cat. Who can live like that? If people have a home and share a life, they need to be able to do what's best for Their family as a unit, no???

They are all good and reasonable questions NewAgain and particularly as they apply to the "Bail Out" scenario.

A brief exerpt from my own little drama.

In the marriage my ex and I had, everything was "ours" as you say. Then in about 2003 she told me she was leaving and did in fact leave me.

We Both worked and had similar income at the time so i thought that I would do what I could to protect my own interests and had my pay put into a seperate account.

She came back a bit later with no word on where she had been or what she had been doing and I just never got round to having my pay put into a joint account again. by this time, her pay was going into her own account anyway.

This continued on for several years while I paid the mortgage, rates, power and other utilities and she bought a little food now and then. Please remember we were earning a similar pay.

Throughout these later years in our marriage, she continually ran out of money and was unable to meet her own bills that she had accumulated. She even ran up a credit card debt of 25 thousand dollars.

I continually "bailed her out" as you put it, by paying HER bills and eventually re-mortgaged the house to bail her out of HER credit card debt. None of these bills were for anything to do with the house or the marriage, and as it turned out were for her dirty little weekends away while she was supposedly visiting her mother or her girlfriend - whatever.

Now she is living in a rented hovel in another city, visiting her criminal boyfriend in prison and generally having the wonderful life she so well deserves. Karma, gotta love it.

I hear you Mick. I just don't know what the solution is, because having a family life is very important to me, it was the reason I got married to begin with, and situation like yours happen all the time unfortunately.

In a time when evryone is struggling and trying to make ends meet, I don't see how people function and survive with these types of metalities. I have a friend in her early thirties, went to Harvard, who just lost her job due to cutbacks and had to move back in with her parents. Glad some people can afford to be out there being irresponsible and effing around.

@ Jeff: We did talk and sometimes argue about money. He simply had no head for it (although he thought he did). After a discussion about money, he often would go out and do what I would call a "spite" purchase--buy something outrageous just to spite me. It's so ironic, when we first married he was the one who wanted me to take charge of the finances. He said he hated doing it. So I did. Ironically, this helped me a lot in the divorce. He had no clue about our finances.

The following illustrates just how dumb this man was with money: One year when we filed income taxes, we filed separately (accountant said we would do better this way). I ended up getting a refund and he had to pay. Now both me and the accountant had been advising him for years to increase the amount taken out of his tax sheltered 403b account but he refused. He actually said one year when I questioned him about it that it was because the accountant and I were both women telling a man what to do. So when he had to pay his taxes, I simply shrugged my shoulders and said, "Oh well. You'll have to figure out what to do. I'm spending my refund." He sneered at me and walked away. Come April 13, he's sweating razor blades saying, "How am I going to pay this tax bill? Where am I going to get the money?" I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I don't know" and walked away. Finally at zero hour, I asked him, "Do you need money to pay this tax bill?" and he said yes. I said, "I will not pay it until you fill out this card that authorizes more money to come out of your paycheck for your 403b. If you don't sign this card, good luck with Uncle Sam" and I walked away again.

He signed the card. Sadly, it took frying his ass over the hot coals at the 11th hour on April 14 to get him to see any kind of sense. After that, he was much better about taking financial advice from the accountant and me. But it is sad to say that this is how I had to deal with him.

I love my finances now and even if I would be involved in an long-term relationship again, I would not blend the money in joint accounts.

My ex husband and I never, ever argued about money. There was always plenty. We just had an agreement that if either one of us spent more than a certain amount on a single item for ourselves, that we would let the other know and always had ZERO debt. That part of my marriage was simple, thank God....when he was sober, anyways. His thousands of dollars drinking binges...well, thats another story, and when I began to separate my earnings.

Thankfully, I still have zero debt... I like it that way and enjoy sleeping at night. He now however, lives in credit card hell. His choice, not mine....and not my problem. Going into future relationships... Im not sure how I will handle this one. When I married my ex..he had a lot of debt that had been assumed before marriage, that I helped him pay off. Honestly, Im not sure I will do that for anyone again.

Well the topic of money certainly ranks high on the list of marital disputes. It does seem that oftentimes, partners are on the opposite sides of the spectrum. Many times there's a "saver" and a "spender".

My H, and I both hail from humble beginnings, so that part we do have in common. However, I have met many folks in that department who somehow later in life, develop an "entitlement" complex, and have a hard time with delayed gratification, which yields in their spending beyond their means, because they "have to have it now" cuz "they deserve it".

My Mom was never a credit card advocate, and the closest she got to that was "lay away" plans, for clothing, like dresses, and coats, and necessities. I have maintained that approach, and have tons of credit cards, but use them seldomly, and on a rare occasion, when I do, I pay them off within 1-2 months. For me, it gnaws on me, and I have an underlying nagging feeling about them.

I prefer to have less anxiety, and that's how I sleep at nite. If anything, I have offered loans to friends and family, in dire times of need. So far, fortunately, each loan has been repaid. In this economy, it seems more people are in need, and so it is a good feeling to be able to assist.

Back to the marriage, when I saw that my H, was building up balances on his credit cards, I felt anxious, and told him, it would be a huge bone of contention. At first, I did pay down several cards, and assist him w/ purchasing vehicles. But I always kept my own account, because I felt that it was a way to provide me "safety", just in case. We still have separate accounts, and due to it, I have been able to assist his family with funeral expenses, and important things, where he hasn't still been able to save, and have a few grand in the bank. I've told him repeatedly, that in purchasing cars, he needs to buy them with lower mileage, pay down some cash, and not have car notes in excess of $450-$500 per month. He likes to get a different car every few years (not brand new), and he has always had a car payment over his head. My car is 12 years old, still runs well, looks fine, and I hope to keep it as long as I possibly can. So that's how I manage my money. If I trade in a car, that money goes straight to the upgraded car, and I attempt to pay it off in one or two years. I haven't had a car payment in over 5 years, and that's the way I like it. I could care less if anyone thinks "it's an older car", I'm happy with it, and it serves my purpose, so that's all that counts.

I'm not into keeping up "with the Joneses", never had that mentality. And I do not attach my self-esteem to my possessions, or inculcate my image of myself with all those external toys. I think, having been raised poorly, taught me how to pinch a penny, and I still live a comfortable life, without wasting money. And when in a pinch, I am able to assist others, and that feels good to me. I do feel a bit more security having a few bucks in the bank, because "a rainy day" always seems to come, especially in this economy.

So, that's my philosophy: live within your means. If you can't pay for it, don't buy it! Sleep comfortably at nite, knowing you have a little buffer zone, for now, because we all know that we are "one hospitalization away from bankruptcy". It happens all the time, and I can learn from other people's mistakes. I don't need to have something frivolous, those are things people "want". I even buy jelwelry at pawn shops, and then trade them in, for th same value. I'm a big resale freak, and garage sale/estate sale advocate. I've learned now in leaner times, that I've cut that back tremendously, too.

I feel I have all I need, and I don't need to waste money or stuff, cuz stuff doesn't give me happiness, it's just an attempt to fill the "hole in the soul". After all we can't take it with us, can we?

I watch the "Hoarder" shows all the time, and see where so many people buy duplicates of things, let them get destroyed, dirty, filthy, and lost in the mountains of "stuff", and almost baricade themselves from live, family, and real living, all due to "their shopping addictions", and lack of self control, cuz they have to have something, even though they know, probably, deep down inside, they really don't "need it", just "want it".

Sure, it's nice to go out to eat once in a while, or buy a new garment of clothing, or a nice purse/shoes, but now I remind myself, I have enough, and do I really "need it"? Yup, more often than not the answer is "no", so that helps me a lot!

I always knew that I was the saver. He would spend without caring if we could afford it. I would sacrifice and not spend, because I was afraid we couldn't afford it.

well, hairymick, my ex didn't get her credit cards as high as yours did, but we had similar situations. She ran her credit cards up and I paid them or did a balance transfer or something. We both had separate savings and checking accounts and credit cards.

In all the stories I see here, it looks like those who can't handle their debts wind up in poor situations - one of them is with a criminal now if I remember. when we did the legal separation we had to fill out our marital statements as far as finances and when she subtracted out her debts from her savings (including her work retirement fund) she was worth nothing. and she left me with the house and the funds. yep, 45 yrs old and worth nothing. not what I would call a good decision, but it was hers to make.

If she's the mother of your children, she's worth something. If she's a human being she's worth something. I understand what you you were trying, but still.