Have you ever experienced a fight about money? I guess most people have I was just remembering the last money fight I had with my DH.
Got married in 2000, no money sense between the pair of us! Bought a house with a personal loan for the deposit early 2001, had our first child end 2001.
Too much too soon.
We had huge debt before we even considered the house, then I had to leave work mid 2001 with pregnancy trouble... depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, husband was in US during Sept 01, that stressed the whole world out and being halfway around the world from him really put me on even ground...
The baby was born early and spent ages in hospital with problems which meant I was miles away from home for weeks and so was DH, leave without pay. Sob sob I know...
We didn't talk we just lived together, when DS was 16 months we had our last money fight... it was memorable because it ended with a hole in the wall and an all night session of yelling and crying and crap.
I had managed the money on the home front until that point because DH was a labourer and I was a Banker... doesn't mean I knew what I was doing believe me.
Anyway, after that we were both scared, we had no idea either of us had such a horrid temper and being that scared of yourself makes you want to talk instead of yell...
We started to talk about everything, what we wanted in life, who we wanted in our life, where we wanted to be and most of all how we could fix our money problems.
We worked extra jobs around the kids, I started a home business around my job and being mum, we sold the house for a loss and moved on.
Since then DH has discovered he has a brain - I always believed it was in there somewhere - and so got an office job on commission, he loves the sales and talking to people, I now work Fulltime at home with the DS2 and we have successfully reduced our debt from over $60K to $17K in 3 years. Average income has only been $35K in that time but we discussed a budget and set it together.
There is no budget in a house that can be stuck too unless things are discussed. I just hope no-one else has to destroy a wall to find out about that.
Our children already know about saving they have special money boxes 4 each to save for their house & car, to have money for charity and to have money to spend. We set them up early while we were still learning ourselves. Our budget is the same, save for house, save for vehicles, give to charity and then living which includes all the bills.
In the process of doing this we have managed to help some of our closest friends set up budgets in the past couple of years and all of them are doing well too. We all laugh about how we don't fight about money yet our siblings, parents and some of our other friends still do and thought we were mad talking to each other about the TABOO subject.
Guess who will have money to retire on early...
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