Don't see eye to eye on spending.

I could use some advice. I have been married for 22 years and am still having money problems. I did not live with my wife before we were married so I did not know what to expect. I thought that we were both savers because when we would go out she was always asking to not do anything expensive. She would tell me to eat before I picked her up so we would not have to pay for expensive restaurant food, we went on cheap dates like hikes or we would play tennis (always at her request). So we get married and we are always barley making our bills. I always assumed it was expensive to have kids but as our kids are now older (with two out of the house) and our pay has increased we are still always tight. I know everyone thinks they don't spend money but I really don't. I don't carry cash, I don't go out to lunch & my gym membership is $10 a month. My wife makes an excuse to go to some kind of store every day. For example we were out of chicken food so instead of grabbing a $17 bag of food she meanders around the store and ends up getting $70 worth of pet stuff. One of the big problems is she can justify everything so when I say "Why did you spend $70 at the chicken food store" she thinks everything she got was totally important. Do this every day on top of paying your regular bills and my family runs out of money before each pay day. To make it worse my wife does not cook or buy food for the family so she is never meandering around a grocery store getting stuff to eat, so everything she buys really amounts to nothing. She has this mentality like it is a race to get what she thinks she needs before we run out of money this pay period. We never can go on vacation, upgrade our vehicles or furniture and I have no real hobbies because we are always behind. As the provider for the family is it wrong to be upset that I make well over $100,000 a year and still live paycheck to paycheck (we live in a pretty reasonably priced part of the country). If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.

Put the internet to work for you.

Delete or edit this Recipe