This is the long way of answering your question ... it gets there at the bottom, but there's a lot that you can do first, to increase the chances of success with your DH ... hear me out!

Ok, I suggest:-

1. start a budget - a full, warts and all budget. use your receipts or credit card statements of whatever for all the different things you spend over the course of a year. And I mean everything - make sure you don't forget annual things or odd things, like car rego or mail redirection services, etc. Categories to get you started:

Rent/mortgage, bills (all utilities, rates, body corporate, agents fees, whatever), petrol, insurance (all of them - house, car, life, health, whatever), car stuff (services, mechanics, oil, cleaning, tyres, rego), train tickets, food, clothes, uni or other educational stuff, books, presents (Christmas, birthdays, weddings, housewarming - these add up too!), alcohol, cigarettes, magizines, gym or other memberships, going out (movies, meals, takeout, renting DVDs, going to the pool, whatever), cleaning products, gardening stuff, clothes and shoes, daycare or babysitting, stuff for your dog (food, vet, shots, collars, toys, clipping, registration, everything...), mobile credit, medical (doctors fees, medicine, vitamins, physio, bandaids - again, EVERYTHING). Also put in an allowance for general savings (I suggest 10-20% of your after tax income) and a further "baby savings" amount to get a bit of a nest egg together for when you need to buy things for your upcoming bundle of joy.

Open up ING or similar accounts, so the two savings amounts get deducted from your income straight away, so there can be no temptation to see those funds as being "available" in any way shape or form.

Be brutal, and err on the side of caution - if last year you spent $700 keeping the car up but the year before it was $1000, budget for $1000.

And have a think about all the other little things which crop up but aren't intended - how often do you get fines (whether a $3 library or video store fine, or a $500 parking/speeding fine, overlimit fees, interest charges on your credit card) because all those add up really quickly on a tight budget. What realistically gets spent over the year?

2. using all your hard work from above, make a budget for how much you need to set aside every pay day (whether it's weekly, fortnightly or monthly) to make sure over 12 months you have enough for everything - putting aside extra for any annual amounts which you need to get to quicker (eg: if your car insurance is due in Feb, you obviously can't set up your budget so that it's all there at the end of December 2012 ... you need to have it by Feb, and *then* you can go back to just the amount you'll need per annum.

3. once you've got your budget set up, look at it critically, with a fine tooth comb ... what really should you not be spending that much on? Are there lots of late fees or overlimit fees? can you orgnaise things better, so that you can avoid those? Even if you're getting just one overlimit fee every 4 months, that's $100 a year! Personally, I'd rather get a new dress with matching shoes ... you? and are you spending more on takeout than you reaslised? or does pay tv end up being not really worth it, if you're struggling with the more essential elements? what can you shop around for? we found that if we bought our dogs' worming etc pills from our local stockist, it was about 45% the cost of it from the vet ... are there little areas where you can tighten up your belt? When you go to Costco, do you end up buying the 12 things you needed (at niftily reduced prices) but also end up with your loving DH having snuck in 4 books you didn't need, and a throwrug? Or do you find that food goes off in your fridge, and maybe you need to buy less? Do you end up spending more on presents than you intend to? If you mean to spend $50 but then buy something for $60 and wrapping paper for $4 and a gift bag for $5 and a card for $5, and $4.50 for parking, and you bought a frappachino and bagel while you were out for $10, you've spent almost $100 ... again, this might seem really stupid and obvious, but it can be really surprising (for your DH more than you, probably!) to see where it all goes ...

I did this with DH years ago (we were 18 and had just started living together, and as far as he was concerned budget was the 4 letter word straight from the pit of despair - but I lived by one, and I got all his receipts and showed him how he'd spent $191 on MacDonalds in the past month ... I kid you not. And that's even worse when you consider he was earning something like $8.50 an hour less tax at the time, and only got Maccas on his way to or from work or Tafe - when he could have got a free staff meal or taken food from home ...!

4. make sure that in the budget there is an allowance for each of you to have a little pocketmoney. and I mean a little - DH and I used to get $5 each a week, and that has crept up to $10 a week. It is for things like buying lunch (as there is no excuse not to pre make it and take it from home, in our house!) or a magazine (me) or a scratchie (DH) or anything else not essential. And an awful lot of incidental spending is not essential ... but you can't have a realistic budget without a little slush money - we are grown ups, and we do need to know that we can go and buy a coffee or a newspaper if we want to ... or we can save it up for a few weeks, and buy a CD ... a friend of mine spends all his pocket money on cigarettes - he's usuing it as an incentive to quit ... as there's no way on God's great earth that his smokes money is coming out of their household budget!

5. once you've got your no holds barred budget drawn up, and you've had a think about where you (as a family - not just you personally!) can pull the purse strings a little tighter, sit down with your DH, and go through it with him. Show him where the money is going, and where you can be in 3 months/6 months/12 months if you stick to the realistic budget you've figured out.

ask him where else he thinks you guys can shave a bit off, together. and what you both would like to do with the savings ... eg: if we save $x by [date] then we'll have enough to go away to [wherever] for x nights, and will still have $x saved! yay us! or you'll have enough money for a new bigger bed, or couch, or TV, or gym membership, or laptop, or whatever takes your fancy ...

or the savings themselves, if it's for a baby or a home deposit or something might be enough of a reward on its own, without needing a payoff alongside it.

6. agree with your DH that you both will stick to the budget, and that you both will only ever spend what you already have.

7. every cent you spend must be recorded. seriously. you make a 50c phone call from the station? or get a potato cake on the way home? write it down, so it can get included on the budget. This is really important for the first 1-3 months, to see where the $$ goes when you're not both paying attention ... because realistically, if you both keep your receipts and write down anything you spend, then your salary minus your receipts should equal your bank balance plus your wallets. If not, something has slipped, and you need to know what it is ...

But it also makes you think twice about purchases. If you DH is intending to buy x, and he knows that is going to come out of the budget category y, there's a little bit of accountability. Eg: he sees some nice carseat covers, and he wants to buy them. He can - but they are either going to come out of the "car" budget (leaving less money for repairs, etc), or his "Christmas/birthday present" budget, or he needs to have enough pocket money to pay for it (in advance - this isn't a mortgage!! again - only ever spend what you already have). so he thinks twice about it ... maybe he buys it, maybe he doesn't ... but it makes him think.

realistically, you are likely going to need (and want) to do all the entries for a while ... do it every day, so you can get the receipts from him every day, so you can see early on in the piece whether your budget is realistic, and whether you and your DH are both coping with it.

and also because your DH is (hopefully) having an enormous mind shift in terms of his attitudes towards money - when he starts to understand the benefit of having a decent budget that you stick to, hopefully he will do an equal share of the work to maintain it!! But until then, you doing it is the only realistic way to get it to be in place, up to date, as an accurate reflection of your households income and expenses ...


It's not easy, but it's worth the effort - and hopefully if your DH starts getting it, participating, and you're both gettnig the benefit from it, you won't actually need to do it long term ...