Wedding Wednesday
Tonight, My Intended and I have our big premarital counseling session to talk about money and budgets. From our mentor couple and other married folk around us, we've long heard many horror stories about money fights and shocking realizations of how fast money goes when you are a couple. Still, we got quite the shock last Friday night when we did our first combined budget.
Using records we kept of our expenses through January, we made a monthly budget considering everything--from DVD rentals to band-aids. We considered all income--her salary, tax returns, Dominick's coupons, freelance work, everything. We even included my salary. Since I'm a non-profit journalist, we just wrote "one sandwich" on the line for my yearly income.
Of course, it's not quite that bad. I kid. But still, when it was all said and done, we found that we were $600 in the hole PER MONTH. We were really depressed. And confused. How can we both be currently paying mortgages separately but yet together we can't afford one? I decided the problem was too many DVD rentals and new clothes. I was worried we'd never be able to afford children. I was concerned about never eating Salt Creek again. But really, I just couldn't believe that all the Chicken Little warnings from wedding books about how quickly money disappears in a marriage were true. Well, at least we thought they were for about 12 hours.
On Saturday morning, My Intended ran all the numbers again. It turns out that we had entered my paycheck as my monthly income. However, I get paid TWICE a month. We were chopping my salary in half and that solved the whole budgeting problem.
I tell ya, that half of sandwich makes a big difference.
6 comments:
You earn enough for a sandwich? Wow, I can't wait until I've worked here for 5 years to have that privledge.
hee hee..Todd, since you get a whole sandwich, you really are "the bread winner" plus meat and cheese! :) I only get paid peanuts! :)
Well, we shouldn't count on the cheese until raise time. Keep your fingers crossed.
So, I guess asking for mustard may be too taxing...
Just wait until you have kids . . . then your sandwich goes straight to either the kids and spouse or to the kids and childcare. You don't even get a bite.
Glad you can make it work on paper. Heh. Heh. On paper. It works on paper over here, too. On paper. Until my son eats the paper.
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