Goodnight January: Love Signs and Dollar Signs

"Any relationship between Aries and Cancer is usually subjected to a generous sprinkling of fights over money -- how to obtain it and how to dispose of it. He's extravagant, she's thrifty. At least, she's normally economical, until she spins into one of her many moods, triggered by the phases of the Moon, and she indulges herself in a buying spree..."
-- Love Signs by Linda Goodman

For two people who can find ourselves freely chatting with pretty much anyone about anything, money is the one thing that stops Husband and I both dead in our tracks. We know we're "bad" at money, have absolutely zero instinct when it comes to money management and have no discipline.

And I'm not talking serious large-scale money matters here. We absolutely acknowledge that we are not competent enough to do big-picture financial planning, and should we ever get that organized, we are perfectly capable of hiring someone. What we are, apparently, not capable of, is getting organized enough to locate all of our checkbooks and understand our dental insurance.

We are unable to talk about these things because, usually, we don't know where the information about the dental plan IS, or Husband is checking with HR about some insurance question or the plan is changing so why bother to figure it out or whatever, and then a bill comes from the emergency crown that had to be put on and we both just assume that because we have insurance that this is an oversight on THEIR part.

So we ignore it, assuming it must be caught up somewhere between the dentist and the insurance company, which usually leads to a whole conversation about how it's no surprise that health care costs are rising when they are wasting time sending people like us bogus bills. And because we've talked about the bill and how lame it is, we figure that we've Officially discussed it and the bill will somehow take care of itself.

We honestly operate this way. A lot.

And because of this -- our total and complete lack of simply taking time to understand the basics of our money -- January, for us was simply about getting in the habit of thinking about money, starting to get organized, asking questions and just trying to get a grasp on what IS going on in our sad little financial world.

So we started by becoming familiar with our online banking system, something I only use for automatic bill pay and Husband was clueless about. And after poking around and learning that the bank actually tracks spending for us we decided to change how we spend our money. No more checks. If it's on the debit card, the system will track it to a category like groceries, gas, utilities, restaurants, etc. If we write a check it gets labeled "unknown spending."

So, even though we haven't drastically changed the way we spend and this raises some privacy questions for me, we figured "unknown spending" wasn't good and that at least this way I'll be held accountable for my had-to-have-it burrito from Taco Bell.

So no more checks.

We also started keeping all of our receipts and questioning all of our expenses. Should we move to a cheaper house? Could we do without the daily newspaper? On the line. All of it.

Every decision started with first considering the financial impact. Husband had to go in for a checkup for some cholesterol medication and I asked if it was necessary and asked how much the visit would cost, since we haven't met our deductible yet. I wanted to sign Twin A and Twin B up for a music class and he drilled me wondering if I could do more music activities with them at home, rather than paying for a class. I made my case that my sanity was on the line and he said his liver was. We paid for both, with checks, violating our new policy but swearing it was the last time and then decided to give ourselves the month of January to wean ourselves from checks.

And finally, we did some reading. "We" means I did the reading and then read key sections out loud to Husband every night. I'd talk and he'd keep reading his magazine, look over at me and nod. I tried to get him to make it his own idea to read the books, hoping he'd have a revelation and be super duper motivated, but after weeks of "accidentally" leaving the book "The Debt Diet" on his side of the bed, and him tossing it back to my side of the bed without even glancing at it, I gave up.

But then, scouring our bookshelves for more of our many purchased-but-not-read financial-related books, I came across this book called Love Signs. The super-groovy 1970s book provides advice and descriptions about aspects of a marriage based on your sign and your partner's sign. Besides the fact that the title of the book didn't have any words like "debt" or "frugal" in the title, I roped him by reading all the negative stuff about me ("it won't be long until he notices her moodiness", it says) knowing that would get his attention. It worked and with him completely sucked in to all the parts about me being a "crab", we got to the part where she talked about money.

Not surprisingly, it turns out the Aries Men and Cancer Women view money, very, very, very differently. Not that we needed a book to confirm this, but to simply acknowledge how different we are and being able to blame it on astrology, rather than our parents or own obsessions or own lack of knowledge or that someone "should have taught us this stuff in college", eliminated a whole layer of discussion. No wonder we're so broke! Look at our signs, dude!

Instantly, I was more empathetic toward him and wasn't firing off at the mouth about how growing up Husband pretty much got whatever he wanted and Husband didn't shoot back about how it was a good thing that we didn't meet in junior high because my mom's handmade clothes would have surely put me firmly in the nerd category and he never would have given me the time of day. Yes, while I was selecting fabric for my new jumper from the clearance bin at Joann Fabrics, Husband's mom was making sure that he was decked out in Claiborne for Snotty Little Boys. And, these little tidbits about our upbringing tend to rear their fashionable -- or unfashionable-- heads during conversations about money but now we could, like, totally just blame it on our signs.

And, so, the start of 2006 was about coming to terms with the Sun and the Moon and pretty much, just how lame we are. We continued to think about future goals and acknowledged that it will, shockingly, take work, effort and organization for them to be realized. And, according to Love Signs, for this to happen, it's going to require "a Sun-Moon trine or conjunction between their horoscopes -- or a great deal of patient understanding from both, to bring these two very different astrological creatures together in an mutually acceptable emotional terrain."

So, in January we braced for the rough emotional -- and financial -- terrain that lay ahead and said goodnight... Goodnight checks. Goodnight financial doom. Goodnight Tex-Mex. And Goodnight Moon.