Aspies and finances

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Hi all, I know I haven't been here in forever but I have a question for you. Do Aspies have trouble with money management?

I am N/T and a fairly good money manager. My husband and I have been married 5 years now. We do pretty well in most things, but in finances, we end up fighting a lot if we talk about it. I have my account and my job, and he has his. What bothers me is that he makes a pretty good amount of money, but always claims to never have any money. The way I look at it, if we could work together, we could actually find a way to save some of that...because we certainly make enough. He also won't buy life insurance...but I would be pretty screwed if something happened to him. I don't feel valued in the finances department and it just bothers me. I am very, very patient with him and I have learned not to say anything to him. I'm just tired of running on nothing when we could potentially save quite a bit. I only work a tiny bit at my current job, so I hardly make anything and what I do make goes towards gifts and vacation. What he makes pays all the bills and buys anything extra. We own a computer repair company and he is EXCELLENT at what he does, never ending stream of customers...in fact, he should be rich. But we are just getting by.

Another issue he has is that he doesn't want to ask his customers for any more money. He doesn't want to raise prices at all. His prices are already VERY very low, and he thinks that by raising the prices, he will ward off customers and have less business. But his customer base is extremely solid and no one is going anywhere. He's had this business for 8 years now and it's thriving. So I'm split between us not having enough money, and him refusing to raise his rates. Recently, we had an emergency where we had to replace our countertops because the ones we had had black mold under them and whatnot because the guy who fixed up this place before we moved in here a year ago did a crap job of it. He asked me to lend him some money...I have a certain amount saved, and I had it there to give him...but it frustrated me, because if he managed well enough, I wouldn't have to give him my money and bandaid it over.

Today, I met with a friend of mine who is also married to an Aspie and we were venting to each other about how frustrating the financial situation is. Her husband does the same thing. He will think that because there is a dollar in their account, it should be spent. He will forget there are bills due and won't care about it so he'll spend it...thus leaving his wife (who is currently on disability due to a bad hip that never got better) to pay the rent from her small disability checks.

My husband has constant cash flow...but instead of putting the money in the bank, he will put it right back on the credit card. The card is always maxed out. We are a young(ish) couple who have hardly any debt so that is a good thing...but ideally I would like to see us using REAL money from our accounts for our food, gas, and bills. I understand using the card sometimes, but that thing is a life line for him, and if something happened to him, it doesn't have my name on it so I wouldn't be able to use it. We married young, and I never went to college because I could never afford it, so I don't have any real skill yet...I'm working on that, but I wish he'd care enough to save. We moved last year, and somehow got 800 dollars back from our closing. He put it in an account and told me he wasn't going to touch it. Solemnly swore. And usually he's dead serious. But alas...he broke a guy's laptop, and had to replace it, so instead of the business eating up that money, our personal savings went down the drain. And he didn't tell me that he did it either until I wanted to pull some out for an emergency.

What do you think? What have you experienced? I am not angry at him for it, but I would like to know if there is a different way to approach thinking about this or talking to him about it. We are married, so...together...and yet the finances, he won't have anything to do with me helping him and yet we could be so much better off. He can't even find money to send me to a proper doctor to help with my back issues (part of the reason why I don't work full time is because I have some chronic back pain/issues that can be resolved with a good chiropractor over time, I believe.) And he won't get life insurance which is only 20 bucks a month but he says he can't afford it. It's only frustrating because I am fairly organized and would rather live without running up the credit card all the time.

I suck at finances, but I'm better at it than my husband. He makes the money, I pay the bills. We are both horrible spenders. Charge accounts? Not quite maxed but almost. I'm a hoarder and an impulsive buyer. He won't tell me "no" to something because he thinks it makes me happy. And he feels like a failure if he can't buy me things or eat out. We're both like kids, give a kid $5 and they'll spend it on toys or junk food, not put it in the piggy bank.

I am an Aspie, pretty sure hubby is somewhere on the scale as well but he's never been tested. I got an inheritance from my grandmother and all we managed to pay off was our car and some medical bills. Since then we've blown through it.

And being a hoarder I can't sell anything. I end up throwing perfectly good stuff away or giving it to charity rather than selling. Or we get another storage unit. I've never pawned anything, I wonder if that's a way to go.

I try to talk to my husband about the spending or hoarding, he makes the same excuses I do. And what's worse, he'll get rid of his stuff (tools, etc.) before he'd help me get rid of some of my junk.

I grew up poor and hardly ever got anything new. Hubby grew up well off and never had used. We're a disaster with money.

I am not independent, but I do a good job taking care of my money I get. I always have some saved and spend some.

i try to save but stuff happens.

I used to be fairly bad with money. However, I have learned to manage money and my life better as time has gone on. I have also learned to manage my (minor) hoarding tendencies as well since, in my case, they were interrelated. I would constantly bite off more projects than I could realistically finish. I changed that tendency by committing myself to actually completing one all the way through. It taught me how much work was involved and how much time was too. No longer were they like Schrodenger's cat. I had opened the box and found the cat quite dead indeed. This changed my outlook and now I only take things in that are immediately necessary and that I can complete in a reasonable amount of time. It taught me that money is a precious commodity not to be wasted. While I also have done some prepping, I do so only with things that store well and that add to my ability to survive a natural disaster, like canned foods, ramen, rice, pasta and a camping stove. I didn't buy a ton of stuff. I bought enough to fill two shelving units and called it good.

As far as the computer repair thing goes, you have to get him to both see the value of money and the value of his time. This means he needs to see it in larger terms. Part of the price a business charges is to cover unexpected expenses and mistakes. This means a business always has to run a surplus to survive. What he needs to do is pay himself a regular salary out of the gross and put the rest away. He needs to figure out what his time is worth to him and strive to reach that amount of pay for all of the hours spent at work, including the down time. Why? The time is still being dedicated to work and needs to provide for the family's needs. After all, if you work a regular job and no work comes in, your employer cannot require you to stay on the premises off the clock without pay. No one would stand for that and neither should an independent business owner. So, if your time is worth $20 an hour to you and you spend 8 hours a day at work, you need to bring in $160 a day on average. This means charging an amount that lets you average that over the course of a week. It may only take you an hour to sort a virus in someone's computer, but if you had to wait 3 hours for that business to come in, then the price should be at least $60. It doesn't matter that it only took you a few minutes to clear it, it took you three hours of productive time to finish it. The customer needs to pay you for your idle time. Without that idle time, your service would not be available to them and so it is part of the price of the service.

This is just personal stuff from a high schooler; but I can relate how the Aspies feel.

Generally, at least in my case, haven't gotten any real-life examples aside from myself, we find it generally difficult to organize stuff. Chances are that we'll end up spending it, because our minds are subconsciously telling us it's going to end up far too complex later if we don't, and they're generally trying to avoid some form of a Meltdown in a later situation.

Just my stance on it though.

I think the best way is to approach him the way he will best take it: run him through the numbers. A logical approach will always work. It's even better if perhaps you two could go to a personal finance counselor so a pro can show him how much he could be saving if he changed some of his habits (which is the problem: habit).

As for him not saving... that's something he really needs wake up to. You two will need a big cash buffer for when kids come around and medical stuff/school..college... well you get the idea. Present that to him as an unavoidable and critical future expense that needs to be prepared for.