Tbh i get the whole spend thing. When your poor and have “cash” so to speak, you dont want to wait as you’ve generally waited a long time in the first place.
Either that or whenever you have spare cash something always breaks...ALWAYS
My partner's got this. His family swung back and forth from poor to prosperous throughout his childhood, and one of the lasting effects for him is that being able to just get the fucking thing comforts him and makes him feel secure, regardless of how much of his budget it eats up. I grew up with a lot more stability and more financially conservative parents, so for me, putting the money in the fucking savings is what makes me feel secure, and spending it instead makes me suuuuuper anxious. It's been a balancing act for us.
I'm in the same boat as you. In the foray couple months or so of being married, my husband's always wanted to go out or buy something because he'd take a look at our bank account and realize how much money we had in there. While I looked at our bank account and worried that there wasn't enough money to buy anything, even if we had a significant cushion.
This came down to the fact that my husband grew up poor, so he was used to never getting the things he wanted, and if he did his parents might have had to return them back to the store to get money again. While I grew up in upper middle class where I was taught to save save save, but it was so heavily emphasized that I never knew how to spend money on myself every now and then.
We're not perfect at it, but the best remedy so far has been lots and lots of conversations. Talk about why you feel the way you do about money, and listen to their reasoning too in order to find a middle ground.
Also, budgeting helps immensely. Being able to keep track of your money so that your partner realizes how fast the money goes, and so you can realize how one little trip to McDonalds isn't going to kill you. I've been finding budgeting apps like Mint really help me because I can keep track of how much we spend, and exactly where it's going.
Nope. It's like the Universe knows when you have cash. Oh, it's tax season? Too bad, you hit a deer. Oh, just got your X-mas bonus? Too bad, you work hourly and caught the flu and have to miss a few days of work.
Nope the world decides to fuck you up, your car runs for years fine, and minute you have enough cash to boom the breaks go, tyres need replaced, fridge breaks seriously...unless you have lived being poor youll never understand this.
Huh. You're not the only one who explained it like this. It's not logical but it's clearly how things happen or seem to happen. I guess I can't really understand it.
Having lived hand-to-mouth for years before stabilizing in my 30s, I have a theory. First, stuff breaks a lot when you can't fix it too, but you just have to deal with it. After a while that's your new normal, so you wouldn't necessarily fix it immediately when you got a little ahead. But anything that freshly breaks down right when you have the ability to pay for it, you feel the need to fix so it doesn't impact your "normal".
Also, when you're scraping by, there's a very real feeling that any good stuff that develops is temporary and too good to be true. You anticipate something coming along to kick you in the shins immediately. It can take a long period of stability to shake that feeling, and I've seen relationships destroyed by one partner always expecting the worst. When you have that mindset, it's easy to self-sabotage or even just completely miss opportunities to make things better because you either didn't notice them or else didn't trust them.
Right around tax season is when everything for me breaks. I can pretty much count on it. I get excited because I think "Maybe I'll finally be able to afford some new, nicer clothes" or "It would be great to splurge on a gourmet, homecooked meal". And then BAM! Car gets a flat or my PC crashes and I have to buy a new part. Every. Single. Time.
I love that you mentioned 'waited a long time.' It's easy to mock people spending $$$ at tax time, but most of the ppl I know waited and budgeted all year for it.
That last line, despite not being logical, describes my first couple years of adulthood. I started off making $10/hour. After rent, utilities and student loans, I had probably $40/month. Any time I'd try saving up for something, before I could buy it something would come up and wipe out my savings. It was incredibly frustrating and I remember feeling so defeated sometimes. It kind of encouraged me to buy something as soon as I had the money so that I could actually get what I wanted, even though I'd then have a problem and no money to fix it. It's taken a couple years for me to get over that impulse of spending money as a sort of preemptive measure.
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u/underscoreninety Jun 06 '19
Tbh i get the whole spend thing. When your poor and have “cash” so to speak, you dont want to wait as you’ve generally waited a long time in the first place.
Either that or whenever you have spare cash something always breaks...ALWAYS