Wine Budgeting and Significant Others

Question for everyone one here: how do you all negotiate wine budgets with your significant others(s)? I only started getting into wine after my now wife introduced me to it a handful of years ago. Yada, yada, yada we now have an offsite storage locker and I frequent this board on a daily basis.

Nonetheless, my interest (addiction) has grown far beyond what my wife thought it would and probably wishes it did. I spend more time/$$/resources on wine and wine related endeavors than she probably desires and it has led to some “spirited” conversations.

I’m assuming, wrongly or rightly, that others here are in the same boat and was wondering how you all negotiate/compromise/talk about this crazy passion we have when your significant other might not share such passion to the same degree.

First question, do you already have an established and agreed to wine budget?

My wife usually gets all bent out of shape on the wine budget, but then when we go to Napa or Paso and she starts tasting and decides she wants to buy cases of everything.

Don’t ask, don’t tell.

My advice is to find some kind of counterweight hobby for your wife to indulge in and spend more money on than she probably should.

My wife has rough idea of how much I spend on wine and trusts me not to be financially rash. It’s my little sandbox … and then she has hers – say home design stuff.

She doesn’t complain about my wine purchases – except for ribbing here and there – and I don’t complain about home furnishings that pop up suddenly.

She might wonder how anyone in the world could possibly spend $200 on a bottle of wine, and I wonder why anyone would pay $200 for a Moroccan throw pillow?

Just get to tacit agreement and stay in the guard-rails and you’ll be alright.

I’ve been told my wife deserves Montrachet. She’s managing to survive pretty well on Muscadet.

RT

I make it work by acquiring wine to fit my husband’s tastes. He has expensive tastes so it works out

We each have what we think our wine budget should be. Where we tend to disagree at times is my desired wine budget >>>>> my wife’s desired wine budget. It’s a hobby and interest we both really enjoy. I’ve tended to like it much more than what non-Berserkers would consider “rational”

We do 99% of our buying from mailing lists or via visits to wineries, so my wife is a participant in essentially all our purchases.

For things like Berserker Day or the auctions here, I tell her about them and we decide the budget.

Separate accounts. It doesn’t work for everyone but since we are dual-income no-kids it has worked for us for the past 20 years. We split the bills based on income and agree to how much we will each set aside in savings/investments and what is left after that is ours to spend and the other doesn’t have the right to question it.

This is my deal, too. Though we have kids.
Highly recommend, in general, not just in this wine buying context.

My wife and I have had a (relatively tight) wine budget for several years now, and we’ve been mostly good about sticking to it, making exceptions for extraordinary circumstances - which we usually talk about ahead of time. I’ve done most of our wine/alcohol buying and have built enough history of being responsible that it’s not a point of contention.

Neither of us are big spenders when it comes to “discretionary” items. My wife also enjoys wine and tends to be more impulsive than I am, so whenever we talk about reining in the budget, it’s more likely to be about something non-wine, and it’s unlikely to be anything big.

More like Brian’s arrangement.

We don’t have a budget and we don’t ever argue about what we spend on anything. I suppose some couples do that but if she were irrational I wouldn’t have married her. If she thought I was irrational, she wouldn’t have married me. And I was never looking for a mother to set parameters for me.

Thus, we don’t ever negotiate how much one or the other will be “allowed” to spend on anything.

I’m not about to subordinate my desires to someone else’s control but I’m happy if she’s happy. Neither of us is really into “things” so we don’t particularly care about having the coolest car, coolest cell phone, or any of that.

No negotiation required. I raced a Porsche for 15 years. My wine budget is smaller than my racing budget was.

My rule: if I want it, I buy it.

I’ve signed an non disclosure agreement so I can’t discuss it.

Being one of the older geezers on this board, in 2006 I achieved my goal of being debt-free… no mortgage, car payments, loans, or credit card debt.
That helped convince my wife that my wine purchases were ‘rational’.

We don’t have a wine budget, but we make sure everything else is funded before we get to the wine. No debates like “we could have have taken that vacation if you didn’t buy a case of Krug 165!”

If there are wines you want to buy outside of your current budget, maybe you could buy a taster bottle and share with her to generate some excitement. I find that if my wife really loves a wine, it’s not hard to get the green light on a purchase.

Whatever’s left after the mortgage and taxes gets paid can be spent as ‘discretionary’.
Which admittedly isn’t much. Since my wife doesn’t drink, she could care less about having ‘a wine budget’.

Just a guess from what comes through in your comments - you might get a bigger wine budget if you spent less time on your new addiction or found more ways to include her (local couples tasting group? or something similar perhaps?)

Otherwise independent discretionary funds are essential.