If your spouse is spending money like crazy, how do you get her to slow down spending? Until now, I have said nothing about her spending. Mostly it has meant that we spend what we make. But now her monthly spending is greater than our salaries, so it is coming from our savings. Last week she spent almost $1000 on clothes for herself as one example.
That's clearly not sustainable, so I would put my foot down on that right away. Tell her you're going to work up an expense spreadsheet and invite her to participate. If she declines, then do it yourself. The way I did it was to track my expenses for several months using an Excel spreadsheet. I put every single expense in there from house bills to fuel to lunch and dinner costs to groceries to flower/ mulch/ etc. for the yard. Even yearly costs (like property taxes) are broken down to a monthly allotment and shown. Then I was able to project future monthly costs and define how much money I could spend on "other" (clothes, vacations, irregular car expenses, etc.) Do that and show your wife in black and white that she only has "xx" dollars per month to spend on undefined expenses. Then do a spreadsheet every month. My monthly spreadsheet has formulas at the bottom that show that month's expenses, my salary and the balance. That will tell you and your W in no uncertain terms whether you're up or down for the month.
Why did I go to all this trouble? Because my W did EXACTLY what your W is doing- she spent a little more each month than we were bringing in. But she didn't tell me. We maintained separate accounts and she covered her monthly losses with credit cards. By the time she told me, she had accumulated over 80k in CC debt. I think the aggravation over this is a large factor in why we're separated now.
