If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon (16 page)

His amusement didn’t last very long.

I was in an extreme shabby-chic phase when we bought our first house, and Joe—who’d grown up in the country—was appalled at my foolish, squandering ways.

“You didn’t pay for that, did you?” he asked earnestly, inspecting the rusty, dented watering can I’d picked up at an antiques store. I was planning to use it as a planter, and I thought it was just darling.

“No, honey, they gave it to me for free,” I replied sarcastically. Well, I mean, honestly.

“I hope so,” he muttered. “Next time we go to my dad’s, you should poke around in the shed. It’s filled with a bunch of banged-up, corroded crap. You’ll love it.”

The epithet for the recurring economic debates in our house became “form versus function.” (You can probably guess which one I favored.) Joe would come into the house, filthy from working in the yard, and look as if he were actually going to sit down on the creamy white linen sofa.

“Ah, ah, ah,” I’d scold. “Get a towel if you’re going to sit in here!”

“I can’t even sit down on my own goddamned couches,” he’d roar. “Who the hell buys white couches?”

“I do!” I’d yell back, and the game would be on.

My husband is the biggest banking hypocrite ever. We are both spenders, no doubt about that. Neither of us pines over making purchases; most times we just do it. But I do not have exorbitant tastes, dress well, or eat out often. My indulgences come with the big red Target emblem or from a big-box store, and 85 percent of the time they are for my children. My husband, on the other hand, spends as he pleases, but only makes purchases for himself and takes enormous amounts of money out of the ATM. The worst part is that he constantly monitors my purchases, demands to know how I spent $598 at Costco (we have four kids who eat like six adults, dumbshit) and $18 at Walgreens (a prescription and Red Vines, thank you very much), and why I wrote a $100 check to the guy who has been coaching our kids’ soccer for six years (annual fees). Meanwhile, he is completely unsupervised in his own spending. As you can imagine, I suspect that the bulk of his money goes to greens fees and hamburgers. I really don’t want to know, or else I would.

VICTORIA

 

 

When we married, the very fact of our separate checking accounts drove Joe mad. We lived like a pair of very civil and laid-back roommates—he’d pay the mortgage and the car insurance, I’d pay property tax and all of the utilities. Because this allowed me some measure of control, I would have been perfectly happy to continue this way forever, but Joe felt a burning need to establish financial solidarity. Though we agreed that “our money” belonged to both of us, we couldn’t seem to settle on a mutually satisfying accounting system.

“We should have one joint account,” Joe would gripe. But my husband was unconditionally loyal to the little mom-andpop bank where he had once worked, and I liked the convenience of my behemoth institution. (We had online banking
and
cooler checks.) And then there were the logistics: Who would keep the register? Who would be responsible for the monthly balancing? Would we pay bills my way (immediately upon their arrival) or Joe’s way (file them away to be paid at the last possible minute)? It was all too much.

Eventually he wore me down and I agreed to try a joint account—if I could keep my own for the trial period. I wrote one check out of our joint account. It bounced.

“This is why two people can’t share one account!” I wailed, indignant. “You didn’t record the last check you wrote and I was stupid enough to believe the balance in the register was accurate! I have never bounced a check in my entire life!”

“Well, now you have,” Joe said agreeably, clearly not as traumatized by this blemish on my otherwise pristine record as I was. After that I would write checks from the account at his request, but I refused to use it otherwise. Eventually he closed the joint account and we came up with the system we use now, which is that Joe pays all of the bills from his personal account and asks me for money when he needs it. I don’t even have to look at all of those bothersome bills, a perk that has made giving up my precious control infinitely easier.

We had the banking thing dialed in, but that wasn’t the last of our money issues. I became acutely aware of this the night Joe made the following gruesome announcement over an otherwise lovely dinner:

“We need to create a family budget.”

My skin prickled, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I broke out into an uncomfortable and unattractive full-body sweat. I’m the person who, when she sees a DO NOT TOUCH sign, has to
immediately
stroke the off-limits object. Rules and restrictions piss me off, so telling me not to spend money was just asking for disaster.

“A what?” I asked, feigning vacuity. On some subconscious level, I am sure I knew this was coming.

“We have nothing saved for our retirement,” Joe was fond of reminding me. “We spend more money than we make.” “Your highlights cost
how much
?” Although I was appreciative that someone in the house was concerned about these things—and grateful that it didn’t have to be me—I certainly didn’t want anyone poring over my receipts, calculating how often I actually used my health club membership, or worst of all, putting the kibosh on my monthly pedicure.

Joe began establishing the dreaded budget by enlisting a financial planner I’ll call Satan. After great effort and expense, Satan charged us the equivalent of several hundred cups of designer coffee to tell us that
we spend too much money
. Believe me, the irony of this shocking epiphany was not lost on either of us. In particular, the Angel of Darkness suggested we eliminate our child care budget (which included the cost of preschool) entirely. The fact that we’d have significantly less money without the income our jobs produced while the kids were being cared for by someone else didn’t seem to be taken into consideration. Though we were going to be allowed to continue to eat (in moderation), Lucifer also recommended not just curtailing but eradicating the
entire
personal-grooming category. Now, I’d consider walking around with ragged toenails for just about any worthy cause, but revealing my sad salt-and-pepper roots was just not going to happen. The Antichrist would just have to peddle her sensible living plan somewhere else. Like Mars.

Thankfully, even Joe realized the absurdity of Beelzebub’s recommendations, and I was allowed to continue to enjoy regular meals
and
maintain my lifelong charade of “naturally” sun-kissed tresses. We agreed to the pleasantly unrestrictive plan that we would “try to be more frugal.” I still had to submit all of my receipts to my husband, but Joe agreed to a no-judgment policy. To show my team spirit, I started to stretch out the time between hair appointments—fortunately I have a pretty nice assortment of hats and look okay in most of them. I even let my beloved
New Yorker
subscription expire.

I also started paying for some stuff with cash. Nothing major or illicit, just things I’d rather not have to admit to buying. Before this I was the poster girl for credit cards, the gal who swiped her plastic to buy a single greeting card or a scoop of ice cream. I didn’t charge exorbitant things I couldn’t afford, and I paid the bills in full each month (well, technically Joe paid them—but I made sure I didn’t spend outside of our means), but I liked my cards for the easy record keeping and of course the frequent-flier miles. But now that someone really
was
taking note of every lip gloss and latte I bought, I felt like Big Brother was breathing down my neck in every checkout aisle. Tiny cash purchases here and there were like a few stolen bites of someone else’s dessert: They didn’t really count.

“I’m not trying to get you to cut back on spending so much as I am trying to get an idea of where all of our money goes,” Joe told me sensibly when he clued in to my petty-cash habit.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But if I get grilled about a single pack of Trident, I’m going back to the squandering-cash plan.”

I found it interesting—but not all that surprising—when I read the results of a recent global study by the infamous media giant Nielsen. This time the researchers determined that women will fare far better in the current recession than men because, quite simply, we put less emphasis on money. Rather than judging our worth and potency by our bank balance, women derive their happiness from
personal relationships and meaningful communication
. In other words, as much as we gals may pine for a rock the size of a golf ball on our fingers or a glistening new Viking range or those slutty clip-in Jessica Simpson hair extensions, we’ve also discovered—long before our blockheaded partners—that money can’t actually buy happiness. It just lets you look better in your misery.

My husband spends all of
my
hard-earned money on his boat. We are
at about $10,000 at this point. He continually asks me for more money
for his boat and lovingly calls me his “sponsor.” It probably has
strengthened our relationship because his extended time on the watercraft
continues our “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
philosophy of marriage, but it is still annoying.

HANNAH

 

 

Even if your partner is the generous sort, here’s what happens when you are working with a field of pooled resources: You can’t just go out and buy whatever the hell you want. (I know!) For instance, Joe believes you should wait until your current car is officially pronounced dead, and then go out and pay full price for a brand-spanking-new one, which you will then be expected to drive into the ground. Using Joe’s method, one might have the privilege of driving two or three different cars in a lifetime. Conversely, I was raised to believe one should
never
purchase this year’s model (“It costs you 20 percent of the price just to drive it off the lot!”), but to buy a wellmaintained two-year-oldv vehicle—preferably from an eighty-seven-year-old grandchildless woman who only used it to get to her weekly bingo game up the street. You would then drive it for exactly two years before trading it in for another gently loved toddler model, thereby dodging the bulk of that bothersome depreciation.

“Why would I want to buy someone else’s headache?” is Joe’s cynical argument whenever I buck for a trade-up.

Because of this, I am the proud owner of a nine-year-old SUV. The goddamned thing works perfectly and has never caused us a day’s headache. It’s only got 75,000 miles on it (because where the hell do I go?), and I am sure it has another ten years of life in it, possibly more. The mats are stained and ratty, there are Goldfish crackers and bits of string cheese ground deeply into the seats, and it doesn’t have any of the fancy bells and whistles—like built-in DVD players in the headrests, an in-dash navigation system, or gloriously heated seats—that they’ve come out with in the past decade.

I drop hints about wanting a new car frequently. These “hints” include e-mailed links to Craigslist listings and oneday-only tent sales; laborious, gushing descriptions of other friends’ new cars and all of their swanky features; and casual statements like “For the love of Lexus can I please just get a new car?” I know I am setting myself up for failure here, but I have fantasies of being awoken on my birthday with some bogus request to come see the new birds’ nest in the yard or to check out some silly thing the dog is doing in the driveway. When I shuffle outside in my slippers, I rub the crusty gunk out of my eyes to find a brand-new (well, two-year-old) Mercedes parked out front. Of
course
it’s wrapped in a giant, obnoxious red bow. A flying pig winks at me from behind the wheel.

Now, I make my own money and could easily go out and buy myself a new car any old time I please. (Well, maybe not
easily
, as I am really bad at all of that tedious paperwork rigmarole and have a habit of signing things I haven’t quite read, but you know what I mean.) But I haven’t and I am almost positive that I won’t, and not because I believe that blessed Benz is ever going to appear on its own. I know, in fact, that it isn’t. But until Joe goes out and buys the motorcycle I don’t want him to have, I just don’t have enough ammo to do it.

My husband was about thirty pounds overweight when—with his thirtieth
birthday fast approaching—he decided to diet! Exercise! Get in
shape! Most would chalk this up to being an early-midlife-I-should-
get-healthy crisis. But no. It wasn’t for his health. It was because the
only thing homeboy wanted for his thirtieth (not sixtieth) birthday was
an
oil motherfucking painting
of our family to hang over our nonexistent
fireplace. He lost more than thirty pounds and said that once we got
the oil painting done, he would stop dieting and eat whatever he wanted
again. His birthday was in June and there have been no plans for an
oil painting and there never will be. He’s still exercising and being
healthy because I’ve seduced him with a trip to Hawaii in the fall.
Because seriously, I’d rather dole out the cash it’s going to take to see
Maui than have to stare at our family in a painting on a wall where a
fireplace will never exist.

MEGAN

 

 

My friends Jenny and Rob have an interesting way of handling their money. And by “interesting” I mean “Holy shit, this seems wacked to me, but hey, if it works for them, who am I to argue with it?” Jenny and Rob have been married for nearly two decades and they still keep all of their money separate. They both make around the same salary and each writes dozens of checks a month, for
exactly half
of all of the household and family expenses. When Jenny wanted to repave the driveway and Rob didn’t really think it was all that urgent, Jenny saved up her own money to get the job done. Jenny drives a beater and wears fabulous clothes; Rob pilots a tricked-out Saab and hasn’t been spotted in a new shirt since his teenage kids were toddlers.