If you love getting a good deal and have a partner that shares your passion, then you probably already know that you can double your pleasure by both using the same coupon (one per person, right?) or signing up for bonuses separately, and then getting double the money!
Alas, I, who truly loves wringing money out of companies, has a wife who hates this stuff. She works hard and controls her spending well, but is the type of person who chooses which credit card to carry based on how cute it looks. The words ‘S&P 500’ mean nothing to her. There could be a $1,000 bank bonus and she wouldn’t care. I can’t even sign her up for offers myself anymore, since she really hates having to deal with customer service reps if something goes wrong. The last thing she signed up for was the $100 gift card from Citi, and only after I did it first (and convinced her she could spend it on cute stuff). But I still love her =) So – does your better half care about money as much as you?
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Quotes from wife 10 minutes after posting –
“Hey, what does S&P 500 mean?”
“That’s not true, I’d sign up for a thousand dollars! … Think of all the stuff we could get for the puppy!”
Let me also add that my wife is much smarter than me. But she really doesn’t know what S&P 500 means. Although now she’s bugging me to tell her… mission to get her to learn more about investing accomplished!
My wife is perfectly happy with not having a clue about anything even remotely dealing with money. I mean, nothing. At all. Ever.
She’s good at other things, though.
My better half works closely with me in just about everything we do… but when it comes down to money, it’s yes or no with her and she’ll just keep to what she does best – spend.
I handle all the finances around my house as well.
One thing that I’d suggest doing… compile a list of accounts / passwords and put it in a sealed envelope inside your bank safe deposit box. Should something happen to you, you’re assured that your wife (or husband if it’s the other way around) will not have additional difficulties trying to locate and get access to the accounts. Always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
– MikeB
I’m the wife, and I’m the one who deals with pretty much all the money stuff currently. My husband is brilliant, but just way too busy and interested in other things to think about money. He didn’t even know our annual income or current savings until we did our taxes together recently (a coup). However, he will play along when I find a good deal that is worth pursuing. 🙂
Mr. Savvy is very content letting me make the money decisions. I have convinced him to sign up for a few deals, but he hates talking to credit card CSRs, so I’m limited to deals that can be done online.
For some reason he does get a kick out of knowing what his IRA and Roth IRA investments are and how they are doing, but that’s only after I’ve decided where to put the money.
No, my other half wants to know NOTHING about things with a dollar sign at all.
The best thing she did with me was to open her own Roth IRA, period.
this is hilarious. my wife, like yours, love cute stuff and hate dealing with CSR in case anything goes wrong. However she, like your wife, will go for $1000 bonus to buy cute stuff!
Our wives will be good friends if they met :0
I read all the WSJs, the bankrates, smartmoneys and motley fools and give her the gist of our investment strategy, just to fulfill the charter she has given me: dont lose my money!
She is able to discuss our strategy intelligently with her boss and he thinks highly of her sound investment planning process !
Exactly! She is still afraid that with me handling everything that I am going to lose all our money. I think this is because she has seen some friends get caught up in gambling. So anytime I get even near anything like Vegas or poker, she starts paying lots of attention. I guess that’s a good thing though.
My wife understands a lot about money…but it doesn’t interest her like it does me. She knows a little about stocks, bonds, index funds, mutual funds, etc, but has no desire to take a bigger role in investing in them.
Sadly, my husband-to-be is not quite as obsessed with personal finance as I. I am the budgeter, investment-planner, and general money advisor for our household.
That being said, its not all that bad because he really isn’t a spender at heart and I can’t even think of the last time he bought himself clothes or anything outside of the requisite birthday/valentines day/christmas gift for me!
For my wife, she has no clue on how to save and invest. When we got married, I redid what she had (which was not much and in disarray) I arranged everything where she has a diverse portfolio including her 401k (large, small/mid and intl) and set automatic investment contributions to them. To this day she knows she is saving but not sure what she has or how much she has. When I give her the report, she is amazed she saved so much.
WW
SIGNING UP FOR $100.00 GIFT CARD?!!!? SHE THINKS IT?S ILLEGAL!
I am forever grateful that my wife doesn’t care much about the details of our finances. She’s smarter and more successful than I, but after a long (L O N G) day’s work she’d rather spend an hour watching CSI than read a book on portfolio allocation. I think it would drive me crazy to have her reading over my shoulder anyway.
And to be honest, I’m not sure my investments do any better than hers for my over-attention and her lack thereof. Certainly not sufficiently better to justify the time I spend on them anyway 🙂
Very interesting! I would have thought there would be more couples with an equal interest in financial matters…
Using the same coupon..great stuff! I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future.
First time poster here :).
You sound like my significant other. She clips so many coupons it’s not funny. Her favorite thing to do is to find deals on the Wed and Sun papers!
If I could attach a picture you would understand. We have boxes of toothpaste, deodorant, soap, mouthwash, whitestrips, “girl stuff”, etc. all bought for pennies on the dollar to stock up on. We recently went to Walgreens and were PAID $0.06 (ie refund of six cents) to take 4 dove deodorants, dove soap, and 2 boxes of toothpaste because of all her coupons.
It’s good she does this, because after expenses we have about $100 extra per month :(.
Luckily, my spouse is not as obsessed with money as I am. He helps me remember that it’s not the most important thing.
My wife is all for the xtra bonuses offered by companies, banks ,etc., but also hates taking the time to mess with it. After 12 years of marriage, I now have all her info memorized (DOB, drivers license, SS#, mothers maiden name, etc). As long as just a phone call is required, I can even cover that, since her name is Kris. Yes, it sounds funny when the CSR pauses and says, “and your husbands name is Dave?”, but I just go with it and say, “yes”. Only trouble is when she is required to go to a location in-person, like a bank. Haven’t yet figured out a way to impersonate her…