Budgeting

We are on our pre-vacation budget, which is going to look remarkably like our "getting out of debt now that you told me about it budget." We've both agreed that we have to make changes, including writing down everything we spend money on and talking about it. It is a very interesting experience.

Roland and I just grew up differently. I never had and never expected to have everything I wanted. I have always understood spending money as making a choice -- if you spend money on one thing then you can't spend money on something else. I hoped to have a secure job someday that would allow me to have any particular thing that I really wanted, knowing that I would never have everything I wanted. My idea of what is genuinely necessary is fairly minimal.

Of course my good parent who made me feel safe was incredibly frugal, and the parent with whom I was unsafe spent money carelessly.

From my perspective Roland is just screwed up. His parents during his lifetime went from comfortable to wealthy (at least by my standards). I have been frustrated by trying to buy them presents because anything they want, they buy. If they don't have it they either don't want it or don't know about it. Roland was never really denied anything. I saw it when we were dating. If he ran out of money, his father gave him more. They insisted he get a job in the summer, but he did not really save money.

Roland has equated being a successful adult with being able to buy pretty much everything he wants. Where I feel like a responsible adult when I tell myself that I can't have something, Roland feels like a child or a failure.

We are having different responses to our new commitments regarding our budget. I am actually happy and excited. I feel hopeful that being frugal on my part will make a difference in our budget. It hasn't for a long time. He of course is anxious about not being able to get everything he wants the minute he wants it. We are also learning that we have different ideas of what is simply necessary. I'm not giving up my high quality tea for nothing, but I don't see why it should be any hardship at all for him to switch from bottled body wash to a bar of soap.

We have been married for more than two decades, but in some ways this is like going back to the very beginning all over again.

And for those of you who aren't married, this sort of thing is central to what it means to be married. You imagine the joy of spending time together, even the struggles of making major decisions regarding jobs and family. The reality of marriage though so often boils down to standing in the aisle of a grocery store and saying, "Really? Body wash is a necessity of life? Like you would die if you used a bar of soap?"