One Step At A Time

This past Sunday was our 2nd class in FPU and it was about money and relationships. During the class, I could not help but look back at how Felicia and I have handled money and our relationship. We have always gotten along real well but when it came to money fights, we were seasoned fighters. Looking back, we had a lot of unnecessary fights. In a nutshell, it was her job to pay the bills and my job to complain about what happened to all the money. Honestly, that is how it was. I let her pay all the bills, then I would ask how much we had left and when I did not like the answer, I would launch an investigation into the matter. Understandably, she would take offense to the Spanish Inquistion and then the gloves would go on and 12 rounds later nothing would be solved. In hindsight, we both played a part in our financial mess. I chose to turn a blind eye to it and not deal with it; and she would deal with the financial stress with Ebay therapy. We have both gotten a lot better. I ...

She is right!!! I am not sure what it is, but when I get really stressed out the first thing I want to do is hide and not deal with anything. When we were engaged and moved in together, we put our finances together and tried to run our household. I know when I was young my mom handled the money and I saw how it would stress her out a lot, so I guess I thought I would let Felicia deal with it. We split it up 50/50, her job was to pay the bills and my job was to complain about having no money. Now, that is not working together. Since I did not where the money was going, I wanted to spend like we had all the money in the world. In the end, I realized it was not fair to Felicia. She had to keep track of all the bills, pay them on time, and when money was thin, deal with me complaining. Now we sit down before each pay day and spend the money before it is in the bank. We look at what bills are coming up, what we are going to spend on household things, but the very first thing we do ...