Because the husband earns the pay check should he have the final say in how the family income is spent?
A wife who thinks the answer should be “No” but has found that in her marriage it is “Yes,” writes to me:
“Shouldn’t the things a wife considers important carry as much weight as the things the husband thinks are absolute necessities?
“In our case it is a good, well-furnished home versus expensive vacations, a big car, equipment for any hobby that momentarily catches my husband’s fancy.
“We have the big car. We take expensive trips. My husband never hesitates to spend money for anything that he wants for himself. But we can never ‘afford’ improvements cm our house. When I mention that the furniture is shabby. I’m told it will just have to do.
“Yet if we saved in other ways we could have some of the things that seem important to me, and which I think would realty mean more to us as a family, since our children are reaching the age where the kind of home they have is important.”
It does sound as though things are a bit one-sided in your family, if your husband always has the final say-so in how the money is spent.
Don’t start fighting over money, though, to get your way. It won’t be worth it, even if you win.
Try to get your husband interested in how your home looks by using a little feminine psychology. You might, for instance, try inviting someone he considers important to dinner and before the guest arrives remarking that you wish you could afford to fix up the living room a bit. He’ll see how it looks more clearly when he starts looking at it through someone else’s eyes.
But win or lose — don’t take this money problem too seriously. After all, a happy home is a good home. And a home is never happy when a couple is fighting over money.
From the Long Beach Press. Long Beach, California. February 11, 1951.
