9 ways to rein in a spendthrift spouse

Watch your words

Ask a spender: the words "budget," "spending plan" and "save" actually mean "sacrifice," "deprivation" and "death."

OK, maybe not "death" -- just the end to life as he knows it.

What you want to do is get across the real goal of budgeting. That is to make sure you're spending money on the things you really want -- not letting it dribble away on stuff that isn't that important to you.

Set your goals

Discuss, together, what you really want out of life, but take the discussion beyond the dry words ("retirement," "new house," "college fund"). Talk about how you want to feel about money in five years, 10 years, 30 years. A spender who feels that his credit card gives him freedom might respond to the idea of financial freedom -- a life free from stress and worry about money.

But he's also going to need some concrete, achievable short-term goals as well as loftier long-term aims. Make sure your goal list has a reasonable mix of the two.

Get some inspirational reading

Good books can get you, ahem, on the same page. Inspirational books recommended by readers on the Your Money message board include:

• "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Readers call this book "revolutionary;" it almost certainly will change the way you and your partner think about finances.

• "Mary Hunt's Debt-Proof Living, " by Mary Hunt. A former overspender who was $100,000 in debt chronicles her road to recovery with lots of helpful tips.

• "Personal Finance for Dummies" by Eric Tyson. One of the most readable (and often funny) general personal finance guides on the market.

Alison gave her fiancé "Personal Finance for Dummies," and together they read "Your Money or Your Life." The discussions that followed made her so hopeful about the future that she's stashed a hard-core savers' tome -- "The Complete Tightwad Gazette" by frugality expert Amy Dacyczyn -- in the bathroom "in the chance that he might pick it up and glance through it."

(Note: This is exactly the kind of book that will send an unreformed spender screaming for the hills. So, wait until you're making good progress before trying this at home.)

Add it up

Spenders tend to be present-tense kind of people -- they live more for the moment than for tomorrow. That's why a $4 coffee break or a $10 lunch doesn't seem like a big deal to them: It doesn't seem like that much money in the scheme of things.

"My fiancée just didn't realize how eating lunches, buying clothes and shoes, and whatever else added up so quickly," Brown said. "After all, it was only $8 here, $24 there."

You can help by showing the bigger picture of how much those little indulgences really cost over time. That the $4 daily coffee, for example, translates into $1,456 a year.

• Talk back: Is your mate cheating on you financially?

One poster on the Your Money message board had a husband who thought nothing of treating family and friends to meals two to four times a week -- at $70 a pop. She showed him how his generosity was costing the family up to $15,000 a year. He's since agreed to trim back to one or two times a month, while she's hosting more dinner parties at home. He still gets to be generous and social, and they get to have more money in the bank.

If you have personal finance software, you can print out reports showing your yearly spending in all categories. That can help you identify, together, areas to cut back.

Have 'mad money' accounts

You can organize your finances any number of ways, but the method that seems to work best with spenders is the "joint and separate" plan.

You create a joint account into which your paychecks are deposited and from which all your joint bills are paid. (The saver probably will be responsible for actually paying bills; most couples find their financial life works more smoothly when one partner takes over this function.) Then each of you gets an "allowance" that's routed to your separate bank accounts. Your bank can help you set this up so it happens automatically.

That gives both partners some "mad money" that they can spend as they want, without accounting to anyone.

You can also reverse this process, by depositing paychecks into separate accounts and transferring an agreed-upon amount into a joint account for bill paying. That's what Brown did with his fiancée.

"For the first couple of months after we chose to use this system, she had zero money left over. As she realized how fast it disappeared, I showed her how to budget, how to see where her money is going," Brown said.

Pick a number

Many couples have a "talk to me" limit.

If a purchase for the household isn't made with "mad money" and is above a certain dollar limit, the partners have to discuss and agree first. If money is tight, the limit might be as low as $10 or $20, but many couples find $50 or $100 is fine.

Don't despair

Most marital money problems are fixable with enough patience and time. You just may need lots of both.

One reader on the Your Money board confessed to years of overspending before a serious illness put her life in perspective for her. "I'm so glad that my husband was smart enough to take as much control over our money as possible and patient enough to love me while I was being stupid," she wrote.

Of course, you may need some extra help if your partner:

• Has a gambling problem. Counseling or participation in a 12-step program like Gamblers Anonymous may be in order.

• Promises to change, seems to want to change but doesn't change. If someone is aware of a problem, agrees to a solution and then repeatedly falls short, deeper issues need to be addressed. Once again, counseling and a program like Debtors Anonymous may help.

• Really and truly doesn't want to change. Your spender may go underground by hiding bills or opening secret accounts. Counseling is worth a shot, but a spender who absolutely refuses to compromise can sink a couple's financial ship. You may need to take legal steps to separate your finances if you want to stay married. This isn't a do-it-yourself project or one that's easily accomplished. You'll need to consult an attorney about the rules for your state and be vigilant about keeping everything separate from now on.

Liz Pulliam Weston is the Web's most-read personal-finance writer. She is the author of several books, most recently "Your Credit Score: Your Money & What's at Stake." Weston’s award-winning columns appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.

Updated June 2, 2009

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