It can be really tough when spouses aren't on the same page when it comes to money. I know we've had more than our share of arguments about money, and feelings of anger and resentment due to it.
I'm the more frugal one in my relationship, and my husband is the spender. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't blame every last cent of our credit card debt on him. When I'm in a nice mood, I'll say that most of it was from him, because we have put some home improvement and travel expenses on plastic - but if we didn't have to pay off all his debt, we would have had more than enough to pay for those items in cash.
I hate being one of those households that runs paycheck to paycheck. We make more than double the average income (in fact, we just barely break the 100k threshold), and we should have plenty of money. It makes me feel insecure to not have a 3-6 mo's emergency fund to fall back on, and to have monthly payments so high that we would be unable to absorb any sort of major life event (losing a job, having to move, having a child) or serious medical problem. And I'm resentful that so much of what I make goes towards paying off his debts, that he buys all sorts of expensive things and I have to be the responsible one that scrimps & saves or else there wouldn't be enough money to pay back what he spent.
And he's resentful of me, that I'm constantly nagging and disapproving of his spending. He feels that I'm more like a parent, and that I'm not any fun.
We're arguing about our upcoming trip. I only marginally wanted to go in the first place, and would rather have done something else. And he wants to make the trip longer, and spend significantly more money (about 3x as much as we had originally agreed on) to be able to see/do more.
