<prompt> Human: Hello PF, I am basically looking to get some perspective here in the form of 3 questions specifically, but I would be interested in whatever feedback you might have. The two questions are:1 do I need to tone down my frugality, and if so, in specifically what ways? 2 is it worth it to try and get my wife to trim maybe 500month of spending since to be honest money is not currently an issue, and will not be in the foreseeable future?3 given the pretty detailed list of our situation below, what am I doing wrong and what could I do better?Here are the basic facts of our situation:1 Our combined earned income is about 160Kyr now.2 My wife is a doctor and in 7 years after residency and fellowship our combined earned income will likely be in the 350-400K range.3 My wife has no debt, the only debt I have is a 4K car loan which I only did instead of cash up front because I got an extra 250 off the car price and its a 0 loan. 4 My wife has about 1M that her parents have stashed away for her over the years. We didnt do a prenup, and if anything were ever to happen I would never consider trying to take that from her, I would just do a 5050 split of the rest of our assets. As far as Im concerned, its for buying a house in cash or for our nonexistent but future childrens education. Her dad showed me the tax return which indicated she had a passive income of about 28K in dividends last year. Unfortunately this income was realized and thus taxable which of course her parents picked up the tab for but I am planning to ask her dad to have it automatically reinvested so we dont realize the income this year.5 My wife has a separate checking account that her parents just randomly decide to put 5K into from time to time. She says its bc her mom wants her to be able to spend without my making her feel guilty.6 between 3 4 and 5 I feel extremely guilty, like I all of a sudden have all this money, more or less, to myourher name and I didnt do anything special to earn it. But, that being said...7 I do have a PhD myself and earn a pretty comfortable living on my own so I have worked hard to get where I am. But I grew up lowermiddle middle class and have developed extremely frugal habits. The whole notion of I make and have more money therefore I should spend more is ridiculous to me. I dont suddenly require 8 meals a day or a lexus. I save avidly, and have, so some extent, gotten my wife on board with this. She says we tend to balance each other out. I used to be outright cheap which I admit, now she calls me frugual though what she doesnt acknowledge is that my cheapness allowed me to shell out 10K cash for an engagement ring for her on a grad students stipend. And likewise I would say I have probably helped her to tone down her spending.8 Excluding the large sums of described in 4 and 5 the that my wife and I have actually earned and saved ourselves which I actively track and consider a more realistic indicator of myour true net wealth with just an incredibly strong safety net recently surpassed 100K this does not include depreciating assets we own such as our two cars. My wife honestly doesnt really know what is in her real investment portfolio and isnt all that interested to find out which leaves me to awkwardly have to ask her parents who manage it with their money person, even though Im their son-in-law. But the 100K wealth I consider real is about 75K in various investments target retirement funds, and related standard funds, nothing special just aggressive and on the riskier end since we are young and 25K cash some of which is in some CDs. Of course both of our 401ks are maxed at 17.5Kyr, I will max out my 2014 roth next year when I confirm our income is not too high to prohibit it. And her parents just randomly dumped the 5.5K to my wifes roth because why not.9 So of course I feel fortunate and very grateful that her parents have the means and desire to do this for herus and Im not about to start rustling any feathers, but this is also not sustainable. I want to do my best to consider our finances as a closed unit that is sustainable and not dependent on random cash influxes. We make plenty of ourselves and are, realistically speaking going to make a lot more over time and the unemployment rate for doctors is like -8 right? : 10 Unfortunately, due to bullshit circumstances we for the moment live 3 hours apart and thus require two rents and two sets of utilities bills, plus 150month of transportation costs from me driving back and forth every week, but if things pan out this will change very soon. Given the two sets of all bills, this runs us about 2800mo. I make sure to pay all of this except one of the rents in an effort to be sustainable. The other rent just magically comes out of the account in 5. But when we go down to just one rent, I will pay that.11 In a typical month I would put somewhere between 800-1300 on my credit card, which includes most of the utilities, groceries for both of us, gas some medical expenses I have from time to time, etc. I have also added her name to my credit card so she can charge things to it that I just pay, but she doesnt do this very much because then she knows I can see what she is buying and doesnt want the associated guilt.12 My wife is very opaque to me about her own credit card, because she not-totally-unjustifably claims I get annoyed when I see some of the things she buys and her attitude is she works hard, has the money, and you only get one life. She does work incredibly hard 80 hrs work weeks and I love her an insane amount partly because of how dedicated she is to helping people, so its not a totally unreasonable thing. But at the same time I feel like wasted money spent inefficiently is ridiculous no matter who you are. However, I am able to get glimpses of her final monthly bill which is typically around 1500mo keep in mind, groceries and utilities are taken care of by me. This balance is of course paid for out of the magical checking account.13 One of the things she spends money on is exercise classes which are not that expensive, like 12each when you buy bulk. It obviously adds up though. But this does kind of bother me since I specifically bought her a treadmill she requested as a gift to have in the house for convenience.14 Adding everything up, our total monthly expenditures are around 5300, but will drop to probably 3200-3700 in the near future when only one residency needs to be maintained at least I got my wife on-board with me to forgo the cancer that is cable tv, we just do Netflix and hulu plus which I know is fre, but not on ipads instead. Even in that 3200-3700, there is substantial fat, in my opinion, but cutting the fat would require a sustained confrontation with my wife which just doesnt seem worth it given the fact that we absolutely do not need to pinch pennies, despite my naturally strong inclination to do so.15 Between my cashroth 401k and matching, my savings amount to around 3kmonth and hers to about 2.5kmonth though this is just accelerated to get the 17.5k max by years end, we will have to tone down the pace next year. So even in a sustainable cycle where her credit card and rent about 2900 technically are paid from money we earn, we are still about 2600month ahead. However, this is not all that meaningful due to the 2 rents ending hopefully soon.Assistant: I would look at the cash her parents put in that 5 account as her fun money, never question her about or give her grief about using it, and dont include it in your family budget in any way. If that stream of money stops one day, that is when your wife needs to curb her spending, not now. Human: But see this reasoning ignores the reality of humans and habits. If it were practical to curb her spending exactly when the account got turned off I would totally go for it. Unfortunately, the habit is liable to stay and when the 5 account dries up, it will become an entrenched part of our family budget. This is the whole reason I worry about sustainability.  <response>: You guys have more financial stability than 99.99 of people out there, and a very high income level. Why not enjoy it, and not worry about a disaster that may never come? Her parents will probably give her money forever. If they die, it sounds like money is not going to be a worry for you. Your wife seems to be saving about half of this extra income stream, which is pretty damn good. Your wife seems like an intelligent, educated, sensible person. Does all of that really add up to shes going to put us in the poorhouse with her spending!? No. Relax. Work in things in your life that have a higher potential to actually become problems. Tell your wife about your anxiety about this, and leave her alone about it. 