<prompt> Human: Over the last few years we have gone in and out of a fair amount of debt. The short term debts have included cars, personal loans, credit cards and the long term has been student loans and mortgage.I am working and my wife stays at home to raise our child. I do have a good income, but we both have been in the habit of looking at our finances as a paycheck to paycheck thing. We have little to no savings, so any sort of emergency has gone on our credit cards. We have both been guilty of over spending and then just throwing another 50 or 75 dollar purchase on the credit cards when the cash is gone. This has been a major source of stress for me and I am desperate to rectify the situation. In the last month, which I know is a very short period of time, I have pulled a lot of my unneeded spending back to try and help get things going in the right direction. It seems that this has just given her more money to spend. I have talked to her and tried to explain as best I can to get her on the same page but nothing seems to work. Im not saying its her fault that we are where we are financially, it has taken us both of us to get here, it just seems she has no desire to leave and get on the right path. TLDR: Are there any online resources or books relating to this subject, so my wife and I can get on the right track together?Edit: Thank you all for the amazing suggestions, when I get home from work this evening I am going to share this and hopefully we can get everything going the right direction.  <response>: Most people are much poorer than they think they are. You need to examine your finances from a big picture perspective. For example, you should be asking questions like these: What is our net worth? Is our net worth where it should be for our age? When will I be able to retire? Have we saved enough for retirement for our age? What happens if I lose my job tomorrow? Can we pay all of our bills for at least one year? What if it takes me 5 years to find a decent job? Can we live on 9 per hour for five years IF I can find an entry level job? Can we move in with my or her parents if we need to? What would that truly be like? How many years do I want to work? Do I plan to die at my desk in my late 70s?If you are not building some financial security, you are screwed. The days of living paycheck to paycheck are OVER. That may have worked 60 years ago when jobs were plentiful, labor unions were strong, and the economy was booming, but the system has dramatically changed. If you are working today and earning a decent income, you are essentially in a race to build as much financial security as you can, as fast as you can, because the opportunity may be gone tomorrow and you may never get another chance. And unless you have already already accumulated substantial assets, or have other financial sources like parents who will support you, or a trust fund you can tap into you are at grave risk to be very poor, or homeless, or dependent on the charity of others family, food banks, friends, etc..If your wife truly understood the precarious position your are in, she would be afraid. And she NEEDS to be afraid, because the threat of being poor is a very real one that is already being quietly experienced by millions in this country. They are out of our sight, but they are there, they are suffering, and you could join their ranks tomorrow. If your wife understood the risks you face, the issue wouldnt be about her spending, because that would be so glaringly obvious that it would almost go without saying. It would be about why she isnt working full-time too, while simultaneously saving every penny she can so you both dont end up truly poor and desperate. Clearly she doesnt understand the risks she creates with her reckless spending. In this environment, no sane person would choose to live check-to-check if they didnt need to. Only people who truly do not get how truly poor they really are would place themselves at such risk. And it doesnt matter if youre making 30,000 per year or 250,000 per year... if you are spending all of it you are on the precipice of being poor. So I guess what Im saying is this: Your problem is probably FAR more grave than you think it is I cant know for sure without more details, yet you are talking about wanting to walk at a nice, slow, leisurely pace when you should already be running as if a monster is at your heels.BTW, my wife and I are early retirees. We understood the risks we faced when we were relatively young, so we lived FAR below our means for many years. We saved every penny we could possibly save and had fun doing it. I learned how to invest, and now we are truly free. Barring cataclysmic macro-economic events that have not been seen in 200 years because one can never be 100 certain of anything, we have more than enough to cover all of our expenses for the rest of our lives. Thats what you want to shoot for. You will never regret it. 