'AITA for telling my wife that we shouldn't be spending $1100/mo on groceries?' UPDATED 3X

"AITA for telling my wife that we shouldn't be spending $1100/mo on groceries? No kids, just us."

Original post:

I track our accounts in YNAB, and I am meticulous about accurately recording categories. I'm trying to figure out how we can have such a large combined income yet paying off our debt at such a slow rate. I make $110k/yr and she makes $28k/yr. We've been struggling since Oct 2018, when I got a $25k raise, followed by a $30k raise in May 2019, to pay off about $16k in credit card debt.

We've whittled it down down to $12k. We've paid off $4k in debt in the past 15 months despite pulling in a LOT more per year. I'm like...where is my nearly doubled income going?!

It turns out that we are spending $1100/mo on groceries. She does the grocery buying, and it has come up before in our marriage counseling that I shouldn't feel ownership of the money just because I make 4-5 times more than she does - so I always have difficulty expressing to her that she is spending too much on certain things. She gets defensive, saying that she has equal rights to the money.

I agree - it should be shared. She enrolled in a community college class this semester to slowly work toward a BA in Environmental Studies so she can increase her income, but she dropped out this week because the pregnancy symptoms make her too sick to go to class (we are expecting our first this year).

Her parents offered to pay for her degree when she was younger, but she thought it was too hard, so she dropped out. Now we're trying to pay for her degree ourselves, and she doesn't qualify for financial aid due to my high salary, but we have no extra money due to the grocery expenses. And now the money for this semester's class is down the drain.

When I showed her the numbers and said most couples our age live on $400/mo in groceries, and I know we like to eat healthier, but it shouldn't cost an extra $700/mo to eat healthy, she said "I think food should be our biggest expense." I don't disagree, but she's missing the point. We can spend more on groceries to eat healthy without spending $700 more per month than most people.

January 2019 alone was $1450.91 on groceries for the two of us. We spend about $291.14/mo on restaurants as well (another conversation). AITA for suggesting we cut back on the extravagantly priced healthy groceries? On Sunday, she sent me to the store with a list, including 8 beef jerky sticks (think slim jims) but a specific healthy brand. They were $2.29 each, so it was over $18 just for 8 beef jerky sticks.

What do you think? This is what top commenters had to say:

Critical_Liz said:

What the hell is she buying? Organic Quail eggs straight from Vietnam? Even gourmet super organic food shouldn't be THAT much. NTA

eta: I just figured out what she's doing. She's buying stuff and getting cash back, probably the max amount and pocketing it.

[deleted] said:

NTA. Wtf? My immediate family of 6 doesn't spend that much every month. That's insane. Are you sure it's all going to food? That's really sketchy

Qwintex5 said:

NTA. That’s insane. There is no reasonable way to justify that expense as “groceries”. How much alcohol is on your grocery list?

And braven10 said:

NTA. $1100 a month in groceries it outrageous.

Update 1:

A lot of people are asking what the heck she is buying. Since I made the grocery store run on Sunday with a list from her, I have the receipt. I will upload it tonight. I will see if I can find any older receipts.

Update 2:

THE RECEIPT This is from Tuesday, two days ago, when she made a list and asked me to go to the store for her. Keep in mind she's 6 weeks pregnant and in full "I want THIS SPECIFIC FOOD" mode. It was $128 and not really representative of a typical list of ingredients she buys to make excellent homemade dinners. This was definitely a snack run. With some lavender stuff thrown in.

- Sea Salt chips - both a small bag and a large bag (for reasons)

- 6 x coconut water

- 8 x beef sticks

- kombucha (this is mine, it was not on her list)

- cashew milk

- plain yogurt

- cheddar cheese

- 4 x lavender oil (@ $2.50 each it was $15.99...the math does...not check out)

- lavender bath stuff

- B6 vitamins

- bacon turkey sandwich with double bacon double turkey

- salt (she wanted sea salt from the papery cylinder thing, but I got bulk himalayan - I screwed up)

- "citrus popcicles" I did the best I could

- local ground beef

- paleo breakfast sausage

FINAL UPDATE:

When I initially brought this up with her, it was via a text message with a screenshot from YNAB and a long text about how we need to make better purchasing choices. She responded that she doesn't like these long texts about finances in the middle of the day and if I want to discuss these things we can do it in person in the evenings. I get it. I was confrontational (and freaked out, honestly).

So I brought it up last night in person. We had a heart to heart last night after she asked if we could go on a date night tonight (Friday) to go out to a fancy dinner and then dress shopping. I told her that we don't have to become ultra-frugal, we can still make allowances for fun but that we absolutely have to limit our "fun allowances."

We can't impulse buy every little thing we want, which is a habit we've gotten into. I told her she's spend over $1000 on clothing since Dec. 1st and re-iterated the crazy grocery spending (I didn't say crazy though). I told her that we both benefit from paying off our CC debt and that we would both benefit from building an emergency fund and having the peace of mind that we are preparing for retirement.

I think about retirement a lot, and having enough money in retirement, even though we are both only 33-ish, but she is concerned about "living while we're young" and "we don't even know if we'll be alive." I told her that we can at least plan to be alive, and if we somehow make it to retirement age without dying, I don't want to have to work to survive and that it's much easier to put in the hard work when we are young.

We've talked about spending our retirement living out of an RV as campground hosts in national parks, and how that will allow us to live cheaply and fun, but I don't think she understands that we can't be living that rough and tumble life in our 80s if we physically decline, which most people do in their 80s.

Anyway - long story short, and leaving out most of the details of our discussion - she did come away from it recognizing that she needs to be conscious of what she's putting in the cart. She also wants to eliminate our CC debt, but since it's interest-free in the form of balance transfers (18-mo or 21-mo, varies by card), I don't think it seems real to her.

She despises this "debt culture" we have in the U.S., and I do to, and she is finally coming to terms with the fact that if we really want to break the cycle, we have to pay off our debts and BUDGET.

Personally, I've been using for YNAB for 4-5 years as an expense tracker. It's really difficult to budget in YNAB when you have debt. I recently discovered the part of the app where you set a goal and an end date, and it automatically determines how much you should budget in X amount of time to achieve that goal. I think I can use that to pay off the credit cards.

Just put in the date the interest kicks in and make sure it budgets for us to pay enough off every month that the full balance is paid before the 0% interest expires. Because she was receptive to "reducing our fun allowances," I think it's going to be easier to talk about this going forward.

While we are not 100% out of the weeds yet in terms of our spending habits and debt, we've at least resolved to think twice before getting that "want" purchase and even delaying a "need" purchase according to the budget. I'm going to stop simply using YNAB as a tracker and reporting tool and use it as a budgeting tool.

If we go over the grocery budget and still need groceries - sorry, that's coming from the clothing budget or whatever other "envelope" still has money to spare for the month. Thank you everyone for participating in the discussion!

Final note: A lot of you are really, really committed to the idea that she's using cash back at the store. We do the "round up for charity," hence the even dollar amounts. I haven't asked her about this, but I will. I also plan on collecting the receipts so we can better split the categories up into "personal care," "household goods," and "groceries" since a lot of grocery purchases cover multiple categories.