Money Makes the World Go 'Round!

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago today I married my best friend. Not to get all sappy, but I think it’s worked out pretty well! In fact I found some statistics on Wikipedia (if you can trust it!) that say we’re over the hump. I attribute our marital success (hey let’s be honest, it’s not always bliss) to a lot of things I’ve talked about at length before.

As we move along another year I have come to believe one of the most important components to any marriage is always going to be financial. Rounding our 10 year mark has coincided perfectly with the two of us meeting many of our financial goals. It wasn’t easy, but it’s incredibly satisfying. Making decisions and working diligently together to make things happen has brought us even closer. This has given us peace of mind and has made us excited about our next goals.

In the last two years I’ve started becoming more involved in our finances, doing lots of reading and research, and working on an investment strategy for our retirement planning. Since money is one of those necessary evils which keeps you both from doing what you want all of the time it’s important to put together a plan that minimizes it’s impact on your relationship. Just some notes on how we handle things:

• Just before we got married we started consolidating a lot of our finances. We’ve had a joint bank account since then and we’ve always taken out car and home loans jointly. I know joint finances don’t work for all couples but since we’re both working towards a common goal our thought is this helps us to keep each other accountable for our successes and failures.
• On that note we did not do as well with credit cards. For years we kept separate credit cards. When I discovered Mint and I was able to see that we weren’t being quite as accountable as we hoped I also discovered we could be saving A LOT of money by using rewards cards instead of our current cards. For years we had been using credit cards to buy everything and paying them off at the end of the month. The only thing this was doing was keeping us from having to carry around cash. We made the switch to two joint rewards cards with cashback. (One of them even paid cashback to the principal of our mortgage!) This helped us get a better idea of what our typically monthly expenses were so we could start looking for places to cut back.
• Trust and compromise is key. No matter how wonderful your plans are, your partner can find flaw in a second. Different goals will have different emotional connotations for a person. While having a well funded emergency account might be what you need to sleep at night, paying off the car as quickly as possible may be the most important thing in the world to your partner. Don’t ram a brokerage account down your partner’s throat! Compromise on another goal that may not be your first choice! To quote one of our favorite shows, Star Trek Enterprise:

“I believe someone once defined a compromise as a solution that neither side is happy with.”

“In that case, these talks have been extremely successful.”

- Captain Jonathan Archer and Commander Shran

• Resolutions, promises, and the ilk don’t ever work. Set challenging goals. We’ve had more luck setting goals than anything else. The more challenging the goal is the more of a game we tend to make it and the harder we work to achieve it.
• Run your finances like a (successful) business. You can bet companies like Apple don’t fly by the seat of their pants when it comes to the ledger. They have billions of dollars on hand and are poised to weather any financial upheavals. You can also bet they have a 5, 10, 15 year plan and you’ll need one too if you ever want to retire! Right now we have a tentative 2 year plan, but we’re working on a 5 year plan that we’ll no doubt have a pretty clear picture of by the end of this year.
• Shop for quality and value. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I am a terrible perfectionist and part of my journey in the last two years has been trying to break myself of the habit of not being happy with something unless it is perfect. I do however spend more and will always do research to buy the best quality at the best price point. A business doesn’t buy disposable things and neither should you. It’s easy to find yourself drowning in belongings you don’t truly want. Our entire economy is built around disposable junk, but if you are willing to look you can still find quality, just be prepared to spend more.
• Be persistent. You don’t get where you are going by making huge changes for a month and ending up right back where you were or by saving big on the large things and ignoring the small. You need to make challenging goals that require big changes and you need to be persistent. When you think you’ve cut out all you can, look again! You may be surprised!
• To the last point, understand that this is a journey, and you should enjoy it! Don’t make yourself miserable trying to meet your goals! Reward yourself from time to time and it will give you the encouragement to continue! When you see yourself meeting and surpassing these goals you’ve set it makes it all worthwhile.

If you really love each other and want things to work financial health is just as important as emotional, sexual, reproductive, or any other kind of health you hear people discussing when they are married. Financial problems can cause a lot of stress and strain on a relationship and it will definitely dull the shiny newness from your marriage when you’re fighting about it.

Thanks for 10 wonderful years Sara, I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Will & Sara at McPherson Park in Greenville, SC

As of today Sara and I have been married for 9 years! It’s been a long road and I can’t believe all of the things we’ve seen, said, and done. Some days I feel like we’ve always been together and others it feels like no time at all. One thing is for sure, I am the luckiest guy in the world.

On January, 19th 2001 we piled into Sara’s white 1991 Mitsubishi Montero with Ben Chabot and his then fiance Caitlin and drove to the Little Wedding Chapel in Easley, SC. I remember our family and friends packing into the woefully small chapel and laughing with us through the next 30 minutes of comedy gold.

Highlights:

• Meeting the minister minutes before the ceremony in his bright yellow plaid suit and matching bowtie; (un)fortunately(?) he wore a robe for the ceremony
• Sara’s mother thinking that her father had already, “given away the bride,” but not heard it as he is somewhat deaf and whispering very loudly while crouching and tugging on him to sit down
• Sara and I being forced to stand and bend uncomfortably over the kneeling bench we asked be removed several times. That’ll show them! We’ll stand and bend over you uncomfortably!
• The operatic rendition of the lords prayer with trademarked country twang played on a cassette deck that had the entire chapel in peals of laughter by the end
• My botching of my vows, “with this ring I be wed…,” WTF was I thinking?
• Being trapped with my Grandmother Byrd during the reception who I believe was still convinced that I was either gay or had impregnated Sara and was forced to marry her; I still cannot understand how these conflicting ideas can occupy the same place in anyone’s head…
• Sara being trapped during the reception with a mutual friend who had been gone all summer and was desperately in love with her
• Sara’s Dad is the spitting image of Norm Abrams. I’m not kidding. My Grandfather Wayne is quite the furniture builder and artist and was convinced we had no small celebrity on our hands and felt compelled to introduce himself and discuss his love of the New Yankee Workshop. Both men are slightly hard of hearing so the conversation went something like this:

Grandfather Wayne: “I’m Hugh, Will’s grandfather.”
Sara’s Dad: “No, I’m Sara’s dad, Jerry.”
Grandfather Wayne: “No, I’m Hugh, Will’s grandfather.”
Sara’s Dad: “No, I’m Sara’s dad, Jerry.”

x20 or so until Sara walked up and straightened them out…

• Being pelted by birdseed so hard it left marks and Sara shaking birdseed out of her over styled hair for about a week after
• Leaving the wedding with Ben and his fiance to head home for champagne
• Champagne had been left in the freezer by someone and exploded into champagne slushy
• Going to Nick’s Tavern to drink with some friends when your freezer is full of champagne slushy
• Getting almost too drunk to consummate your marriage and finally managing it way too late above the heads of your best friend and his fiance who for some reason were spending the night

One would marvel that the marriage lasted the first night. As I read this back to Sara now no one is more surprised than her that we made it past that first night when at my parents dropping off my Dad’s tux and she finds out Ben and Caitlin are spending the night. Our wedding night. Good god, what was I thinking. Fortunately our honeymoon was much better and salvaged my bumbling during our wedding. We spent 4 incredible days at Hidden Mountain Resorts in Sevierville, TN. Our ride up to Sevierville was treacherous and beautiful. It started snowing in the mountains of NC and things got cold and icy very quickly. The poor Montero had a time on the mountain hills and when we finally got checked in we were pretty much snowed in. It was a great time and just about the only real vacation we’ve had since we’ve been married. The few times we made it out were for a few nice dinners and games at some arcades near Pigeon Forge.

At any rate when we got home it was back to work and things weren’t peachy. Sara and I were poor and it sucked. We were living in Government housing and barely making livable wages. We both had insurance thanks to my job but things were uncertain as the company had just filed Chapter 11. Sara was working for her parents at their Frame Shop and making more than I was. I decided things needed to change and started looking for new work. Fortunately for me an old classmate from High School IM’ed me day and told me he could get me a job in Greenville, SC with Trivergent. Trivergent was a communications company that was having financial problems but were in the process of being acquired by Gabriel Communications in St. Louis, MO. I figured moving from a low paid job with no security to a higher paid job with slightly less security was a no-brainer and we packed up and moved to Greenville. Sara’s drive got shorter and I walked to work from a cheap condo we rented downtown Greenville on West Earle St.

During the early years of our marriage I honestly can’t understand why Sara stayed with me. Maybe she saw there was some raw potential there but at 21 I was insufferable. I thought I knew everything and never thought for a second before making it known. I’m convinced I drove away some people I was really close to because of my attitude. Fortunately she worked through the process of growing up with me and I learned the world wasn’t black and white and it was possible to see things from another perspective. We had long conversations about what we could do to improve our relationship. Sometimes we’d stay up and talk about it all night. (We did this about two weeks ago in fact!) At some point I decided I wanted to be a better person for her and started work on improving my less than desirable qualities. It’s not been easy but compromise is the name of the game. If you love the person you’re with don’t you want to be worthy of their love? Don’t you want the last thought in their mind when they fall asleep that they’re glad to be with you and not, “That asshole forgot to fold his clothes again?”

Things worked out and the new company became NuVox, Sara started working there, I was rapidly promoted, we both learned an incredible amount about telecommunications, the Internet, and mergers and acquisitions, met some terrible people and some of the best people we’ve ever known. In the last 9 years we’ve started two failed businesses but are still trying, moved five times, bought a house, bought two new cars, been introduced to the amazing Siamese breed, enjoyed a short time with our first Siamese, lived a melancholy and sometimes downright painful year and a half with our second Siamese and his bout with lymphoma, learned to live with Sara’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis, taken each other to the emergency room, and so much more than I could ever cram into one sentence. What have we learned from all of this?

When I look back on the last 9 years I’d say that demolishing the typical husband and wife roles has played the biggest part in keeping both of us happy. She’s my best friend, my confidant, my partner, my love. Not my cook, maid, chauffeur, dishwasher, or slave. I can wash the dishes or cook dinner and she can work 80 hours a week and bring overtime when we need it. I don’t own her and she doesn’t own me and neither of us does these things because it’s, “the husband’s/wife’s job.” We do them because they have to be done and we understand how it feels when you’re doing them by yourself and the other person doesn’t help.

At the end of all of this exposition I can sum up the key to our successful marriage in one sentence. This is not all about you; don’t be a selfish ass. I think far too many people forget that in a marriage you can’t always control what the other person is going to do or think or feel and you have to be able to truly understand and live with that, rational or irrational it may be. It’s all about the patience and willingness to learn, understand, and grow with your partner.

I know you all probably read this far hoping that you’d get some quick and easy tips to make things better at home so I won’t stiff you. For 9 years here are 9 things that have made things immeasurably less tense in the evenings:

1. Mint – Until the end of 2008 Sara managed the finances by herself. She did a great job on her own but she couldn’t say no to me and I had no idea what our finances looked like. At the end of 2008 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis she made me sit down and look over them with her and I promised I would be more involved so she wouldn’t feel like, “mean mommy,” when she had to say no. Mint let us import all of our financial accounts into one portal where we could quickly and easily extrapolate where our money was going and what we needed to do to get our finances working better for us. If there’s a better tool out there I haven’t seen it yet.
2. Dishwasher – Moving into a place with a dishwasher eliminated the biggest point of contention between us. Who’s doing the dishes? You might not think about it much but consider this; doing the dishes for a regular meal that you cook for two people takes just about as long as when you cook for 4-5. You typically use the same amount of pans, skillets, measuring cups, etc. as you would for cooking a larger meal and these are the things that take the longest to clean. Buying a dishwasher gets you back 45 minutes to an hour of time every evening you’d otherwise spend washing dishes after a meal. Over the course of a year that’s about 15 days of time each year you could be doing anything else.
3. Keeping each others secrets – If I told you my wife would kill me…
4. Cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, cats, and more cats – They are ridiculous, loving, fun, and they lower your blood pressure. You can also blame them when someone passes gas.
5. CatGenie – Seriously, with all those cats, who really wants to scoop litter? Let them use their own cat toilet.
6. Working Cars – So many other things are broken, do you really want to be stuck in the house when your air conditioning is broken because you wanted to save $500 at the dealership?
7. Comfortable Bed – It’s hard to be mad at each other when you’re falling asleep in a comfortable bed
8. A great sense of humor, especially about each others’ neuroses
9. Common Enemies – Fighting against a common enemy or problem is the first step towards working together!

EPILOGUE FROM SARA, WHO JUST DISCOVERED THAT SOME OF HER FAMILY MEMBERS READ THIS.

Hi everyone! Silly Will — I’m actually a virgin and have never even tasted alcohol. Love you!