I'm not at all surprised that army wives tend to spend recklessly. It's pretty common knowledge than women in general shop to relieve stress and to cheer themselves up. I imagine that not only being without your husband, but also having to worry about his safety would be extremely taxing, especially if you have children. Though it's not as excuse, it's a reason I can understand.
The woman I nanny for is an army wife and instead of spending, she seems to drink in excess. With the two little ones it tends to worry me.
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i wonder if there are studies on spending specific to military spouses. it is an interesting combination if you think about it. consumer overindulgence is often used to fill "holes" in ones life and women often defer financial discipline to men. so now you have a scenario with a hole left by no man to discipline. double jeopardy.
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Amanda, normally the 3 keys to a smooth year for the spouse with their soldier deployed are 1. participate in the unit's frg, 2. spend as much time as possible with both friends and family and 3. stay very active. My outlet will most likely be gaming - with Marty - I'm not much of a shopper. Military spouses do have to shoulder a lot of responsibility when their soldier deploys, especially if children are involved. That's sad that your friend is abusing alcohol to deal with the stress. There are many programs/sources within Army military organizations that assist in such siutations where the spouse has turned to substance abuse.
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Mike,
It's sad that managing your own finances can be difficult/complicated for soldiers while deployed, so they feel the need to appoint someone in charge of that while they're gone. I tried searching for studies that would apply to this subject but couldn't find anything other than blogs of folks arguing about the same issue. maybe when the financial counselors show up at our next meeting they'll supply some documented statistics/studies in their presentation.
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About 10 years ago I had a converstion with a friend of mine who was a marine. He had a different story but on the same topic. He told me that soldiers were paid more if they were married. Many of them would go get married just to get the extra pay, but never sent the money to their 'wives'. Some of the women learned that they could go to the administrators and have pay taken straight out of the soldiers account into their hands. This really pissed of the soldiers. I don't know if that is still relavent, but the pendulum seems to have swung the other way.
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Well, I'm sure it swings both ways - I just know that MOST of the military wives I've interacted with [hundreds at this point due to army wives forum & frg conference] have a lot of trouble managing their finances and it gets worse once the soldier deploys.
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Do you find the military wives that have trouble staying in the green are also ones that grew up with little cash in the first place? We might be seeing a spatial correlation here that is actually a relationship between low-income individuals and their spending habits when given a cash-flow.
Also, everytime I see this blog post I immediately think "Sixteen military wives....."
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I believe it lies more with what Mike was addressing about consumer indulgence to help fill "holes" in life. We've only really witnessed the spouses digging themselves into financial duress while the soldier is deployed.
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"spatial correlation here that is actually a relationship between low-income individuals and their spending habits when given a cash-flow."
Dylan I think they have a term for what your talking about and I think that it is probably a very real problem. If you never see anyone conservatively handle their finances, if your only exposed to 'spend it if you got it' type of mentality, then I would imagine that yes people's early finical experiences would definitely effect there spending habits later in life. I am sure there is research on that.
I would also imagine that Jenn and Mike’s assessment is correct to an extent but I would also like to add some evo psy stuff to the picture. Lets say that men have evolved to obtain resources and to share these resources with women for both long and short term mating. Now women on the other hand have evolved to receive resources form guys and in return give the male an opportunity to spread his seed. So overall all we have men obtaining and securing resources to add to their mate value while females are selecting males based in part off his ability to procure these resources. It would always be in the females best interest to take resources from the male and it would always be in the male’s best interest to be somewhat frugal with his resources because if he loses resources he ultimately loses mate value. If you apply this to modern society were we put a very high value on material possessions it just amplifies the problem. I am reminded of a long standing joke among married people, the notion that the wife always want to go out and buy new clothes and jewelry and she ends up having to hide the stuff from her husband who would get upset if he knew where his resources were actually going. Now combine all of this plus the fact that these women are lonely and you have the ingredients for some bad spending habits and material conflicts.
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i hate to get grim, but based on that, then is it also possible that spending increases because there is an increase in likeliness that the man might not come back? kind of like...smoke em if ya got em?
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A lot of this, the spending money and even cheating, the women rationalize by blaming the husband for going over there. It becomes a punishment for the soldier. "He left me here so I'm going to ____." Even the individual you speak of has said "it's his fault for leaving me here."
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shit, double post.
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good recovery
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this computer for some reason runs your site very slow and i hit submit a couple times thinking it wasn't doing anything. also, can i get a m.idiotechnica.com?
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It's not just military. Working in retail I've seen plenty of women who don't look like they've made the money they're spending. Some of my friends moms just walk around ordering $80 bottles of wine, etc when I know they don't work. I've seen financially responsible stay at home moms but I have to say they're more rare than the eager-to-spend. It makes me ashamed to be a woman.
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How are you doing, Nicole?
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Other than every person I'm friends with on facebook having seen my ridiculous and private suicide video -_- I'm fine
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I sent it to your sister and a couple of what appeared to be your closest friends, telling them the videos proves I'm for real - the message is not a joke - and for them to contact you ASAP. I apologize it was distributed to your entire facebook friends list. Didn't consider the videos particularly private when someone shared the public video site it was on and told me it was posted onVMO. I hope your family and friends are being more conscious of what you're up to and you're seeking some form of help. I apologize for any grief my sharing those videos may have caused you.
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thanks Jen. I tend not to think of VMO as real life. I think they had a couple hundred views before they were taken down. It's cool anyways. I'm here. Etc.
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