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The Financial State of Our Union

August 8th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

Here it is a week into August, and I have been doing well tracking all the spending. I have not really looked at the list. I am kind of afraid to look at it. Already I can tell we spend a lot more than I previously thought we did.

Things with Baseball boy and I are going well. We are growing. I think it's important to remember that we are both evolving, so the outlook each of us has now is not going to be the outlook we have next year. Our priorities will be different, our spending habits will be different and our wallets will be different.

In the meantime life is going to throw up a good number of financial obstacles we will encounter and learn from. They will teach us about ourselves and each other, as well as give us tools to use in the future. I will use these oppertunities as a chance to try different things, while venting my frustrations and encountering setbacks. I am glad I have a community here who will cry with me and can offer guidance when I don’t know what to do.

I am trying to be very self aware in my financial choices, and I believe Baseball boy is getting there too. He might not share my philosophies with money but I need to remember that I am really a baby in money management. He might not make all the right choices, but neither do I.

There are no cardinal rules in money management. If there were, then I would follow the existing guaranteed model for living wealthy and make baseball boy follow it as well. But since it seems financial success is a different path for everyone, I will continue to 'experiment' with money and blog about my success/failures.

Although Baseball boy and I don’t share the same financial pages right now, we are both trying to get there. I believe he wants the same things I want, but his ‘awareness’ and enthusiasm to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ is not a priority right now. I think that following all my plans, charts and websites exhausts him. He has left the finances to my domain for now, allowing me to try different things, and once I have a strategy that works he will enthusiastically get on board.

I wish he would take initiative himself; it frustrates me when he mismanages money or we don’t share the same outlook, but that does not make his choices, his journey or his perspective bad. It just means that we are both on an individual journey and are actively trying to get to the same point by using different paths. If I felt that he is selfish, irresponsible, or that we don’t want the same things in life, then I would have left him years ago. If I felt that I was beating a dead horse, that he will always be a dead weight for me to drag around, then I would not still be with him. But I do see improvement. I do see enthusiasm. I do see comprehension and effort. Sometimes I don’t understand his logic, but it comes from a good place and I cannot assume that I am the only one in the relationship capable of seeing the big picture.

I believe in Suze Orman's philosophy that there is a lot of psychology behind money and how it gets used. This blog was started for me to understand my own psychology with money, and to develop a working relationship with it. I want to be active and aware with the money in my life, and become as educated as I can so I can make the money work the hardest it can for me. I want to understand tools for using and saving money while trusting the methods I use to employ those tools.

This might take a long time for me to understand my own psychological issues with money. It might take me a year or two to develop a reliable and trusted money model that works for me and my family.


In addition to chronicling my own journey, my goal is to bring Baseball boy into this level of financial awareness I have found. He has his own relationship with money, and his own money issues. Because I don’t think he is deeply "in touch" with his finances, it is hard for me to learn his financial ways. I am an outsider watching him as he kind of reacts with his money, rather than consciously plans for his money. Since he is not "connected" to our money, either enthusiastically or educationally, it frustrates me to see how he chooses to use the money because I see no deep thinking or long term strategy for the money.


I look to forward sharing with Baseball boy everything I have learned. To awkening the same goals and desires I have; to understand money, its impacts, and to create a strategy that will maximize the money that enters our life.

But first I need to learn it. First I need to understand my own money "issues" before I can tackle and work on his.

So it looks like we will have some problems. We will waste and lose some money. Hopefully save and invest some money. I will be counting on others in this community to help me avoid the pitfalls of money mismanagement that surrounds all of us on a regular basis. I will be reading your blogs to increase my financial education and maintain my "financial awareness" so that Baseball boy and I do not become a statistic that you all read about and wonder "what were they thinking?"

Eventually we will get to where many of you are. We will have a tried and true system that we both understand and believe in. We will both be "plugged in" to our finances and together we will be planning a lovely picture of our future. I look forward to it, we will get there eventually. In the meantime I hope I dont lose to much money. Smile


5 Responses to “The Financial State of Our Union”

  1. frugaltexan75 Says:
    1218235483

    I think that you are heading in the right direction -- just for the simple fact that you are thinking and planning and learning about the best ways to use and manage your money. Even if all the decisions made are not the most financially sound (i.e. baseball boy) you still have enough of a balance to keep steady and keep moving.

  2. sillyoleme Says:
    1218238888

    I realized the exact same thing about BF & I only yesterday. I have always thought of maturity, responsibility, personality, etc. as either "adult" or "not". I've been able to look back and see that when we started dating (me 18, him 17)... we were basically the same people, but so much has changed about us.

    It was only yesterday that I realized we have both changed alot in the past year (BF being ready to get married, me giving up some control, us moving away from the place we've always lived and ENJOYING it, BF deciding he wants to above all have a good job in the future). I think the defining factor, and the part that gives me confidence in our future lives together, is that the aspects of "us" that keep us together never change. He is still the same person I started dating, but we are "tweaking" ourselves as we go.

    And now I realize that this will only continue into the future. No matter how fast I grew up, or how mature I think we are now, life experiences will change us in some way in the future.

  3. gruntina Says:
    1218301470

    At least you know where you and your bf stand at this time and there are no new suprises after the union of marriage.

  4. gamecock43 Says:
    1218307582

    Yeah, We are still evolving. What can I say? I wish I could say we are 'there', and already 'responcible' or 'grown up', but we're not. And as a team, well, I am at a little different point than he is, but this way we can rely on one anothers strengths, when he falls I will help him, if I fall, we dont both crumble.

  5. Amber Says:
    1218315107

    I think it's great that you know your position as well as bf

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