So my husband and I are currently saving to purchase a duplex for our first home, to rent out the other side, the first of many desired investment properties. We drive a 2019 vehicle and pay about $680/month for our car payment. Which we can afford. I am a SAHM and he works. He makes great money, and it’s not a problem. However, he wants a new vehicle. Our car is freaking nice and I love it, and he’s never home anyway, although he tolerates the car (he picked it out, and it was a pretty random decision, but fine financially). He’s been talking about refinancing the vehicle to get it in our names together (FIL is currently a co-signer for it due to bad credit, so it’s just in my husband and his dads names) plus having a lower payment. But he’s wanting a new vehicle that’s way more expensive than what we have. In addition to this, we are moving to a place with 50% higher rent, and about to take on a health insurance policy to include our two kids, which is like $800/month. Which is necessary and fine.

I’m very frugal, but I recognize his desire for nice things. He grew up dirt poor and abused so he has this urgency to construct a standard of living level with the one our parents built over the course of 30 years. I want to go slow and own our vehicles outright and save and upgrade (Dave Ramsey, I know there’s some things I don’t agree with but this seems smart to me financially). He pushes for the new car all the time and I’m feeling like I’m just being a party-pooper but it’s really important to me, especially because it will slow our progress to acquiring investments. I see a car as an automatic loss, so I’d rather own instead of have a payment, I want to make moves and grow our money (or at least have an opportunity to grow our money). I literally do not care about vehicles being nice, I care more about quality of consumable expenses or investments or vacations and stuff. Also not looking for Christian “submit to your husband” shit.

How do you navigate these things together? I don’t want to view this as “who wins” because we’re not enemies.

Also, he says we’ll never own a vehicle outright, so would something like leasing a vehicle be a viable option?