Day 30: Money

I've never been much good with money. Even when I was a kid and we used to fill 5 gallon pails with rocks from the garden for a quarter a pail. I would make two dollars on a Saturday and have it spent and swallowed on bubble gum before Monday morning. In college, my roommate and I worked on campus- she saved all her earnings and deposited them into various savings and stock accounts. Mine were spent on gas and darkroom equipment and undoubtedly piles of bubble gum. After college, even with a decent paying job in a public school system, I couldn't save a bit. I had parking tickets that piled on top of each other, until the city police knocked on our door one night threatening to tow my car.

Imagine my relief when I found, in Rich, a man who was not only forgiving of my monetary ineptitude but even worse than I. The first year was spent spending what we barely had. And then I did our taxes and realized that we made nearly a hundred thousand the first year and had nothing to show for it. A few pairs of sneakers, 20 extra pounds from eating out every night and a 60 gallon fish tank filled with Oscars and Bettas and other fish we couldn't keep alive for more than a few weeks. There was nothing else to do but buckle down and learn how to create a budget. We started with a weekly allowance, opened a savings account and went grocery shopping together. Two years later we are a lean mean budget machine. While we bring home half the paychecks we once did, the money goes twice as far.

They say that more marriages end over money than anything else. I don't know if this is true but I know that when two people come together instead of apart to overcome something they grow together and forge a new bond- a stronger tie. And I know that if we can do this, if we can run together instead of away, we can make it through the big things. Because the big things are made up of the everydays.