The Ruly Blog

"The comforts of matrimony - a smoky house and scolding wife." Engraving by Robert Sayer (1790). From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Money is a flash point in most marriages. Conflicts over money occur in good times and in bad but many marriages right now are incredibly strained because of financial decisions.

Adding to the economic woes is a broader trend of gender role changes in marriages. Who is the breadwinner any more? Joe Peck’s editorial in The Atlantic has raised a few eyebrows with its dire predictions of the societal impacts of the recession.

The weight of this recession has fallen most heavily upon men, who’ve suffered roughly three-quarters of the 8 million job losses since the beginning of 2008. . . . In November, 19.4 percent of all men in their prime working years, 25 to 54, did not have jobs, the highest figure since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the statistic in 1948. At the time of this writing, it looks possible that within the next few months, for the first time in U.S. history, women will hold a majority of the country’s jobs.

In this respect, the recession has merely intensified a long-standing trend. Broadly speaking, the service sector, which employs relatively more women, is growing, while manufacturing, which employs relatively more men, is shrinking. The net result is that men have been contributing a smaller and smaller share of family income.

–Joel Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010.

Why is money management so hard for couples? At a macro level, it seems so simple. Each partner should chip in a contribution for the basic expenses and share in the excess funds. Suze Orman gives a good explanation here.

But why isn’t it this simple?

Often the basic problem is that the couple doesn’t have enough money to fund all of their desires. Then it is not merely a conversation of budgeting and accounting but a difficult negotiation about who will sacrifice a dream and who gets to indulge. It is always hard to tell someone, especially someone you love, that they can’t have or be what they want because of a lack of money.

The Medians

If our fictional family, the Medians, were to apply Suze Orman’s advice about splitting their money among 3 accounts: his, hers and ours, their current budget requires that all of the money go in the “ours” account, leaving nothing for individual needs. Suppose Mr. Median’s goal is to eventually get a new flat screen TV, add a deck on the house and buy a new car. Suppose Mrs. Median’s goal is to update her wardrobe and hire a personal trainer or maybe she wants to stop working so she can stay home with their children.

Maybe they both have decided that life is short and they want to enjoy it now. Is it OK if they each charge up secret purchases on credit cards? When they finally have “excess” money in their budget how should they share it? Should it be a strict 50/50? Do they take turns funding their respective goals? There isn’t one answer and a lot of complex emotions involved.

How does a real life couple address these issues? Ruly Ruth shares with us.

My “BFFs” on Bravo’s “Housewives of Orange County” are showing us that even in their elite worlds, money and spouses clash/have problems that mirror all economies of life in this crazy financial era. Lynne’s husband hid from her the fact that they’ve been going under for some time now—-crashing to a horrifying halt. Ending their stay in their gorgeous home, and placing them in a condo to rebuild their lives. Even Lynne admits on the show, “We’ve been living beyond our means.”

A 2003 Reader’s Digest poll “How Honest are Couples, Really?“ found that the most frequent form of dishonesty in marriages was the amount each of the partners was spending.

From clothing purchases to haircuts/dye job costs, a new video game, even how often and where we eat out for lunch, are hidden all the time from spouses. In the grand scheme of things these items seem and may be trivial and unimportant. But when budgets are tight, an $80 blouse or even a $20 Walmart splurge can almost break the bank, especially when a couple’s main goal is working to reduce debt and increase savings.

So this brings us to two questions:

1) Why do we buy/splurge on something we know our spouse won’t be happy about? Is it because we don’t realize the price of the item until we reach the cashier? On rare occasion, yes–but the vast majority of time we DO know the approximate or exact transaction price before we pay for an item or service. So why do we still do it?

2) What can we do to reward ourselves without breaking the bank/budget? (Since often shopping is a known temporary stress relief–yet can cause marital stress once the trip is over.)

Part of the problem is education of the other spouse and appreciation of the desired object. For example, my son has a “Cars” polyester inexpensive $35 comforter. My husband was not thrilled when he learned that it was time to upgrade to a new all-cotton queen-sized comforter for about $100. (For some that would be the basement model.) Until he went to Walmart and researched online for himself would he believe me, and allow said purchase. By the way, this convincing took over two days. So I can see if you found this item for $75, which to me would be a great deal, that you would jump on it without taking the time to educate your spouse, that you would go ahead and buy it and pretend you spent $50 or whatever dollar amount would be acceptable. (I am NOT saying you SHOULD do this–just simply stating that I understand and am probably guilty of this in the past myself.)

On the flipside, my husband has wanted a welder and had to explain to me the variances and options of what is turning out to be a spendy purchase. Apparently a butane torch and a piece of metal are not all that are required!

The other issue that goes right along with this is the unwillingness of spending time on said object by the other spouse/partner. For example, my husband doesn’t mind shopping for my son’s bedding, but he does NOT want to go through a mall with me for a new ball gown or new outfits. This is unproductive to him–he’d rather “throw money at the problem” as our Uncle Jimmy would say, than spend his own time researching ball gowns and garment lines. Therefore he doesn’t always understand what makes a $300 dress MUCH better than the okay $150. (By the way—I settled for the $50 post-pregnancy-not-sure-if-I-can-wear-it-again one this year–just wait ‘til next year, honey!)

So—what do we do now? How to alleviate these purchases that cause marital discord….or at least mitigate the sticker-shock? COMMUNICATION! My husband recently told me after 11+ years of marriage he would rather we spend $25 or $100 more on an item we agreed upon rather than me snatching up a “deal” without letting him know about it first. Prior communication would be ideal, but in this world of instantaneous communication via texting and email, it’s very simple to notify your spouse of the unplanned purchase.

However, probably the best idea would be to talk each week (like we try to) and discuss how many lunches out we plan to have, what gifts we need to buy, and any incidentals that are beyond the typical household requirements. Maybe those incidentals can wait until a sale comes around, or at a later time when maybe a bill is paid off fully. This is my Ruly challenge to our readers—communicate with your spouse weekly and see if it makes a difference in your spending. I hope it does! Let us know how it goes.

How do you rate your communication skills with your spouse about money? What lessons have you learned about the marital checkbook? Please share in the comments.

It’s the end of the month and time to recap our discussion of perfectionism.

Arhat (Chinese: luohan), dated 1180 from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. An arhat is a Buddhist deity who who has reached a stage of perfection through study and meditation. Photo by Didactohedron from the Wikimedia Commons.

• We started the month defining perfectionism and dicussing Pavel Somov’s 3 types of perfectionistic hunger.
• The Ruly Challenge this month was to keep a perfectionism diary to make you more aware of the areas in your life you expect perfection.
• The big blizzard of 2010 came to east coast and we discussed snowstorm survival skills, including my 4-year old’s blizzard cupcake recipe.
• We profiled perfectionist extraordinaire Martha Stewart and reviewed her Valentine chocolates.
• We also gave instructions for perfectly fun crayon valentine hearts for kids.
• We contrasted two authors approaches to perfection and happiness, Alice D. Domar’s, Be Happy Without Being Perfect and Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project.
• Joe Hanley gave us the perfect Ruly Mix to remember the 2010 Winter Olympics.
• We discussed lessons learned from professional sports and public safety professions on perfectionism and learned that perfectionists might not make the best law enforcement officers.
• We discussed the roots of perfectionism, the parent-child relationship, and gave suggestions for perfectionist parents and perfectionist kids.
• We discussed perfectionism in the workplace, including how to cope with the perfectionist boss and manage the perfectionist employee.
• Finally, Ruly Ruth gave her perspective on perfectionism in friendships and discussed her love of perfectionistas.

I hope this month’s discussion has been as enlightening for you as it has been for me. Now that I am aware of the attitudes that define perfectionism, I am better able to evaluate numerous situations in my personal and professional life.

One of the most important quotes this month for me came from Hara Estroff Marano’s article, “Pitfalls of Perfectionism” that we discussed in the context of perfectionist parenting.

“[P]erfectionism is a crime against humanity. Adaptability is the characteristic that enables the species to survive—and if there’s one thing perfectionism does, it rigidifies behavior. It constricts people just when the fast-moving world requires more flexibility and comfort with ambiguity than ever. It turns people into success slaves.”

–Hara Estroff Marano, “Pitfalls of Perfectionism”

I still have a lot to think about perfectionism. My current view is that we need “tempered perfectionism” in our lives. While in yoga class last Saturday standing in triangle pose, I had a moment where I thought, “Why am I doing this to myself?” and realized that I must be doing these difficult exercises in the belief that they are somehow the perfect means to strength and flexibility. In the right doses, perfectionism is a powerful motivator. Move a notch beyond the ideal dose of perfectionism, however, and we end up with rigidity, inflexibility, fear of failure and our creative powers suffer.

Going in to the Ruly Challenge this month, I knew that I have a lot of perfectionist tendencies but I was confident that I was confining my perfectionism just to expectations for myself. Wrong! As I reviewed my diary at the end of the month, I was shocked to see how often I was disappointed when I expected other people to act perfectly as well.

A recent conversation with my husband brought home two key examples of perfectionism for us. My husband was playing a game of tag with my youngest daughter around the kitchen island. It was adorable. “Let me grab the video camera!” I said. “No way!” he responded “This kitchen is too much of a mess!” This brought on a semi-heated discussion about perfectionism. I chastised my husband for believing that anyone watching the video would be thinking about what our kitchen looks like rather than enjoying a tender moment between father and daughter. He ultimately agreed that he was being ridiculous. He showed me to be ridiculous too, however, when he suggested we spend a day cleaning the kitchen together and I became upset that he did not offer the “perfect” suggestion of not spending an entire precious weekend day cleaning but rather spending a few hours cleaning and then doing something enjoyable as a family. We both had to laugh and learned a lot.

You see perfectionism at work in today’s business headlines as well. This weekend I was shopping at IKEA, one of my favorite stores. While I was looking up products on their website, I was surprised to find how many recalls their products have had. The current product recall list identifies hazards including “strangulation,” “laceration injury,” “injury to the head,” “choking hazard” and “flammability.” IKEA doesn’t hide these defects and puts a prominent link on the main U.S. page of their website. Strangely, these defects don’t seem to have harmed IKEA in any way. People still trust and like IKEA products very much. The fact that IKEA is so upfront about telling people about defects shows their commitment to safety. Also, IKEA’s products are generally so affordable that it is not a big deal to just throw something out and get a new one in the event of a defect.

Contrast IKEA with the current focus on Toyota’s gas pedal defect. It is my understanding that Toyota is not entirely sure why this defect is occurring and therefore doesn’t really know how to fix it. I find it interesting that people are absolutely unforgiving about this. While it could be that Toyota hid a known defect, it is also possible that something unknown happened or that it will never be fully understood why some cars have the defect and others don’t.

The Toyota recall shows an important aspect of human nature that when large amounts of money are involved more perfectionism is expected. For many people, Toyota’s mistake has become their mistake as well and they may be faced with losing money by purchasing another car or losing money on the sale of their defective car. Threatening people’s financial security puts people into hyper-control mode and perfectionism abounds. It is an important lesson to all of us that we can never guarantee perfection in any situation, even when we spend a lot of money, and that we should always have “Plan B” ready.

Finally, I wanted to give you the update on my amaryllis plants. The perfectionist plant featured in earlier blog posts, collapsed from exhaustion after putting out 4 perfect blooms. It is currently being supported by two wooden stakes and looks spent and sad. The other “Type B” plant has still not flowered yet but it has many lush green healthy leaves and is still going strong. Ruly Ruth might say the Type B plant is boring and the life of the perfectionist plant was dramatic and exciting. She might be right. I think we are all searching for that happy medium between perfectionism and mediocrity.

On Monday, we start a new month and a new theme. Please check back then and in the meantime, please feel free to share in the comments your thoughts on perfectionism.

Have a great weekend!