No, I haven't. My wife and I were both absolutely trash at money when we met and early in our marriage. I made good money, but I partied hard and didn't save. Wife just never made a lot and was never taught good financial habits. I lost my first house to foreclosure in 2007. It wasn't really because of why everyone else lost their homes at the time, though, my mortgage was only $650. It was my expensive drug habit and the depression, I just didn't pay it. For some reason, perhaps the class action lawsuit against my lender, the foreclosure never showed up on my credit report. She sucked, too. She had no self control when it came to credit cards. After she got hurt, she'd try to make herself happy by shopping and it turned into a problem. Debt never got crazy out of hand, like I see with some people, mainly because we didn't have much income, so didn't have a lot of borrowing power. We scraped enough money together to buy a Cheoy Lee 36 sailboat and lived on it. It cost us about $500 a month to live at a marina on it. We were able start changing our ways about debt and had some of the greatest times of our lives over the next few years. Paid cash for fully depreciated vehicles, and just didn't borrow anything for years. Then, as she started having more trouble walking, switched to a 37' Trawler that was easier for her to get on and off. Now, we are much better with our finances and have built a life we're proud of. We bought our house right before covid that has more than doubled in value. We haven't bought anything since prices started going thru the roof. Wife's medical retirement pay and our low cost of living and small debts mean we're pretty recession proof. Wife still spends more than I do. If it were up to me, I wouldn't buy anything I couldn't eat drink, wear, use for shelter or if I needed parts to fix something I already have. I'm that frugal these days. People can get better at finances, but sometimes it is after a lot of hard learned lessons.
Does that manifest itself in difficult situations with your current lifestyle? With most people I know, I've always felt like their financial choices are reflected through their whole life. People with impulse spending habits are going to be impulsive with small amounts of money, or impulsive outside of finances. People who want to live lavishly are often very unsatisfied in other aspects of their life. Things like that.
Given the cost of therapy, and insurance's refusal to cover it, you'll probably go broke faster at a therapist's office than on 5th Avenue.
But also.... Maybe if that person addressed their issues decades ago (with or without therapy) the worst of it would have been nipped in the bud. You're right. Therapy is expensive. Especially when you need a whole lot of it.
I entered my relationship with my wife with a modest amount of debt, maybe 10-12k. She was appalled. Under her gentle “suggestions” , that was gone and we had saved a good amount for our wedding in about 2 years. Since then we’ve lived well below our means. Very modest home, save up and pay cash for our cars, started saving early on for our kid’s college. I’m now at what I consider an ideal situation. I don’t have a second home, a particularly nice car, no boat, no motorcycle etc. But I am only vaguely aware of when payday is, and I have an approximate idea of what my salary is. When the money is coming in or how much isn’t anything I have to focus on.
I get what you're saying. We've yet to run into any real financial difficulties. Even the time I got let go and was unemployed for almost a year, the rent was super cheap and I had enough savings and help from elsewhere that we managed fine. In that time she was every bit as spartan as me, I don't question her discipline in hard times. She just doesn't hesitate to partake in what pleasures she can afford, while I do. I guess I was being unfair to her. But I would still just cut her half the check and let her go wild with her money.
No idea, and she didn't either. She wasn't allowed to touch it until she was 35, which at that point was over 10 years away.
We broke up for a number of reasons but it did bug me that she didn't seem to be especially responsible with money. She'd borrowed a couple hundred bucks from me to "make ends meet just until I can pay you back" and I never expected to get it back so I wasn't bummed but I definitely didn't get it back. Anyway never really saw her again but thanks to the Internet I found out that she later started a business where all the Yelp reviews were about suspicious transactions and unpaid suppliers. Well it turns out maybe those weren't bugs in the payment processing system. Maybe some crimes were committed and law enforcement took notice. And so she fled the country. Apparently similar behavior continued abroad, and that country got wind of it, they either sent her back or she skedaddled back. Which is all good but when you are a fugitive and you come back to the good'ol USA and your name is on a list of fugitives then they are probably going to be waiting for you at the airport. So she spent a little time in the hoosegow and then was let out on some sort of conditional release. That lasted a while until she got caught buying some things to resell with some credit cards that perhaps were not her own. And when she went to pick up said merchandise, she left some items behind by mistake that identified her. So that led to some more trouble. Trail gets a little colder at that point but her entrepreneurial spirit thrived and it looks like she got a very sizable PPP loan during COVID. Which I'm sure was totally legitimate. As someone in the top percentile of world's most boring humans, the fact that I have an international fugitive girlfriend in my past (and a semi-successful paranormal romance author, but that's a different story) is mildly amusing to me.
If only there were some kind of message board, where you had the way to start a thread to tell that story. Alas.
A girl I was into back in my hometown is now into that shit. Weird to see an old “what could’ve been” posting online about her love of stories involving young single women jacking off Minotaurs.
I....I...honestly just thought that was guys online pretending to be women who'd be into jacking off minotaurs. I thought actual women like that were as mythical as the beast they fantasize fucking.
It’s a whole community. Married women whose romance novel of choice is supernatural dudes. It’s just different enough from porn that it’s acceptable, I guess. I mean, I’d totally encourage my wife to read it if she wanted to. Every night, right before bed.
I read some excerpts from one of the books. It was…filthy. All the C words. More suited for Literotica than the romance section of Barnes & Noble.
I'm not financially savvy. I don't make a lot of money. I'm still hodling tight to my SHIB hoping it hits a penny. One of the only reasons we aren't dirt poor is I will not pay anyone to do anything and I will hardly ever buy anything. I spend soooo much time every year, but typically very little money, fixing stuff that most people would replace. Dryer getting new foam seals and new felt ring during yearly cleaning.