ERE as a couple: getting things or services?

[loutfard]

How do you communicate about getting things or services as a couple?

For my wife and me, it's fairly simple:
- Before buying anything expensive, large or subscription based, we consult each other. No strict rules needed. Last time this happened was when we started the summer house project, almost five years ago.
- We prefer simple, timeless, natural, quality, modular, repairable, privacy and preventative maintenance.
- We prefer alternative sourcing: second hand, family or friends hand-me down, lost-and-found box find, food waste app, free library, volunteering for free concert tickets, diy, ...
- Clothes are mostly my wife's area. She sources mostly used, but buys some new ones every now and then for herself and more rarely for me. She knows my hard rule for my personal clothing is something in means something out, but has a hard time adjusting to that. She obviously organises her personal clothing how she likes.
- Kitchen things. We slowly phase out plastic/BPA/PFAS. Existing or alternatively sourced plastic is still ok for now. I'd like to convince her to apply the something in= something out rule here.
- Food and supplements follows the general line.
- Electronics. I take care of these.
- Finances, utilities, insurance and taxes. I take care of this. Documented and automated to the extent possible. She has the helicopter view and can drill down where she likes.
- Medical and psychological. We have only one brain and body each. Good medical is affordable here, so we just get the best. I try to emphasise the medical advantages of avoiding medical overconsumption. Me solving health issues simply by losing weight definitely opened her eyes.
- Travel and transportation follows the general line. My wife often is often the one to launch trip ideas. Organising the trips is usually on me.
- Housing. Not fully solved yet. We're living at my place that I really like but find quite expensive. We've learned to give it time and not force things.
- I know my wife spends more on clothing, electronics, cosmetics and food than me. I can live with that, and she knows that. Nothing much more to be said.

[7Wannabe5]

Well, in my first marriage which lasted 20 years (or from conception of first child to maturity of second child), I was in charge of the finances, the plans, the kids, the house, medical, projects, travel, food/cooking, etc. etc. My ex was in charge of handing me his paycheck every two weeks and constantly criticizing all my decisions/actions. However, we rarely fought about money* issues, because our cultural backgrounds were very similar, so we basically agreed on the basics of what a lifestyle should look like, and he had no desire to develop the frugal skills necessary to afford/fashion that lifestyle on his slim earnings. He didn't even want to go house shopping with me, just said "Is this the best we can do?" when I presented him with my choice.

So, of course, I made the mistake*** of choosing a man who was waaaaaay too domineering ENXJ as my second" husband", but we also only very rarely fought about money in terms of household budget/spending. However, we did fight about money in the sense that his suggestion that he was going to invest in a new real estate project with his ex-GF as his financial partner, but he would pay me to help with the renovation/negotiations/tenant-relationships (as I had in his previous real estate project) made me livid and directly contributed to my dumping of him. However, upon reflection I realized that I wouldn't have wanted to engage in another real estate project with him even if I had the money to go in as co-investor on the project (and wasn't subject to petty jealousy****), because we were already living far below means, so the project was just in alignment with his desire to further expand his Dominion of (land)Lordly power.

Clearly, I am not one to offer great advice in this realm Carry on.



* we fought about sex instead, because I also had to drive all the action in that department in the face of complaints**

**such as "I am bored with your breasts, because I have seen them too often." see my comments elsewhere on the topic of radical honesty

*** okay, the sex was fantastic, so not a mistake in that department. this is what happens when you go shopping hungry without a list.

****I don't like being subject to any petty emotion, so this contributed to my choice to become polyamorous in practice after I dumped him.

[jacob]

How do you communicate about getting things or services as a couple?

I think this is a very good question. How do couples resolve @#$@#$-issues?

This were the WL table can be most helpful! Not as a normative solution telling you how you must do it. But as a tool that makes it easier to understand and talk to your spouse. Partners are often more than 1 or 2 levels apart and the WL table helps making it easier to relate and see whether one's partner is coming from (Maybe 7wb5 can make a table for sex? Not kidding. I think that the recurring sex/poly-debates could benefit from a table of their own!)

When DW and I met, I think I was WL3/4 and DW was WL1. However, our biggest struggle was over minimalism. "Why do you need so many proverbial egg cookers?!". DW later told me how she wasn't sure our relationship was going to work out. The argument back then was mostly over minimalist issues like "do you really need this ... if only we got rid of this ..." (I think maybe we need an WL minimalist table too!!) (Indeed, we need an WL for every path towards better living #clue)

However, those were the early incompatibilities. These days and also for for the past 10-15 years things have run rather smoothly. We're getting close to being together for 20 years. These days I see DW's WL as around WL5.5-6.5 .. myself around 8-8.5.

The way it works out as that we now both do a lot of DIY stuff and we do a lot of it. DIY is generally considered personal projects even as it is for our common good. Buying tools is considering a personal project (own money) but buying supplies is considered a joint project (our money). So if I buy wood, it's paid by the joint account, but if I buy a saw, it's my money. Similarly, if DW wants to buy a sewing machine, it's her money. But if it's fixing clothes, it's our money. At WL7, this often overlaps. For example, when I make soap-making forms out of scrap wood for her to make soap for us. This is free.

This arrangement resolving the previous arguments. Or rather it changes the nature of the argument.

I think partnering revolves around acting around the average of your respective WL. For us (jacob&DW) it's about DIY and helping each other resolving various (WL6+WL8)/2=WL7 issues. OTOH, combining into a couple also means that I can punt/outsource issues that I would otherwise have to deal with. IOW, I can move beyond them while counting on DW to resolve them.

So point being is that partnering has increased the average WL but is has also increased the range of the couple. It means that I have had to accept solutions that are WL-2 from my perspective. OTOH, insofar I've accepted them, it also means I can focus more on WL+2 solutions from my perspective. Combing those means that the team is operating better than it otherwise would but it also requires more acceptance because of the increased range.

---

Basically, it comes down to the African(that seems very general for a continent that big!!) proverb that "if you want go fast, travel alone, if you want to go far, travel together."

[DutchGirl]

I also don't really have an answer. Just this morning I thought: if my boyfriend and I had truly combined forces on this more than a decade ago, reaching FI status would have happened years ago. But unfortunately at that time I couldn't convince him that ERE was possible for "regular people" like us, so I first had to show him.

So... if you can indeed find common ground and work towards the same goal, you will be very powerful together I think.

We were lucky that neither of us spends a lot, me for ERE reasons, he because he doesn't care about a lot of things. We were also lucky in both being above-average earners, so it's easy to spend less than you earn.

We share a bank account for household expenses (groceries, consumables, utilities) and we both have our own bank accounts for personal expenses. If he wants to buy some electric device or a computer part, it comes from his own money - and since he is always making more than he spends, he gets no comments about these expenses from me. If I want to get a pedicure or want to buy another book on investing or so, it comes from mine - and he won't comment on it because I'm also not going into debt because of it.

We did buy a new house about five years ago. To do that, we had to have some conversations on how much we wanted it and how much we wanted to spend on it, and we're now both happy with the new house and how much it cost. Also, I've advised him to start using the Dutch retirement account with tax benefits and he has followed my advice. So sometimes we can communicate about financial goals . But I don't have the answer.

[suomalainen]

I do not have a good answer here either. While it does probably have something to do with managing different wheaton levels, values and personalities, I think the easiest answer is framing it in the realm of authority and responsibility. If each partner has their own pool of money over which they have exclusive authority, then it resolves most frictions. When there are fully shared finances, I think frictions increase. Examples:

In my first marriage, I was the sole income earner. Our differing values and differing spending habits were incompatible and it eventually ended in divorce, not without a lot of friction leading up to the denouement, partly because communicating across vastly different wheaton levels, personalities and values is very, very difficult. What helped for a little bit was having agreed a pool a money over which she was responsible, so we didn't have to fight over individual decisions, notwithstanding that the fight / friction just shifted from individual items to the dollar amount of the bucket.

In my second marriage, things are different. We are much closer in values, philosophy and ERE-wheaton levels (... having met here in the forum ...). We are also both W-2 income earners. Since getting married, we have kept our finances separate, but given the wide disparity in our incomes, it was natural for me to pay for things I want her to do with me (i.e., travel). Having thought about this more as we've stepped into marriage, I think we stumbled into what is a rather solid arrangement. This appropriately maps the responsibility of the financing for the desires to the desire-r and properly maintains boundaries. Because I am the one who wants to do Thing X, I should be the one would should be responsible to pay for Thing X. DW shouldn't have to "compromise" with me by paying her half of the thing that I'm asking her to do. Her compromise is already in the agreeing to do the thing that I want to do. Same goes the other way - if she wants to do Thing Y and asks me to go, she pays for it. If we both want to do it, we either both pay or I pay (due to aforementioned pay disparity). It really, really, really, really, REALLY helps that we basically want the same things, so there just isn't much to fight about to begin with. We've been together for ... three(!) years now and I can recall exactly one almost-fight about money (who was picking up a $20 restaurant bill).

In short, I highly recommend separate finances. If differing preferences cause frictions, then an easy rule is the desire-r / requestor should always (be willing to) pay. If egalitarianism is a concern, that can be sorted in an income redistribution discussion, but I think it's dumb to repeat that discussion for each purchase that may cause an issue.

TLDR; it's best to be lucky in spousal selection.

[mathiverse]

(Maybe 7wb5 can make a table for sex? Not kidding. I think that the recurring sex/poly-debates could benefit from a table of their own!)

She kinda did already!

Another example:

Level 1= Pre-Sexual
Level 2= Pre-Orgasmic
Level 3= Masturbation
Level 4= Dependent Sex
Optimization= Fucking
Yields and Flows = Strong Sex with Mutuality
Systems/Networks= Self-Aware Sexuality
Level 8 = Transcendent Sex



NOTE: I'm not entirely satisfied with my description of these levels, especially the first 2. One thing I was trying to make obvious was that going up one level also requires referring back one level and integrating. In this hierarchy, the focus shifts from inward/self to outward/partner with each step.

[7Wannabe5]

Sexual Wheaton Levels discussion moved to its own thread.