Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. If you regard it as spending, specifically credit card spending per month. How much?
So individually, I spend probably on average around $2,500, $3,000 a month on my credit card, and she's been closer to $5,000 plus per month. Wait a minute. How much do you actually bring in in actual money every month? Are you all running all of your expenses on a credit card?
Is that what you're doing? Not everything. For instance, we pay our credit card off each month. Our house note is taken out of our checking account, and our house note is really our only reoccurring debt.
What's your take on that? And that's kind of a hard question, so I work on commission, and through a job change a few years ago, so it's been hard for me. My wife asked me the same question. What's a good month?
What's a bad month? Sure. A lower month would probably be around $6,500 to $7,500 take-home, and then a higher month could be closer to, you know, it could be $20,000 plus. It kind of just depends.
So tell me, what's the purpose of the credit cards in all this? Because for me, that just creates, there's already the unknown with the fluctuating income, and then adding the credit cards with no real, feeling like no real boundaries around it. It's just adding more chaos to the equation. So why do you and your wife, and let me also add, you make a fine income.
So what's the purpose of the credit cards, and what is it serving? It's a really good question. I consider getting rid of them. I don't really have a good answer as to why we have them.
I've had a credit card since, I guess, I got out of college, and I've fortunately always been able to manage it. It was as far as I can tell, like, I had to rack up a bunch of debt, so I've just kept the credit card, and my wife and I got married, got her one too. Is it a credit building thing for you, or is it a, we can just spend on here and not really have to think about it until it's time to kind of tally it up sort of thing? If you had to point to one reason, what do you think it is, even if it's not you, your wife's reasoning behind it?
Right. Initially, for me, it was credit building. I just kind of got used to budgeting, comfortable budgeting, with what I knew I was going to spend on my credit card. And I guess I'll point out, a while back, like, years ago, when I originally had this conversation with my wife, she was paying some bills automatically on her card, and I was paying some bills automatically on my card.
We've since changed everything to be auto-drafted from my card, but the majority of it. So a lot of, like, some of my charges are necessities, like, bills, but a credit card. So, okay, so the majority of your $2,500 is your household bills and then a little bit of spending for you. Am I to understand that the $5,000 she's spending per month is just kids' clothes and all the fun things?
Is that what it is? Because you just opened up this call, and it felt like to me, as you're a very kind man, and I think you're a gentleman, but it felt like my wife is blowing a bunch of money on her credit card, and I'm taking care of serious stuff. I got some audience folks that are shaking their head in the lobby. So is that what's going on?
What is she spending the $5,000 on? First of all, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. I would consider, the way I say it is, I think she's buying a lot of things. I hope that this call excites both of us and her to look at more long-term investments.
Is she listening to this call? Well, here's the comment. Oh, she does. Oh, this is correct.
There's no boundaries, right? And by boundaries, I mean there's no budget. There's no plan ahead of the month that says, here's what we're spending our money on, and here's what we're doing with the excess after we've spent our money on the things that we want to. Now, you see what I'm saying?
And so I would say for you guys, I mean, I'm always going to tell people to cut up their credit cards, but for you guys, it's like a no-brainer. I feel like in many ways, it's just creating more chaos around the subject of money, and it's creating a free-for-all because I don't know what the limit is on these credit cards, but clearly it allows you to go out of bounds when she feels like going out of bounds. And the great thing about cold hard cash, Ken, when it's gone, it's gone. There's no more.
However, I think Jade's right. But Taylor, I feel like the bigger issue is the fact that you guys don't have a very clear spending plan every month, and whether you're paying cash for the five grand, as Jade is suggesting, or you put it on a credit card, the stressor for you is how much money you both are spending. Whether she's spending most of it or not, this is a wee thing. I'm assuming you guys are not separate accounts.
You guys are joint banking accounts, and you guys are together on this. Is that true or false? That is true. We were separate when we got married, and I thought it worked fine.
We've since made it joint after our first child. And I do want to mention that we, so I try to max out my 401k. I come closer, you know, a couple years, she's a little short of it. She contributes, you know, she's not maxing it out, but she takes advantage of her company to match.
Now, she's working a little bit less now that we have three children, so she's not going to be able to max out her 401k. Sure, but let me cut to the chips, because we've got about a minute left, and here's what I'm thinking. I want to get Jade's take on this. After listening to all this, you're stressed out about how much she's spending.
And that means you guys got to get on the same page with a real budget, like Jade said, but more importantly, I think this is a marriage conversation about what you're valuing. And we don't have a lot of time to discuss this, but to me, the big question that I have for you is, I want you to give it to me in 10 seconds or less, all right, just spit it out. How much money out of the 5,000 that she's spending do you want to earmark to something else, which is what's created stress for this call? I would like to have at least 2,000 of that earmark towards savings, investing, charitable, other things, not just spending.
That's the starting point, Jade. I want to jump in here, but I think that's where he's got to get to with her. Yeah, and the way to do that right now, you're doing the budget the way I used to do a budget, which is I plan for all the things I know I have to pay for house, car, phones, things like that, but everything else is up for grabs. You need to take that treat yourself money and plan every dollar of that money as well.
And yes, it can include some of the fun things your wife wants to do, but it also needs to include the really important things like planning for the future that you want to do. You guys got to get together and talk this out. Share your feelings around this stuff and then come together with a plan. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.