My wife splurges all our money on holidays – she’s ruining our children’s futures
20 March 2026
My wife and I have increasingly different attitudes about how to create a good life and it’s causing increasing tension between us. We have two sons, age 10 and six, and we’re living through unstable economic times: I try to live sensibly and want to save for our children’s future to provide for them.
My wife is a splurger – and frequently accuses me of scrimping. She sees every school holiday as a potential trip away, while I can’t take great swathes of time off work.
When I say we can’t afford something, she smiles and says, “We could get it on credit”. She knows I don’t like paying on credit so we use hard-earned savings, which I feel more comfortable with when they’re accumulating, or we don’t go away. But each of the six school breaks, including half-terms, my wife will suggest a trip.
She says she wants to make the most of these years when the children still enjoy spending time with us, but I find this living in the moment while disregarding the future a concern when we want to support the children through young adulthood. Who’s right?
John Francis, Derbyshire
'She says she wants to make the most of these years when the children still enjoy spending time with us' (Photo: Milorad Kravic/Getty)
Dear John,
I’m struck by how the values you and your wife share are more important than the ones that divide you. It seems to me that you both want to provide for your children and their futures are deeply important to both of you. Your wife is providing them with memories, setting them up for a good life by going on holidays all together and experiencing different cultures.
You are being frugal with money, wanting to avoid the significant outlay of holidays so you, too, can provide for their future, knowing they might have university fees and might struggle with finances when they’re just starting their careers.
In essence, you want such similar things, but have different ways of showing this.
This might be because of your family backgrounds: it’s worth thinking about both your parents’ and your wife’s parents’ attitudes to money. If her family was used to spending money rather than focusing on saving, what you consider “splurging” might seem perfectly normal to her. Similarly, if your family was focused on saving for a rainy day, that future focus might seem completely normal to you.
Our attitudes to saving and spending can also be shaped in opposition to our parents: if, for example, your parents didn’t have the security of any savings at all and it led you to be worried about money as a child, it makes sense that you’d always want to be increasing the pot because it represents security. Also, when parents come from families where promised experiences were always stored for a future that didn’t seem to arrive, they might learn to prioritise present enjoyment.
There are three questions around attitudes to money – and more broadly to life – that might be helpful for you to understand each other’s views better. The first is: how many of your decisions are fear-based and how real is the fear? Fear is not a bad thing, it can inform good planning and good decisions; as long as it doesn’t take over our life and limit our present. Most of our fears never come true. All the worrying I’ve done over many decades has rarely solved anything: being in the present and seeing what life is trying to tell me, when I’ve got a quiet mind, helps life come together beyond my control.
Secondly: do you live from a place of believing life is on your side, a place of love where you can allow opportunities to come to you? From this secure space, you’re open to the flow of life and to giving and receiving, because when life is on your side, you don’t need to grip onto things so tightly. I believe money is energy and rather than holding tight, we want it to flow both ways. So, for example, many people give a proportion of their money to charities or communities, which, I believe, makes space for them to receive more.
Thirdly, ask whether you’re able to respect and accept your own and each other’s fears. By talking and listening to each other, you’re able to empathise with each other’s loves and fears – then you’re not making decisions in tension, or to counterbalance each other. More broadly, by sharing what you love about your lives and focusing on what you want to grow, both now and in the future, you’ll be able to both shape your family’s lives.
As for your question who’s right, it’s often not a very useful one to ask in relationships. There often is no objective “right” way to be; we all approach the world with our different lenses. Rather than looking for right and wrong, instead see yourselves as a partnership, working together to create the best balance of providing for your children by offering them a magical present and secure future.
It sounds as if learning to loosen your grip on money slightly, at least from time to time, might feel relaxing for you, as you feel more reassured that you’re not about to lose all your savings overnight. For your wife, this stepping back makes space for her to be responsible. It creates room for you both to compromise: for you to suggest holidays and her to suggest staying at home. Her current wish to splurge so frequently might be exacerbated by a feeling of needing a break from the tight control over money at home.