I imagine that would make frugality easier. Frugality isn't always easy for me and I know I can do better myself. Sometimes when I say things to dh though he gets upset. He's getting better, but I doubt he'll ever be hardcore frugal. He likes using coupons and shopping sales. I taught him that when we got together. He likes that I shop around for the best deal if we need something. He doesn't like that I tell him when we don't need something. I'm still having a hard time telling myself no and it's hard to realize how far into debt we've gone with our past decisions. We have such a long road ahead and a lot of changes to make still to get to the end of that road. I know we'll get there of course, but the changes are hard sometimes. I grew up frugally but not because we didn't have the money. I think I felt deprived because my parents had problems and used the money for their habits. It was hard knowing we had money and nothing to show for it. They never saved a dime in their life. Neither of my parents (I grew up with my mother and stepfather but even they are divorced now) have any money now. I wonder about their retirment. I worry about them not owning homes. I worry that they'll expect me to provide those things and I'm not willing to do that. Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. It's just that we've grown accustomed to living one way and I'm willing to make drastic changes to get out of debt. I don't think dh is as willing as I am. Am I facing an uphill battle here?

I think it's all in the presentation, if I just said "NO, you can't have it" hubby would rebel, but I'll point out what the bills are this month, what the extras are this month and if and when he can buy things.

Quite often the reason for the shortage is his farm equiptment so he knows better than to squabble on the unnecessary things, the tractors HAVE to have tires, the haybine, baler, wagons, spreader, chopper, plow, disc, planter all HAVE to work or the farm won't run.

You'll get there, and don't fret on the parents, they made their own beds as sad as it is and they are NOT your responsibility. (I'm dealing with this one with my MIL who squandered a large inheritance in 3 years and is now whining and facing losing her condo, I TRIED to teach her to budget but it blew up in my face, so it's her life and her bills to face, not ours.)

Kj

In a word..NO

Yes. Hubby grew up with Parents who lived through the Great Depression and still use up and make do with everything. He isn't as frugal as they but he's more frugal than I am. Give Jack a shack on many acres with a fireplace, a garden, no phone or electricity & he'd be a very happy guy. I need more, lol.

Not as frugal as me, but he tries real hard.

Yes, my DH is frugal, but it is more of an unconscious thing. He is content with so little! He hates to shop, so I pick up his clothes at sales, or he receives them as gifts from our children. He has his small Toyota pickup truck, golf clubs, books, tools and dog, and he is a happy man!

[QUOTE=midwestgal]Yes, my DH is frugal, but it is more of an unconscious thing. He is content with so little! QUOTE]

My DH is the same way. He will buy books :read: or cigars occasionally but otherwise he just doesn't want "stuff". He is, however, one of those people who would go to the grocery store everyday if i'd let him! That is our big challenge. He doesn't like to cook from the pantry. But he is trying...making lists and letting me sort through the coupons before going to store, etc. Overall, I can't complain. :fence:

NO, he likes to see the benefits of me being frugal but finds it hard to be himself.

he isn't at all! If he wants something he buys it - he doesn't even look at the price first - drives me nuts!

I have shown him how shopping at the cheaper store compares to shopping at the fancy store - same product but a dollar cheaper etc.. He is surprised but not enough to change stores.

I do the groceries weekly at the cheaper store then (without telling me) he goes and gets "a few things" that cost another $50-60 on his own. Things that I could have got much cheaper at my store - but when I ask him if he needs something when I am shopping - he can't think of anything.

He is all for instant gratification - he wants it, so he goes and buys it.

I can't get him to understand.

He was raised in a house where they believed if you paid more you got better quality - they are also snobs - can't be seen at the cheaper stores and must buy name brand everything.

My only benefit is that his sister has a son a few months older than ours - so we get tons of name brand hand me down clothes - Roots, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger etc...I have never bought name brand myself.

Kim

he isn't at all! If he wants something he buys it - he doesn't even look at the price first - drives me nuts!

I have shown him how shopping at the cheaper store compares to shopping at the fancy store - same product but a dollar cheaper etc.. He is surprised but not enough to change stores.

I do the groceries weekly at the cheaper store then (without telling me) he goes and gets "a few things" that cost another $50-60 on his own. Things that I could have got much cheaper at my store - but when I ask him if he needs something when I am shopping - he can't think of anything.

He is all for instant gratification - he wants it, so he goes and buys it.

I can't get him to understand.

He was raised in a house where they believed if you paid more you got better quality - they are also snobs - can't be seen at the cheaper stores and must buy name brand everything.

My only benefit is that his sister has a son a few months older than ours - so we get tons of name brand hand me down clothes - Roots, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger etc...I have never bought name brand myself.

Kim

My dh isn't a name brand junkie but he does have that pay more mentality. It's taking me a long time to teach him we can still get quality for less:) Maybe it's a man thing, I don't know. His mother understood the value of a dollar but she was awful at budgeting too. He financed not only his education, but his room and board during the first four years of school. Then he used his tuition reimbursements from work (for his mba) for bills, fun, whatever he wanted, etc... We've had some major fights over the years over stuff like this. Some things I'll just never understand. I wear a pair of shoes till they fall apart. That takes me about five years, lol. He'll need new shoes in less than a year. Honestly, the old ones look fine to me. I finally convinced him we were better off sinking a big chunk of change into repairing his jeep instead of taking on a new car payment. He seriously wanted the new car. Also, when we got our car that we have I made the mistake of leaving him to fill out the paperwork. He agreed to a ten percent interest rate. I'd have walked. I guess the good news is the turn around. He's starting to see the value here and there and he gets excited when he discovers his own bargains:)

Not as much as I would like. He thinks nothing about pluncking $50 at the corner store for junk food, tobacco and beer. One good thing though this money doesn't come out of the budget. And it doesn't happened often.

He does have alot of yankee inginuity though. He is great at swapping and bartering. Oh, and he loves a a good yard sale.

Yes and no. He would think nothing of plunkin' down $25,000 for a Harley, but has balked at paying $3 for a bag of cookies. (He went in the grocery store to buy a box of Fig Newtons and refused to pay more than 3 bucks for them) He ordered a cheeseburger at a local restaurant and they forgot to add cheese. He asked for the cost of the cheese back, I was kinda embarrassed. :blush:

(sigh) How about an inconsistent guy? Mine is frugal and spendthrift by turn...depending how he views our financial situation and his mood. Mostly his mood. Any extra money in the bank and he's spendthrift. A good couple of weeks and we suddenly need a digital camera for $400.

He doesn't set savings goals so I always have to be proactive in suggesting more go into retirement or paying out the mortgage or whatever. I have to show him it's possible on paper and do almost a full proposal down to the last cent.

He doesn't feel comfortable with me handling the finances...and truthfully, I don't want to. He's too tough a master to report to. And that's what I'd be doing. He's had accountant training. Things wouldn't be done his way. And there would be stress because of that. Just give me my envelopes and let me go. I occasionally surface to do the odd proposal and keep him from spending money when he's in his spendthrift mode, but that's it.

Jean

No, my husband is not frugal at all! What I do, is when the pay comes in I pay ourselves first, then direct a bit to his 401K and my IRA. I then pay the bills and buy groceries. We purchase gas for the week and whatever is left is ours to spend, on whatever we like. We are fortunate in that we are able to save quit a bit every month, so we don't feel so bad about spending the remainder. However, there have been times there was nothing left. In that case, we didn't buy. We both go with the flow, and what we have is what we have. We have no credit card debt. What we charge is paid off monthly. We have no car payments. We had a home equity loan, but recently paid that off. Our only bills is our mortgage payment and household bills.

DH is pretty good now, but one day a few years back I came home to a brand new $800 snow blower used a few times since he had bought it. His thing that he blows money on , like the rest of the posts, is going to the convenient store and picking up a "few" items. Makes me nuts.

Thankfully, my DH is mostly frugal. I handle the budget and money, so he usually tells me what he wants, then asks if we have money for him to do it. He's good about waiting if I say we don't have the money for it this paycheck.

He is a Star Wars collector, and he wanted a Stormtrooper costume. The good ones are really expensive. With costume, guns (fake), and various mods, he's spent $2000. However, none of that came out of our budget. He sold an X-wing pilot costume he'd made on Ebay for $1100. Then he sold a bunch of other stuff on Ebay and even made costume pieces for some people for a fee. He raised all that money outside of the budget. I was so impressed!

Then again, he came home a couple of months ago saying that he'd just purchased a flat-screen monitor for his computer. It was a great deal at only $100! May be a great deal, but we didn't have the $100 to spare. *sigh*

Yes, for the most part. He also realizes areas where he isn't frugal, but adjusts to them. For example, he likes to eat lunch out at work, so he works one meal a week "out" into his allowance budget. Another he likes is expensive computer equipment, but he will save a portion of his monthly allowance until he has enough to buy it.

Otherwise, he tends to be frugal. He gets stockpiling, will only impulse buy at the grocery store if its really on sale, buys store brands, keeps cars for a long time, etc.

Uh...honestly, no.

If you asked him, he'd say definitely. But I've seen him drop hundreds of dollars on magazines he doesn't read (but he 'needs' them for his job) and thousands of dollars on books (again, for the job...which I can't really fault him for, because when he was working at his old job he made really good money.)

I've seen him buy cheaper bricks at the hardware store (he save $.06 PER BRICK!), but I've also seen him drop $3,000 on a projector. (Did he shop around and get a good price? Yeah, I guess...but who needs a projector, really?) He buys computer equipment like it's going out of style...always has to have the latest and greatest, which costs us THOUSANDS of dollars. I kid you not. OTOH, like I said, he did work in the tech industry making very good money...but I still hate to look at old Visa bills and wonder how he spent a couple hundred a MONTH at CompUSA, Fry's, Newegg, Computer Stop, etc., etc., etc.! It makes me crazy.

Now he is wearing shoes that are falling apart, and he doesn't spend *much* on clothes. But he doesn't plan ahead and look for sales on the stuff he insists he needs (like $50 jeans.)

Done griping! :)

My DH was much more frugal than me when we first met. I didn't mind it because he let me live the way I wanted to, and I let him live the way he wanted to. He didn't have a phone or an internet connection and lived in a room that was part of a group home.

I guess his attitude must have slowly grown on me because as I began reading up on reducing my debt (it was roughly $7000 when I moved in with him), I began to read up on LBYM and other ideas. He is very receptive to my ideas so he would listen to me babble on and on about saving on this and that. I remember always having to buy one "toy" with every paycheck. He never said anything nor do I think he thought less of me. I think the fact that DH was very unjudgmental (me coming from a highly judgemental family) is really what changed me to be what I am today and the person I am still changing into.

I do have more "toys" than he does in terms of camera, mp3 player and so on. His computer is something he put together from parts we found trash picking.

So the answer is YES. My spouse is exceedingly frugal.

I do have to add that my hubby is also the ultimate trader, I just don't ask, lol, some of the things he brings home amaze me!

Just last week he was 1/2 hour late one day coming home from work and right behind him was a friend of his with his old diesel HUGE straight truck with a tractor back hoe attachment, a gravity wagon and on a trailer behind it a horizontal milling machine. I'm SURE that haul would have cost at least $2,000 if he'd paid cash for those three items, I have NO clue what he traded for it but I know that none of my stuff is missing and that's all that matters, lol.

kj

Yes and no. Like midwestgals husband he doesn't need much to make him happy on a day to day basis. Blue jeans and t-shirts and he is happy, he smokes so money goes out there, has to have coffee money even though it would be a lot cheaper to have it at home so he certainly spends far more than I do on a day to day basis but then I spend way more on holidays and my two shopping sprees a year so it probably all works out even in the end.
The grocery store is another story - he never looks at prices and if I send him to the store have to be very specific about the brand I want and the price he is to pay. LOL I ran out of onions last week so asked him to pick up a bag of onions - very simple, right - he came home with two huge Spanish onions that he had paid $2.36 or something for. Oh well, the main thing is he tries.

My bf is starting to be frugal only b/c hes seen me do it time and time again over the past year and now has seen how I am able to have funds available for something worthy of spending the savings on.

He ONLY wears jeans, tees and flannel shirts plus long underwear and extra wooly socks in winter :laugh: hes my lil spam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typedspam! It is better fried than typed!

But since having met me he's had to conform somewhat and get some decent business/casual wear. He didnt revamp his entire wardrobe but has enough pieces to muttle his way through events. And when shopping he'll find the style he likes at a high end dept store and then we hit the local Walmart/Zellers/Giant Tiger and look for them there at a fraction of the price. He DOES take care of those select few casual dress items so if the quality isnt the same as the high end it wont matter. Its not like he wears those items daily and has to have a polished appearance all the time. Some items we just have to bear down and buy at the dept store - ie suits etc. Slowly but surely, he's changing his wardrobe!

Grocery shopping - he used to run in and grab brand names and run back out and wonder why the next wk when I bought those identical items - how I saved on them. I bought store brand and sometimes the brand names are cheaper then the store brands. Ive taught him to comparison shop and weigh the option of spending unnecessary gas money to save 30 cents on a can of beans :laugh:

However his weaknesses are TOOLS! Afterall he is a contractor and a male :laugh: And hes always buying coffee and eating out claiming to be 'ont the run' which is bothersome to me but I can only change a few things at a time. I dont want him to change completely but just to be more aware and have the skills to be able to save money whereever possible.

I know he puts those skills into action whenever we're out together - all for me. Gotta love him! :thanx:

I can't really say he is more or less frugal then me. He just spends more when he spends it.

He likes to play games and will spend lots of money ($35-50 a game). He won't "settle" for lower priced stuff he wants, he always buys "the best".

He doesn't spend as often, but he always spends more then I would.

My DH is making great improvements. Yesterday he started quoting Dave Ramsey's book to me. :) Saying we need to make changes in our budget so that every penny is accounted for. I've been saying that to him for forever, but it sounds so good coming from his mount, because I know he gets it. He is trying very hard and I'm proud. He also acknowledged that he is proud of me for sticking to the budgets that I lay out for myself. I always stick to my $200 grocery budget, and when he says he wants something at walmart I have to say, nope, not in the budget, or we have to get rid of something else. Then when we check out I talk about how I stayed under budget and how much I have left for the rest of the month. I had no idea he was actually listening! They can come around girls, you just have to make them think its their idea! :D

My husband is not a spender. He HATES stores. So he brings very little stuff into the house. Send him to the grocery store and he will bring EXACTLY what's on the list.

What he does like is to travel. Big trips to far away places - he gets itchy to go wandering - luckily he takes me with him. We haven't been on a big trip since the kids were adopted. But I can see it in his eyes. That's one of the reasons I don't want to increase our mortgage and to pay it off soon - so we can have the flexibility to do those things.

mmmmmmmmmmmm, NO, he is not. There, I said it!

My dh wasn't frugal in the beginning but I have to say that in the past 5 years he's become more frugal than I am. He was actually excited when I showed him that some shorts that he bought yesterday (that he thought were $16) we on sale for 9.99:D That cracked me up. I can't tell ya what a change that is. Hang in there girls, it can happen. Only took us 25 yrs. to get the point of his accepting frugality.

Dh isn't as frugal as I am but he does his best and I am very proud of the changes he has made. I used to get witchy but now I just don't say anything, he usually figures it out. Like frugalfarmwife I show him the budget for the month and he knows what we have.

This is how frugal I am, I love movies, used to go with friends when I was younger. But I just stopped going after awhile, used to borrow or get from library. So dh and I haven't been to a movie in 5 years. On Monday evening we went to see Over the Hedge. Its a kids movie but everytime we saw the commerical for it we just laughed. So we went, by the way I didn't know they had discount before 6pm it cost us $5 for the both of us. After 6pm it would have been $7.50 each. So I guess now every once in a while I'll let him squeeze that $5 out of me to go to a movie. lol

Yes, I would say my DH is frugal. He hates to shop, but is happy to wear the clothes we find for him at thrift stores, even bragging to his co-workers "I only paid 95¢ for these pants I'm wearing, and 45¢ for this tie!" He never carries any cash. He just doesn't spend anything, really. He does have a nice notebook computer, and that seems to keep him happy. We paid cash for it.

Dh isn't as frugal as I am but he does his best and I am very proud of the changes he has made. I used to get witchy but now I just don't say anything, he usually figures it out. Like frugalfarmwife I show him the budget for the month and he knows what we have.

This is how frugal I am, I love movies, used to go with friends when I was younger. But I just stopped going after awhile, used to borrow or get from library. So dh and I haven't been to a movie in 5 years. On Monday evening we went to see Over the Hedge. Its a kids movie but everytime we saw the commerical for it we just laughed. So we went, by the way I didn't know they had discount before 6pm it cost us $5 for the both of us. After 6pm it would have been $7.50 each. So I guess now every once in a while I'll let him squeeze that $5 out of me to go to a movie. lol

We have one theater here that has movies for $4 all day on Tuesday and you get free popcorn. We only go on Tuesday, lol. It's nice to take the kids out. Of course we haven't been since AJ turned two and he's not free anymore, hehe:)

Yes, I would say my DH is frugal. He hates to shop, but is happy to wear the clothes we find for him at thrift stores, even bragging to his co-workers "I only paid 95¢ for these pants I'm wearing, and 45¢ for this tie!" He never carries any cash. He just doesn't spend anything, really. He does have a nice notebook computer, and that seems to keep him happy. We paid cash for it.


I'm pretty sure my dh didn't have to wear hand me downs or thrift clothing when he was younger, but for some reason, he is soooo anti-used clothing. He'll let me buy a few things for the kids at my consignment sale, but he won't wear anything used unless his dad gives it to him.