Submitted by YackedySmackedy t3_ynxm26 in personalfinance
My wife has a bit over €40k that she has blindly sitting in mutual funds since I’ve known her (over 15 years). It has not grown much. We just ignore it.
During this same time, her sister actively controls the investments for the same sum she was given and has grown hers to around 90k.
My wife admits that if she paid attention to how the money is invested, she could do better with it but says she simply doesn’t have the energy to learn about any of it. Therefore, she’s turning it all over to me to manage and grow.
I have no clue about money, stock, or how to invest or grow money. I grew up poor and my education on money from my family was more than nonexistent, it was detrimental.
Our financial status outside of the 40k:
- I bring home €4150 a month after taxes.
- She brings home €700 a month after taxes.
- The only debt we have is the house we just bought a year ago.
- The house needs further non-urgent work in the future (new kitchen, bathrooms, etc.) that we’d like to save up for.
- We own our car outright and only pay insurance and gas.
- We have 3 kids 10 and under.
- We have about 4K in savings (recently down from 15k due to initial cost of moving in and renovating)
- We put about €1,200 a month into savings.
- We don’t otherwise budget or control what or how we spend but we live within our means and don’t go over.
- We live in Germany.
I’m willing to put in the work to learn whatever I need to learn in order to make proper decisions but on my first googles, I’m a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information and options and want to try and narrow the scope a bit. I guess I’m looking for good advice so that I can have a better starting point with it all.
I really don’t want to mess this up. I want to take a firmer grip on our financial situation.
Any suggestions, tips, direction, or help would be very much appreciated.
Edit:
Thank you so much for the continued responses. I’m still working my way through them all, which will take some time, but I greatly appreciate your input and will continue to read everything.
I do want to address one thing that’s come up repeatedly about my wife.
My wife works her ass off for our family. Lazy is the last word anyone could ever use to describe her. I may “work” longer hours and bring home more money but she runs circles around me with the amount of stuff she does while I’m at work. She kicks ass. Anything I can do to ease her burden is a plus. If anything, I’m at fault for not taking a larger interest in our finances earlier.
Her wanting me to drive a topic that she has no interest in or energy for is completely reasonable, I think. We’re a team. I’m just taking the lead on this topic, not being abandoned to make all of the decisions on my own. She’d still be involved, listen to everything I have a say on the topic and help and support making major decisions. She’s not leaving me alone to take the fall if I fail. She’s not ignoring it all.
This is what teams are for, no?