need to vent....

Psych, if he was that righteous, he would have returned that money by now. Dont you think so?

Because, only you know your H the best. From your posts, he seems to be slacking in the finance dept. And what you are going to try, is the first of its kind, between you and your H, right? So you cannot be sure, that he would agree to it. After all, that takes away a lot of his financial freedom!

 

If your DH is smart ( I am pretty sure he is ) he will immediately realize this idea is a death blow to his spending more than he should be . It will mean he will have to say no to his parents/Sisters more often than he wishes to.
That is not going in easy. He will resist. Or he will accept easily but not follow through. You will have a few battles up ahead making sure he sticks to the plan.That is going to be hard enough. Making him pay for things in the past will add to the fights and wont really help you to focus on the now.

 

psych,

I havent read the entire thread but I definitely want to mention one thing. You are a working woman, you earn your own money, you sure as heck do not need your husband's 'permision' or agreement to purchase those items that you deem necessary for your home or for your personal use. This is a fatal flaw in us women. We talk and discuss before we take action causing ourselves endless problems. I used to do this too and I cant tell you how long the unnecessary arguments would last. Once we stood in the middle of costco and argued for 1 hour because I wanted a particular type of blender. It was ridiculous! And senseless because how can one justify to someone who doesnt even cook what you as a cook need? Anyway, finally I wised up and started going on my own and purchasing whatever I need. My weakness is small kitchen appliances Its your money and you are buying waht you want, this shd not be a subject for discussion. Same way, you dont need to justify to him about what exercise equipment you need. Dont even tell him. just buy it and use it. If he asks that may be a good time to slowly bring in some of the issues you have with unilateral expenditure.

 

LOL on the costco one ..but remember this approach cuts both ways. They will also have discretionary spending. If we are ok with that then its good.

 

Excuse me....as far as I have seen, every DIL, at least most of DILs in USA (from India, do not know much about Americans) has the same complaint..husbands spending for their parents or sibblings. Every DIL has stories...in the end this is the gist. Why?
DILs in India.......I have not seen many complaining like this, at least on money issue. they complain about problems arising out of living in close proximity.I used to think, because they are living together or in close proximity these problems arise.They visit each other more often than those who are in US.Those visiting US DILs come to India only for shopping. meeting relatives and euphoria of meeting people is over generally in two or three days. Rest of the time is spent either in jewellery or clothes shops.If someone calls to meet them...same reply comes "they went for shopping". But even after staying thousands of miles away...they have problems with their in laws. Human phschylogy is strange. I visit one more site....they are also full of complaints from US based DILs against in laws.

 

Shymala, DIL living in India or in US have same thoughts same feelings. "Earn Money Save For Your Family(Wife, Husband and their Kids)"

I heard same sort of complaints from both DIL in both US and India. Don't think that women live in US have lots of luxury life. We have lots of privacy and freedom but not luxury life. We need to cook by ourselves, clean, drop kids to day care or school, go to office , work, again come back, pick up, do grocery shopping, again cooking, cleaning, spending time with kids, and again during weeks laundry, ironing.. lots and lots of work. I don't say in India life is easy but you can always have helper. In india, we can have driver to pick up and drop, can have maids to help cooking, cleaning , washing, and you can do everything if you spend few hundred rupees but if we spend few hundred dollar to have these luxury then finally we will end with no money to pay the rent and we will not have money to spend and buy gifts for MIL, BIL, SIL, FIL . To gift all loved ones in India, we live happy life in US without luxury but definitely living in US is peaceful as no relatives trouble.
When we come to India, yes we do lots of shopping I agree, because that's the time we buy some indian clothes, indian style jewels, ranganatham street ornamets, we are not that rich to buy these stuff in US as its too expensive here.. also, we buy groceries for a year, and do many shopping to minimize the cost of living in US for rest of the year. but women in india go for shopping weekly once or monthly once to buy whatever they like( even i was like this when i was in India but after coming US i have cut down lots of my own expenses).
Again back to psych, I see many guys especially south indian guys (ie. tamilnadu, andra) are like this, they always want their family to be happy by getting gifts all time, am not against to that, but they have to think WIFE is also part of his family.