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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2476 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 2023

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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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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Man I feel your pain, my girlfriend is certainly a spendthrift, even if both of our finances are in the red, it's really not a big deal for me since my family is like 1 or 2 OOM richer.

At least she's self-aware about it, and has already committed to giving me control of the purse-strings when we're making actually reasonable salaries abroad or getting married.

Is there some way to automatically shift the money you're budgeted to spend to a different account, so that it can't be mixed up with the discretionary spend? You can frame it as a way for her to control herself better, if you guys can both agree that dipping into the joint savings account should require both your approvals.

Your family is up to 100 times richer than your girlfriend's? India is an unequal place, but that still seems pretty large, especially since you've noted you're far from very rich (at least by Western standards).

Sure, now that I think about it, two OOM is probably an exaggeration, it's closer to like 10-30 times.

Is there some way to automatically shift the money you're budgeted to spend to a different account, so that it can't be mixed up with the discretionary spend?

This is what I see as the next step, but getting there without her feeling like I'm controlling her is going to be difficult.

Also, she's going to need a new phone soon (she's somewhat locked into iPhone out of habit). Realistically that would mean saving up now. What am I going to do, tell her she has to be phoneless until she saves up the money?

I see phones as being so important both as an essential and for QOL that I wouldn't begrudge the additional expense, but I'm sure you have your own priorities, at least if her current phone is in working condition.

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