Money values almost broke my marriage. So I built this.

I have ADHD. I'm also the daughter of a deeply frugal mother who, in her words, only ever owned a home because she counted every dollar. As a kid I sometimes couldn't get $1 for the school canteen. I got my first job the day I was legally allowed — at fourteen years and nine months — and the moment I had my own money, I discovered a kind of dopamine I'd never known. Buying things felt like joy. And so I lived to my means. Then beyond them.

One relationship fell apart partly because of it. He wasn't wrong. When the person beside you isn't saving, isn't planning, and is happy to put it on a card, you start to ask: is this the life I want for me?

Years later I met the man I'd marry. Early on I'd say I couldn't afford something and he'd turn up with it as a gift. Sweet. Generous. And I never had to say out loud how much I'd been hiding about money. Once we lived together — he'd paid for the wedding, my car, the holidays from his savings — the resentment built quietly. I'd encourage us to spend whatever was left. He always agreed. He also always wished I wouldn't ask.

I only understood years in: he didn't need a frugal woman. He needed an honest one. He needed me to know myself, name it, and choose a partner who either matched me or knowingly accepted me as I was. We never had that conversation before the wedding. Most couples never do.

That's the conversation FrugalLove forces — kindly, gently, up front. Before love makes you blind. Before children. Before joint accounts. Before forty thousand on a credit card becomes the thing nobody can take back.

It's why we score frugality 1 to 10 instead of gatekeeping. It's why spenders are welcome — as long as they own it. It's why we built a neurodivergent corner, because ADHD impulse and ASD systems can be the most beautiful yin-yang if both people walk in with eyes open. It's why we're faith-friendly without being faith-only. And it's why we ask the awkward questions early: who gets up for the baby? Who cooks? Who cleans up? Whose career bends?

The Bible says it's the love of money that's the root of all evil — not money itself. The German saying goes that every pot has its lid. Both are true. Honesty about money is the antidote to the kind of love that doesn't survive a decade.

Find your lid. Eyes open. No surprises.