My husband would LOVE to own a boat but that's not in the cards right now and sadly we own no vacation home. We have a modest 2 bedroom condo that has an interior stairway. This to me is HUGE as I never lived in a house. I grew up in a small railroad apartment and before home ownership just lived in similar rental apartments. I love having multiple floors. It makes me feel like I live in a real house.
I definitely have a few small pieces of furniture that are taking up space. I will probably have them on freecycle in the next couple of weeks. I would like a smaller dining room set. In our current home is actually our kitchen table. My husband and I have had it since we first lived together. It was our first joint purchase (aawwww) when we had an actual dining room in our first apartment. We have been lugging it around ever since.
My big ticket item though is debt. My husband and I have accumulated quite a bit of debt over the years between student loans and credit card bills. No one is immune to debt - I think. If you are debt free comment on my post I'd love to know your secret. We also have a mortgage and car payments and the usual utilities bills. I refuse to give up cable. I love HBO. My husband loves all his ESPN channels. Debt though keeps us anxious every month. We certainly chip away at it but it makes me think about what can we do long term to make it go away. It's hard to save anything when you are paying off debt. My husband handles the finances. I suck at it. He's more responsible at that stuff. We have our share of arguments over it - who doesn't it. Again if you are a couple who doesn't argue over finances would LOVE to hear from you. The future is an unknown to us. We'll we ever be able to retire? Send our son to college? Go on a 10 day vacation to Italy or Ireland? These are questions we just don't know the answers to right now.
*raises hand*
ReplyDeleteWe aren't a couple without debt, but we ARE a couple who doesn't argue about money. I think we had enough time pre-marriage with individual accounts but a shared life to hash out our financial goals and habits and so on. We're both not big spenders, and we both have a tendency to save. Tedd likes to say that we got recreational shopping out of our systems way before we ever met each other. I guess we're just on the same page money-wise.
Now chores... that is our hot button issue, heh. But we don't argue frequently about it, so I'm not really bothered by our disagreements.
Actually - hope this doesn't sound douchey - I'm curious as to what kind of stuff people argue about when they argue about money. Spending habits?
ReplyDeleteWe have a mutually assured destruction policy regarding spending. That is, if one person makes a binge impulse buy, that means the other person gets to do the same, for the same amount. Usually it keeps us from spending on binge impulse items (I think the last time was several years ago: M bought a video card on impulse and while he and P waited in the car, I went into Costco and bought a nano). Now we have to be so careful about everything that just about any purchase over $10 gets discussed.
ReplyDeleteAnyway: we don't fight about money. We are both equally bad at it. We have some savings but not much, and M's pension is off limits. We have crushing student loan debt (but no more consumer debt). I am terrified of having a car payment again, and wonder if we might go carless for a while if it ever came down to it!
Depending upon whether you consider mortgage to be the same as debt (I don't, particularly since the value of the house far exceeds the current balance on the mortgage), we are a couple without debt. We also don't argue about money. We've both always been the sort to live within our means, and adjusting our lifestyle to suit the amount of disposable income we had available at a given time - in prior lifetimes, we both spent long periods without vehicles. We don't have cable, which saves a ton of money each month. We're fortunate to have some reasonably good hand-me-down furniture that is getting us through while we save up enough to find high-quality things that we really like. We're also very fortunate in that, at least for the past few years, we've both been gainfully employed in a relatively recession-proof industry. But, honestly, the main strategy has been just not buying things. I'm pretty sure our biggest monthly expenditure is on food, and that's mainly because I try to shop local and organic when possible, which, in this area, tends to drive the price up. I think we've been out to eat once this month? Or maybe that was July.
ReplyDeleteThis strategy also means no fights about money - we aren't spending any, so there's nothing to cause a fight. When we do buy things that are more expensive (anything over about $50 warrants a discussion), it's always been the case so far that we clearly needed the item in question, so it was just a matter of making sure we purchased something that was well-suited to the need.
Which, of course, isn't really helpful. "Stay out of debt by never getting into debt," won't eliminate existing debt, unless you can actually cut down your spending enough to slowly pay off your debt.
We find sticking to a monthly budget really makes the difference. If we use up our monthly eating-out allowance, then no more eating out!. We also use mint.com, which tracks your spending by linking your credit cards and bank accounts to it. It was such an eye-opener...like my spending almost $20 a week on coffee! The husband, aka "accountant", gave me a more reasonable coffee budget :-)
ReplyDeletePrior to mint.com, I was a Christmas Tree/ Marshalls/ Dollar Tree junkie... $10 here, $5 there really added up. My husband would say I was "nickle and dime-ing us to death". Now I'm more of a conscience shopper and it holds me more accountable to our financial priorities.
Hope that helps, Natalie. But please now that you are not alone! I am convinced I'll be working until I'm 90 so we just better love our jobs!
We paid off our credit card debt years ago. We used some helpful info from a Dave Ramsey book (that we borrowed, as we weren't even spending money on stuff that would save us money at that time)
ReplyDeleteMy husband is super organized and prints out a budget every month. We did take on some extra debt last year (10k for some home repairs and 10k for a hot tub!) but it's all manageable and we are very careful as to how we spend (for the most part) I could probably write an entire post on our adventures in debt world...
Bottom line: credit card debt is gone and we're living better for it. And- arguments over money just don't happen here. I'm with Christa on the douchey what do people argue about re: money question. ?