Her Pressure. My Pleasure.

Taking stock today about personal finance, I was reminded about something that my wife said. She told our Financial Fitness class that she did not feel the pressure of handing the finances that she once felt because I was working with her on the financial responsibility.

My wife took the responsibility of paying the bills. She held the checkbook. She was the one who later wanted to try online banking. I was resistant to online banking even being the family technogeek. I was the one who set the account up, but I would not log on to see the status of the money. I actually had forgotten the user name and password and had to ask her for it.

Prior to our recent debt free journey, I would sit with her while she would go over the bills and input those who she would pay by debit from the checking account. She knew that I had little to no knowledge of how much money was left. This led to my ignorant ability to believe that I could buy now and pay later. What damage could another “small” payment of $10.00 a month do? We could afford that. Right? The problem was not out of control spending, but I would open an account and spend a little thinking I could pay it off.

I did this with computers and clothing. I still use each item and get much use out of them. An example is my 3-year-old Dell computer. It still works great. It has a 15″ flat panel monitor. It runs WinXP Home. It is perfect…..for my daughter who now uses it. I of course bought a Vista ready Dell computer. It was a steal at $299.00 and another $100.00 spent in upgrading the RAM on my own. Dell is the snowball that we are rolling to paying off very soon. It has the smallest balance of the five debts that we have listed. The car being the largest debt.

Aside from the clothes, my family would benefit from what I would spend. That is another lie that I would tell myself. They would benefit more from debt freedom and saving to buy versus what I was doing. Once my wife saw that I had broken the cycle and admitted this to her and myself, she felt the relief that she was not in this battle against money alone. She had the pressure. I had the pleasure.

My advice to those starting out on the path to debt freedom is that you have to work together. Your mate is not your enemy. Work together. Admit mistakes to one another. Pinkie swear and spit shake on the budget that you create. Sign the budgets that you agree to. When you make a new budget, don’t throw the old budget away. Post it in your home where the two of you can see it, but family and friends cannot see it. Unless you need that level of accountability. Then, start your own PF blog and share your mistakes.