Being worthy of money...marital argument #4

One huge difference between cheap and frugal people is - cheap people never feel like they are worthy of money thus are unable to spend money; while frugal people know they are but choose not to spend it.

DH's family are the type of people who lived without. Though they had money they severly limited their spending to the point where they caused their children to feel unworth of money. How so? Well they had one of anything and never more than one. Which is why if I buy more than 1 item at a time (even a sale) DH gets mad. We argue, and he doesn't want me to buy it. I've decided since couponing and even before that you buy things when on sale that you use. I agreed not to be a hoarder, but he has to agree that buying 5 bottles of tomato sauce on sale is not being a spendthrift.

Also DH's parents limited clothing wear and food. They ate what was served and no more. They could eat what was in the cabinets, but food was always portioned out. Yes great for weight control, and probably why I need to lose 20 lbs, but seriously I love food. I enjoy going to the fridge and pulling out whatever I want to eat. I also believe that you can own more than 7 days worth of clothes, DH used to own one weeks worth of clothes, and not buy more until there were holes. Also he patched some of his clothes. Even now he's got 2 weeks worth of clothes, only replaced when there are holes and that's only because we don't have a sewing machine.

I don't like this feeling of always being deprived. I enjoy spending money, but DH never feels worthy of anything. If I demand we buy something, he's happy. For example I demanded we buy dishes, pots, pans, etc after we got married and had GC to macy's. He didn't want to, felt it was very expensive even though we registered. Well he loves them and we use them almost everyday. Now MIL came to visit last year and what happened? She critisized us for buying new pots, pans, dishes and said we were obviously spending too much of our money and not saving enough.

She said that it was shameful we had 10 place setting and a new pots and pans set. Mind you we had NEVER in 6, almost 7 years bought anything before. We had used my inherited set from my old roommates, and had their unmatched dishes. And my husband loves to cook, we have a used bread maker, pasta maker, used wine glasses all from friends. But we wanted something we liked and picked out. After that DH complained that we had "wasted" money on our kitchen stuff.

It's just things like that we've been working on since meeting. I just sometimes get really angry when my in-laws are so critical. We were also critisized about thinking about getting a 30 year mortgage.

But I guess this is why I hate the idea of being cheap. Cheap people make the lives of others miserable. They make other feel guilty for spending money. They make others feel like they aren't worthy of $$. They make others feel selfish, spendy for buying anything. So hopefully we'll change this vicious cycle in this generation. And DH will start to enjoy our money and ignore his parents.

By the way, I'm rubbing off on them. My in-laws decided to buy a new couch after 30+ years. They got rid of their IKEA couch they had since before DH was born. Wowsa! I think yet another argument I'm winning.

And this feeling of spendiness..well it's probably why DH won't let me just buy a GPS. He feels it's a huge waste of money and I can only imagine what my MIL will say.