<prompt> Human: The setup: married 20 years, family of 3, with elementary school aged child. Single income family- spouse has not worked since 2004 many reasons including his desire to have him time before we started a family, mental illness, and the fact that he is stay-at-home dad by design his request. I apologize for the length of this; I included as much detail as I could. The dilemma: I have a strong desire to have not only an emergency expenses fund, but also a nest egg in the event of job loss since as the sole provider for my family such an event would be catastrophic. Given my income and our expenses, I feel that the emergency fund for stuff that breaks or unexpectedly comes up should sit around 20,000 and the nest egg for life if I had to face an extended job search should be around 66,000. HOWEVER, my spouse does not agree. It is his opinion that money is for enjoying life, and any money sitting in the bank is depriving him of something he could have or do today, in favor of a phantom what-if that will probably never happen. As you can imagine, this is creating extreme tension between us. His spending is increasing each month to the extent that I have had to dip into our already limited savings in order to pay for it, which is altogether another topic outside this post. Ignoring the parts of this that is fodder for rrelationships, my question for you all is: given our incomeexpenses below, what is a realistic emergency fund and nest egg funding target? I am open to the possibility that I might be too conservative in my preferred funding targets, but definitely not open to the big freewheeling nothing that the spouse wants to save, so your input is appreciated. IncomeMonthly gross income: 19,583Taxes: 5,533Benefit deductions: 1,327401k contributions: 1,763Monthly net income: 11,000 AssetsSavings account: 1,200401k: 260,000529: 9,000 Expenses Mortgage: 4,000HOA fees: 150Electricity: 135Natural Gas: 25Water Trash: 125Landscapers: 115Gasoline: 120Internet Phone: 200Cell Phone: 130Satellite TV: 150Insurance Home auto: 260Groceries: 300Credit cards: 6,000Monthly expenses: 11,710 Some notes:We have two cars, owned in full so no payments to consider. Items with asterisks on expenses are non-negotiable as the entire neighborhood is obligated through the HOA to use the same internet, phone, and television providers, and have a set landscaping fee for services each month. The actual mortgage payment is only 3,600- Ive just been rounding up to 4,000 forever so I count that as the payment. The credit card category is somewhat misleading- I do not carry ANY debt on the cards month-to-month. That is me paying any spending in full each month. Obviously, this is an opportunity area, and where my story and this post is coming from. In fairness, some of that spending is mine- based on the last 6 months excluding December due to gift-buying of tracking, my monthly discretionary spend is roughly 700, and the family discretionary spend is probably about the same. The remaining 4,600 is the spouse- and it makes me feel physically ill that there is that much available each month and not only can we not save anything but there is overspend! So, please give me a hand: I would like to put this in front of the spouse and say, look- this is what impartial people on the internet say is reasonable, people who have no reason to take my side versus his side.  <response>: If you guys get divorced let met know. I could really put a 4500 monthly allowance to good use. :Seriously, put your foot down. If he wants to spend money, he can go and earn it. Until then, you make the financial decisions. 