phoenixgirl
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2003
- Messages
- 3,390
My husband suggested an interesting proposition tonight (which he claims came from me a year or two ago, but I have no recollection of it). If you recall from my upgrading of my plain wedding band fiasco, my husband dropped the ball after I had hinted that I wanted a simple diamond wedding band to replace my plain band, and it turned into a "thing" that luckily had a happy ending for me, perhaps only because Air France bumped us from a flight and I suggested we spend the credit in that matter.
DH has been saying for some time that he wants/needs a new mountain bike (desire has turned to need as parts have broken on his current bike). DH was a formerly great mountain biker (really, he won the first race he ever entered when he was 13, beating adults, and went on to place in the nationals) who has recently taken it up again. I am all for it as it provides exercise and stress release. I know he needs a new bike, but things have been tight recently. To be fair, things aren''t really tight because there is always the nest egg, but things have been tight as far as living within our means without touching our nest egg or stopping our automatic contributions to retirement. Also, the nest egg comes mainly from a gift from my parents and inheritance from my grandparents, so then there is the whole our vs. mine conflict. While you are imagining that I must be some lucky girl to have entered life with a nest egg I didn''t earn, I agree, but I also know that it made me and my siblings all weirdly stingy. None of us spends money when we don''t have to, and we all have an obsessive need to increase our balance and never touch it except in case of emergency. My sister lives rent-free in a beautiful 4 bedroom house in Mclean Virginia due to her job, and she still won''t spend her nest egg on invitro fertillization when her heart''s desire is to have another baby after three miscarriages. So somehow my parents putting us in charge of the money at an early age made us all afraid to spend it.
Anyway, back to DH and me. We''ve also, I''m sorry to say, had some issues regarding money in terms of his not telling me about a student loan his dad had asked him to pay back and not paying off the credit card in full one month (that is my rule -- we always pay it off). DH is not always the most responsible person and will lie/evade when caught, and then accuse me being too hard on him as though this justifies dishonesty.
So anyway, after all of that, I have tried my hardest to think of a way to buy this bike for DH, whose birthday is in a couple of weeks. He already "spent" his birthday present (which is what he said when he booked the trip) when he decided to fly across the country and visit his brother/go to a concert series over Labor Day. This was immediately after we were trying to pay our bills for our trip to France this summer and pretty much wiped out our reserves. So anyway, I''ve been wracking my brain to think of a way to pay for the bike. I thought about giving him my Christmas check from my parents or my reimbursement check from the course I had to take for my job. But then I realized that this was supposed to be "my" money, and that he already spent his birthday money, plus he had gotten behind and not paid off his bills, so why should he be "rewarded"? Since he was too anxious to wait for after his birthday and Christmas for this all important bike, I suggested that he apply for a 0% credit card and use it buy the bike, then stop using the card and pay it off before the rate materialized. So I am trying to help, right?
So tonight we had a bottle of champagne to celebrate a special occasion for some family members, and that made me less inhibited. I wanted to go out to dinner, which given our "tight" situation I wouldn''t normally want to do. But I didn''t care. At dinner we talked about our fantasies -- what we would do if jobs, families, and money were no issue. I said that really I would probably just want diamonds. Maybe I would buy a few new clothes (I rarely buy anything for myself and let my parents buy it for birthday/Christmas), but mostly I would just want diamonds. I explained how just the ability to compare prices and search for the right one would be pleasurable, that this would be a hobby for me.
Finally, the dufus who couldn''t be cajoled into buying me the ring I wanted seemed to get it, but with a catch. He proposed that we sell a bit of our nest egg (about 2%) and split it down the middle. He would get half for his bike (which would only cover half the cost, so he''d still have to come up with the rest out of his spending money which is a set amount from our pay checks), and I''d get the rest for diamonds, which would be more than we spent on the ring I finally got six weeks ago. I could get myself whatever I wanted (diamond studs! no, a pendant! Aaah! Fantasy becomes reality and confuses my simple mind!).
So on one hand, why not, right? Surely I must be a stingy person if I can''t spend 1% of our non-retirement savings on diamonds for myself, and yet I love diamonds so much that I come here so often, right? But on the other hand, we want to move out of our cramped 700 sq. foot condo into a house within a year, and I want to build up a fund just for that, instead of living pay check to pay check after our automatic contributions are deducted. We make enough money and should be able to live within our means. DH should be able to save from his spending money for a few months to get the bike he wants. I acknowledge his need for a new bike, but the money is not in our account right now. We''d have to sell investments and pay taxes on them, and then the statement will be less next month, which reduces my joy in the gift to myself.
OK, so what is the truth here? Do I have some kind of hang-up about spending money? Is DH finally coming around and recognizing and encouraging my diamond fix (which I surely need since I am such a stingy person), or is he just trying to bribe me into getting what he has irresponsibly not been able to get out of his already adequate spending money? Any insight?
DH has been saying for some time that he wants/needs a new mountain bike (desire has turned to need as parts have broken on his current bike). DH was a formerly great mountain biker (really, he won the first race he ever entered when he was 13, beating adults, and went on to place in the nationals) who has recently taken it up again. I am all for it as it provides exercise and stress release. I know he needs a new bike, but things have been tight recently. To be fair, things aren''t really tight because there is always the nest egg, but things have been tight as far as living within our means without touching our nest egg or stopping our automatic contributions to retirement. Also, the nest egg comes mainly from a gift from my parents and inheritance from my grandparents, so then there is the whole our vs. mine conflict. While you are imagining that I must be some lucky girl to have entered life with a nest egg I didn''t earn, I agree, but I also know that it made me and my siblings all weirdly stingy. None of us spends money when we don''t have to, and we all have an obsessive need to increase our balance and never touch it except in case of emergency. My sister lives rent-free in a beautiful 4 bedroom house in Mclean Virginia due to her job, and she still won''t spend her nest egg on invitro fertillization when her heart''s desire is to have another baby after three miscarriages. So somehow my parents putting us in charge of the money at an early age made us all afraid to spend it.
Anyway, back to DH and me. We''ve also, I''m sorry to say, had some issues regarding money in terms of his not telling me about a student loan his dad had asked him to pay back and not paying off the credit card in full one month (that is my rule -- we always pay it off). DH is not always the most responsible person and will lie/evade when caught, and then accuse me being too hard on him as though this justifies dishonesty.
So anyway, after all of that, I have tried my hardest to think of a way to buy this bike for DH, whose birthday is in a couple of weeks. He already "spent" his birthday present (which is what he said when he booked the trip) when he decided to fly across the country and visit his brother/go to a concert series over Labor Day. This was immediately after we were trying to pay our bills for our trip to France this summer and pretty much wiped out our reserves. So anyway, I''ve been wracking my brain to think of a way to pay for the bike. I thought about giving him my Christmas check from my parents or my reimbursement check from the course I had to take for my job. But then I realized that this was supposed to be "my" money, and that he already spent his birthday money, plus he had gotten behind and not paid off his bills, so why should he be "rewarded"? Since he was too anxious to wait for after his birthday and Christmas for this all important bike, I suggested that he apply for a 0% credit card and use it buy the bike, then stop using the card and pay it off before the rate materialized. So I am trying to help, right?
So tonight we had a bottle of champagne to celebrate a special occasion for some family members, and that made me less inhibited. I wanted to go out to dinner, which given our "tight" situation I wouldn''t normally want to do. But I didn''t care. At dinner we talked about our fantasies -- what we would do if jobs, families, and money were no issue. I said that really I would probably just want diamonds. Maybe I would buy a few new clothes (I rarely buy anything for myself and let my parents buy it for birthday/Christmas), but mostly I would just want diamonds. I explained how just the ability to compare prices and search for the right one would be pleasurable, that this would be a hobby for me.
Finally, the dufus who couldn''t be cajoled into buying me the ring I wanted seemed to get it, but with a catch. He proposed that we sell a bit of our nest egg (about 2%) and split it down the middle. He would get half for his bike (which would only cover half the cost, so he''d still have to come up with the rest out of his spending money which is a set amount from our pay checks), and I''d get the rest for diamonds, which would be more than we spent on the ring I finally got six weeks ago. I could get myself whatever I wanted (diamond studs! no, a pendant! Aaah! Fantasy becomes reality and confuses my simple mind!).
So on one hand, why not, right? Surely I must be a stingy person if I can''t spend 1% of our non-retirement savings on diamonds for myself, and yet I love diamonds so much that I come here so often, right? But on the other hand, we want to move out of our cramped 700 sq. foot condo into a house within a year, and I want to build up a fund just for that, instead of living pay check to pay check after our automatic contributions are deducted. We make enough money and should be able to live within our means. DH should be able to save from his spending money for a few months to get the bike he wants. I acknowledge his need for a new bike, but the money is not in our account right now. We''d have to sell investments and pay taxes on them, and then the statement will be less next month, which reduces my joy in the gift to myself.
OK, so what is the truth here? Do I have some kind of hang-up about spending money? Is DH finally coming around and recognizing and encouraging my diamond fix (which I surely need since I am such a stingy person), or is he just trying to bribe me into getting what he has irresponsibly not been able to get out of his already adequate spending money? Any insight?
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