Q: I love my spouse, but he is too focused on saving and investing money and not enjoying it. I had hoped this would change as we neared retirement, as we have plenty saved, but if anything it has worsened. What advice do you have?

A: As with any good habit, you can get too much of a good thing.

Conquering oversaving and an obsession with money requires a mix of education and specific incremental behavioral changes. Substantive change typically comes over months and years, not days and weeks.

Try the following strategies to enable you to give yourself permission to spend more:

?Understand the standard of living that can be provided by the assets you've already accumulated. Many people I've worked with have been pleasantly surprised by this analysis. There are numerous useful retirement-planning worksheets and analytic tools you can use to assess where you stand in terms of saving for retirement.

?Get smart about investing your money. Supersavers often have trouble moving into growth-oriented investments and sticking with them because they abhor losing money.

?Go on a news diet. Minimize and even avoid news programs that dwell on the negative, which will only reinforce your fears about never having enough money. One justification that supersavers use for their actions is the litany of fears, heard on the news, about the tens of millions of baby boomers hitting retirement age around the same time.

Such doom and gloom about the future of financial and real estate markets is unfounded. The fear that boomers suddenly will sell everything when they hit retirement is bogus.

?Regularly buy something that you historically have viewed as frivolous, but which you can truly afford. Once a week or once a month, treat yourself!

?Buy more gifts for the people you love. Money hoarders actually tend to be more generous with loved ones than they are with themselves. However, oversavers still tend to squelch their desires to buy gifts or help out those they care about.

?Go easier on yourself and family when it comes to everyday expenses. In some families, supersavers who habitually track their spending drive everyone else crazy with their money monitoring.

Personal finances become a constant source of unnecessary stress and anxiety. Work at establishing guidelines and a culture of spending money with which everyone can agree. Parents who teach their children about spending wisely pass along far more valuable financial lessons than do elders who nag and complain about specific purchases.

Write Eric Tyson, author of "Investing for Dummies" and "Personal Finance for Dummies," at eric@erictyson.com.