The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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It sounds like, while doing quite well yourselves financially, she's surrounded by even wealthier family and friends. She feels a bit self conscious about this.
Do you as a couple have any less wealthy friends you could spend more time with? Or at least friends and relatives who aren't exerting social pressure on her to overspend?
This is especially important when/if you have kids. Are these friends/family going to be making her feel bad about only putting her kids in an ordinary charter or private or decent public school when theirs are in boarding schools where they each have their own horse or something?
Personally, I have two little kids, and am a working mom. Several of my friends are stay at home moms who like to organize activities on weekday mornings, and like to talk about aesthetic mothering and homeschooling and "morning baskets" or things like that. This is not something I can participate in very often, or I'll feel angry and jealous. Why are they making aesthetically pleasing morning baskets with their friends on Wednesday mornings, and I'm working a regular job?
The solution is, honestly, to focus on different friends, or at least in different contexts. In my case, it's important to me to talk with different people, who are not all raising goats and looking orderly. In your wife's case, if she's serious about her family, it might look like emphasizing some friendships with people who wear clothing from chain stores, pack their own lunches, and send their kids to public school. Does she have any friends like that?
We moved here relatively recently and are both struggling to fit in socially. I'm less affected because I just go and do my hobbies; she has suggested that the isolation is contributing to her spending. We have a few friends now who also don't seem to be spending large, and that helps. However, she spends time with some girls in the city occasionally. A lot of these are single and waiting for a man with a house and a car to sweep them off their feet, and in the meantime not too concerned about saving money.
But on the whole it's her family and upbringing. She comes from old money that is on its last legs.
I take your point on the whole though. I think it's something we/I can focus on, finding friends who are also more future-focused and frugal.
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