Advice about spouse who can’t handle money, mother who spends too much, and

Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Athena and Elizabeth here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Pay Dirt,

My spouse is an amazing, justice-seeking, do-good-in-the world professional who makes a surprisingly decent living considering the good she does. And she is absolutely murder on our finances. So much of my life consists of asking her to put her earnings in our joint account (she has a private practice, so it’s not a direct deposit situation), asking her to do her billing, begging her not to use the credit card we agreed not to use (or at least to tell me if she’s using it), paying parking tickets she’s incurred—the list goes on. All this is part of a broader struggle she has getting certain important things in their life and mine done that has financially torpedoed us at regular intervals. I can’t remember the last time she saw a doctor. Years ago, she forgot to sign up for her free university health insurance, and only realized it after our first baby was on the way. It was a mess.

These days we both make about the same amount, which is fantastic. But I only recently found that out when spouse did her bills for the entire year, realizing that there were tens of thousands of dollars that should have gone to our family income. I have been scrimping, juggling credit card balances, and certainly not contributing to my own pension because I had no idea that money was there. Because my spouse has clients, there are times when less income will come in, or she’ll part ways entirely with them. Since finances are completely my job, I’ve begged her to let me know how much money to expect, or to sit down together to plan. So far, no dice.

I am at the end of my rope. I love this person. We’ve worked towards having a great relationship after a long journey (not least because of these issues), and in many ways it’s there, but this is just killing me. I’ve thought about what it might look like to split our finances, but I’m worried that that might actually occasion even more labor on my end—cajoling her to pay, contribute, etc. I currently pay and coordinate all our bills. She takes the lead on taxes, largely because the most complicated part is her practice. I also hate doing them, and am not great at it.

I think I’ve got her to finally sign onto the idea of a budget (I used to have one; she thought they were ridiculous), but it’s going to be me looking after things. Is there any way of reducing the sheer amount of work that I have to put into this, and the friction between us that results? It makes me feel awful psychologically, and nervous financially. How can I make sure our financial future isn’t a magic eight ball?

—Till Death Do Us Part, and This Might Kill Me

Dear Till Death Do Us Part,

You probably don’t need me to tell you that fights about money are a major reason why people go into couples counseling, but they are is, and counseling can help. If nothing else, it will help you talk through the ways that her failure to take responsibility on this front is causing friction in the marriage and stressing you out.

Your spouse’s struggle with managing her money may be a function of attentional problems, which often manifest as things like being disorganized with administrative tasks, a lack of attention to detail, procrastination on arranging occasional, but important, medical appointments—a lot of the issues you describe in your letter. (ADHD in women is harder to diagnose than in men, because women are  less likely to have hyperactivity as a symptom.) If you think that might be the case, it might also be helpful for her to be screened for it, because there are specific strategies that help people with attentional problems function better in areas like managing money.

Lastly, there are plenty of systems that allow for automatic payments, including recurring payments from one bank account to another. Many consumer banks offer these things as features of online banking services. Most bills can also be automated. Not everything can be (parking tickets, for example) but there are tools that can help you centralize and organize this process so you don’t have to do as much of the heavy lifting. Personal finance software (like Quicken or Mint) can also help with this.

I wish I could say that you can have one magic bullet talk with your spouse and she’ll turn things around, but it sounds like her behavior on this front is habitual and something she struggles with, so I think finding out whether she needs treatment is important. In the meantime, it might be worth spending a little money to use a personal bookkeeping service that will stay on top of these things…