Knowing When To Say “No” To Certain Spending

If you have been following these posts for awhile, you have seen us talk about many different topics on money. One of the one’s we get the most feedback on are the posts about being a spender or a saver. Obviously, spending money is always going to be the easier avenue to take and saving is much tougher for them. For savers, the saving money is by far the easiest and the spending is stressful. However, there comes a point both individual type’s lives where the opposite trait sneaks in. The saver wants to spend, and the spender wants to save. For this post, we will discuss the saver wanting to spend money.

The Issue

The idea of savers always wanting to save money is realistic. However, it does not detract of the desires for things. I myself am a devout saver. I hate spending a bunch of money if we don’t have to. Although, I am human. This means there are still many different desires for which I want to buy something. The difference with this is, I am also frugal. So, although I want to buy something, I hardly ever do. The problem arises when the desire becomes greater than my want to save. Thus, I am rearing to spend money for the thing I want and nothing seems to be able to get in my way!

The Immediate problem

When you are the saver in a relationship and are married to a spender, the logical part of your relationship disappears. Suddenly you are in a dangerous place of spending money because you both are aligned. It becomes very easy to over spend without fully grasping what is going on. This is especially troublesome around the holidays. You both get excited to give gifts to others and you end up spending way more money than you both had originally wanted. Thus, creating a deficit in your budget.

Protecting Yourself

When you both are saying yes to spending money you are in a dangerous spot. One of you has had a temporary lapse in judgement and now you are spending more than you should. I myself have gone through this. At different times Jordan and I have spent far more than we should have. However, we finally spotted this and took action. Although it took a great deal of practice, we have learned to almost switch places when this happens. For example, I have been wanting a new TV for years. This year we have planned for it, but we also want to get some other tech stuff. So as we were going through the costs and the items, I was excited to get ALL of it and spend a ton of money. Luckily, Jordan stepped in and mentioned we should be smart and not spend a lot and only get the items planned for. Now, four years ago, that conversation would have gone much differently. However, today we have learned to allow for logic to set in when the other one is not thinking straight.

There is nothing wrong with spending money. Especially when you are spending it on things you probably don’t need to be. Yet, if you are taking the extended time to plan for something ridiculous, it makes sense to follow through with it. Just don’t get too crazy and spend a ton of money.