In this video essay, one woman explains how a toxic relationship led her to spend beyond her means, and how her life improved when she found a better partner. Learn how another woman and her partner handle their finances here:
Making it work is brought to you by wealth simple which gives everyone access to simple affordable investing on cruise control i got together with my partner and about a year ago when i was at a very low point in my life i had just ended a very unhappy relationship i was 50 pounds overweight i had almost nothing left in my savings and my apartment was kind of a mess
Just like my whole life and won’t bore you with all the details you all know how romances work but her presence in my life changed everything three months after anne and i started dating i went through my bank statements in order to create a new monthly budget i realized that i had recently been saving about five hundred dollars every month without even trying but
First i put it down to anne’s frugal lifestyle and our shared costs but then i started to dig a little deeper obviously it had to have gone somewhere to figure it out i had to get back to my ex girlfriend the unhappy relationship i had just ended before i met anne let’s call her winnie for anonymity sake winnie and i got together during a time in her life where
Everything was going well she had just gotten a new job and moved into a new apartment in a new city she was funny and attentive and very interested in everything i wanted to share we spent a lot of time together just talking and getting to know each other but after a while things started to change it was subtle at first small things annoyed her and she started
Complaining about her job neighbors colleagues family friends she complained about life and how everything was just so disappointing everything seemed to annoy her and after a while she made it clear that our relationship was also a constant source of disappointment to her i wasn’t passionate enough i didn’t miss her enough did i even want to be with her so i tried
To get her out of what i thought was a bad place i encouraged her to try out new things i tried to support her hobbies to be more invested in her interests i texted her nice things whenever i thought of her i bought her stuff i tried to show her new places and people of course nothing worked it only got worse whenever i tried to talk to her about it she would become
Angry she would tell me i was being an insensitive jerk didn’t i realize what she was going through at the moment also i didn’t i loved her enough for two years i kept trying to make it work i wanted the woman i fell in love with back to be honest i thought that was the real whinny and she was just trapped in a very bad place i kept waiting eventually i realized
That i was waiting for something that would never happen this was the real whinny not the one i had met during our honeymoon phase so i walked out of the relationship humiliated and angry but mostly relieved life i decided had the potential to be great and it wasn’t my fault that she didn’t realize it no cut to a year later shortly after i had ended things with
Winnie i got together with anne who is the single most wonderful woman i have ever met i lost 50 pounds we just rented our first apartment together and things are looking swell and for most of the year i’ve been saving additional $500 every month that i seemingly didn’t have before without raising my income i realized i’ve been spending all this money every month
To make a miserable relationship more bearable here all the ways i tried to buy happiness in that relationship number one driving nobody’s fault but winnie and i had a long-distance relationship for a long time and we met up almost every weekend i probably spent an additional 70 to 100 dollars each month for gas and train tickets number two food i spent so much
Money on food which also led me to gain weight first i tend to eat my feelings second it was the one thing we almost never fought about winning loved good food and we ate out constantly even when we stayed home we ordered takeout or we bought really expensive treats whenever we ate it seemed like a break from fighting and when he was content for a short while
So it seemed like a good idea to just eat as often as possible i now spend about $200 less on food than i did back then it’s number three alcohol i am pretty ashamed of this one we had wine with almost every meal after we started fighting about every little thing i realized things went a lot smoother after sharing a bottle of wine or two or three awhile into the
Relationship i started to develop insomnia and anxiety induced tachycardia so i thought it would be a great idea drink even more wine because it calmed me down and made me feel sleepy yikes all in all i spend about $100 each month on alcohol after the breakup i stopped drinking alcohol completely for a while just to see if i could i now drink it only on special
Occasions and stick to one glass of wine i never want to go down that particular road again number four movies we went to the movies almost every other week again it was an alternative to fighting where i live the tickets were about seventeen dollars and of course we also ordered snacks and drinks i spent about fifty dollars each month for two movies just so we
Could spend time together without having to talk number five gifts i kept buying her little things to try to make her happy books keyrings kitchen supplies chocolate truffles but here’s the thing it never made her happy of course it didn’t we should have actually talked about things but whenever i tried we started fighting again instead i kept quiet and bought
Her things total five hundred dollars monthly or twelve thousand dollars spent over two years that should have gone to my savings they say you can’t put a number on love and happiness but i can because the difference between an unhappy and a happy relationship to me has been a staggering amount of money money touches every aspect of our lives including in our
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Transcribed from video
How I Saved $12K And Lost 50 Pounds By Changing Relationships By The Financial Diet
