How do I (29 M) tell my GF (27 F) she is bad with money?
So we are together for more than 4 years, and during all that time my GF is making significantly less money than me (like, for a long time it was half the money I make).
And I’m not even making that much, maybe an average pay. Because of this for these past years I wasn’t really able to be financially stable, so to say, because it was always like “please buy me a coffee” or “please give me gas money” or “please give me 10$ for something”.
for a long time I also had to carry a bigger part of food spendings (we live together), so every month I’m down to square one, with almost no savings and nothing even bought for myself. I don’t really need lots of stuff, but damn, I want to treat myself once in a while.
With time I developed a system for us to spend only a fixed amount of money on groceries and it was really working. So I am more or less aware of my incomes and spendings, but still she was regularly asking for money here and there.
Recently she got a good new job which pays more (still less than I make but with short term prospects of making more than me), and I was kind of relieved,
I managed to save up some money in the past few months and I was planning to buy some nice things for myself and for the new apartment that we are moving into.
But here comes the moving day (right in the beginning of a new month so she got her paycheck like 1-2 weeks ago) and she says she has no money again, so I had to pay almost my full monthly pay for the rent, advance and all that crap.
Keep in mind, we were talking about moving and actively looking for an apartment for a month minimum, so she was aware that we were going to move and pay that much money at once. So now she owes me half of her paycheck as well, so next month she’s gonna be broke again. So the cycle continues.
That said, she never holds back in spending money not even for herself, but for everyone else. Like, we are going for a dinner to my parents, she buys candy for the kids, wine for mom, groceries to cook something for them. Sometimes she even buys something for me, something I don’t necessarily need.
Every time I start even a remote conversation about the money and spending, not even insinuating that she is broke again and I have to carry us through with rent and etc, she just gets pissed at me and says something like “you always tell me how stupid I am with my money”.
We had one of these conversations yesterday and it was the same thing. After all these years she says that she tries to keep it together with her spendings, but for the love of god I can’t see it.
Fuck man, I’m really close to breaking up with her just over this, I love her, but I want to buy things for myself and just feel stable once for 4 years of this and not grab money from my savings account (which is miserable as is) just to get by.