living with WAW who hasn't walked yet (2)

[dingo]

Is it hard for me to keep judgment concealed on this? Yes.
I understand not judging people based on my values.
Is paying the bills you incur a value?
Not that I'm hung up on making a statement when it's truly not helpful, but I have good reason to be cautious.

Now, having said that, if you feel that I'm just wrong, I'm all ears.

my $0.02:
One of my biggest frustrations in my marriage was the fact that my wife and I were not on the same page financially. She was what I would call financially irresponsible.

When we were discussing having our first child, my wife decided she wanted to take 6 months off of work after giving birth. I told her that if she wanted to do that, I wanted to have 6 months worth of expenses saved up as a buffer to things like unexpected medical expenses, me getting laid off, etc. She agreed and we set up a plan to deposit a set amount of money into a savings account every pay check. As time went on, she tried to use that money to buy things that she wanted that she couldn't immediately afford. This dynamic of her trying to spend the money that we had saved for an expressed purpose and me resisting that and trying to stick to the plan was a major cause for friction between us.

The reason I am saying all of this is that you need to be careful with the advice here to not judge. Obviously you don't judge her worth as a person but you MUST judge whether she is someone you can see yourself trusting as an equal partner and steward of your combined finances and you MUST judge her in this way based on YOUR values (or you need to change your values). If you don't/can't trust her, this will always be a source of conflict between you two.

What does she have to do to make you feel you can trust her with your shared finances? How much are you willing to compromise on your short term and long term financial goals/beliefs?