I love my DH dearly, but he is TERRIBLE with money. So I take care of the finances and the paying of all the bills. My problem is he is constantly fighting me on how I'm doing things. He believes debt is just something that everyone lives with and I shouldn't get so stressed about having it and about wanting to be rid of it ASAP.

I can't accept that. I want to be able to live life with a nice financial cushion in our savings accounts, I want to have empty credit cards so that if an emergency arrises we will be covered. He is just content to only have $100 spare room on each card (he has one and i have 2) and just pay on them monthly. But as soon as the balance on his card gets down he'll just charge something else onto it.:vent

My worst gripe is that he has an AmEx that he got before we were married and it has a 23% interest rate!!!! that is insane! One of my cards has a 10% and the other has a 13%. I keep telling him that he needs to quit using it so I can get it paid off and cancel it. I am even willing to let him get another card for emergencies, it just needs to have a lower interest rate.

I just don't know how to make him understand that it IS possible to live debt free. Yes we'll have a car loan and I'll have an ungodly amount of school loans, but I'd really like to keep it at that. None of this credit card crap, unless it's come about from an emergency. '

He says that I stress about it too much and just need to relax. I grew up in a home with a single mother and always saw her struggle and live paycheck to paycheck and give up so much for me to have what I wanted/needed. I don't want to live like that. We have only been married 7 months, but I want to start getting us in the right place NOW. I don't want to wait until we have kids. I don't want to wait until it's so late that it's going to take us YEARS to dig ourselves out of the hole.

I just feel like every time I get us almost caught up, something happens and we spiral out of control and end up right back at square one.

So I guess if you read all this I'm just really needing advice on how to get him on board with me. I'm not saying that we can't ever go buy movies or a video game or go out to dinner, but we need to stop making everyone else think that we're rolling in the dough, when we aren't. I'm so tired of being the one in control of the money, but constantly getting fought on how I'm handeling it.:vent

We do plan on going to see the financial advisors on base after the new year. Maybe they can knock some sense into him.:sigh

Wow, this ended up a lot longer than I though it was going to!

I'd say definitely get him in to the financial advisors. If his debt continues to grow and he damages his credit score, he can get in trouble with his command in the long run, esp. if he has a higer security clearance.

You're already going to be doing what I was going to suggest, which is the financial advisor. We were in the same situation about a year ago, the financial adviosr really helped DH see things how I saw them.

Good luck! I hope it works!

I'd say definitely get him in to the financial advisors. If his debt continues to grow and he damages his credit score, he can get in trouble with his command in the long run, esp. if he has a higer security clearance.

Yeah. He is a NUKE so he has the clearance issue. It is not like we are in tons of debt either (well besides my school loans, but I still have a couple more years before those start repayment) it's managable, it's just that every time I begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel it turns out just to be a train dragging us straight back to square one. And then he gives me flack for paying $600 a month on three credit cards when the total minimum per month is $65. He just doesn't seem to understand that if I get the cards paid off that $600 will be in our account, and can go towards savings and things we want (such as furniture!). It will no longer be allocated to bills.

And he had been doing so well before we PCSed, he wasn't spending without asking me and I almost had us out of the hole and then we moved and went to visit family while we were on leave and now we're back where we started.

It's just so frustrating. Twice now since we got married in May have I almost had us out of the hole, and we ended up back at square one. I think he sees the credit cards as money availible, not what it is...CREDIT. And of course the holidays aren't helping either.

I just really hope that the financial advisor can help him see the light!