Grumpus, the Elderus Caninus?

The other day Mrs. Grumpus tried to kill me … twice.  She sent me an email while I was at work, asking if our budget could support her joining a new community center with gym, childcare, and pool akin to the YMCA.  The price tag attached to her query nearly gave me a heart attack.  Fortunately, my bike commute has paid off, and my heart withstood the initial shock.  To put this in context, since our marriage I’ve adamantly refused to pay for a gym membership since all military bases,  big and small, have gyms — many with the type of classes she likes to take.  It is an expense that does not make sense in the overall context of the benefits that the military affords its members.  With that said, we’ve paid for outdoor exercise classes before, and at the time she asked about the possibility of joining the new community center, she had just stopped going to her latest outdoor class due to the summer break.  In her email, she also listed several other memberships she was willing to let lapse.  When I did the math though, the memberships she proposed to let lapse did not add up to the cost of the new community center.  I sent her an email stating such.  I expected much foot stomping and toy throwing when I got home.

Her reply nearly gave me my second heart attack of the day.  She insists it was not written in advance, but I am skeptical.  In any case, she sent a line by line breakdown of the costs she already incurs when going to the base gym (like child care for Grumpus Minimus #2), along with the costs of all the other items she was willing to forgo.  Just to be sure she threw in the cost savings of gas and her time because the new place is closer than the gym on base.

The hills are alive with the sounds of my touchdown dance.

Once I regained my breath, I nearly shed a tear.  It felt like a 12-year journey had come to an end.  She was finally on board with my way of thinking about money and budgeting.  If you only understood the hardship, toil, and strife we had gone through to get to this point, you would understand why I wanted to shout from the mountain tops and do a touchdown dance.  It felt like I could die a happy man.  But more importantly,  it felt like I could die without the fear that Mrs. Grumpus would blow through all the insurance money in the first six months!

Now if we could just get her smart on the investment side of the house, my ghost would not have to come back and haunt her.  Maybe that can be my project for the next 12 years?  She’ll happily confirm I am never satisfied, as she mixes hemlock into my beer.  As I fade to black I think back on how it came to be thus …

In the immortal words of Socrates, “I drank what”?

An Early Marital (Tough) Love Story

In one of my first posts, I joked about Mrs. Grumpus’s pre-marriage spending habits.  I think I used the term “profligate premarital spendthrift ways”.  Ouch!  She just threw something at me for reprinting that line and threatened divorce for the 10,000th time.   Just kidding … that was only the 9,998th time, but had it been the 10,000th time, it would equal one divorce threat for every dollar of debt she brought into our marriage.

And I’m like “Blah blah blah blah blah”. And your like “Blah blah blah blah blah”.  Glad we had this talk team!

Prior to our engagement we talked intimately and in-depth about numerous subjects, but we only lightly touched upon money.  I knew she was carrying some loans from her student days, and some commercial debt from recent travels to Nepal to hike in the Himalayas.  Strangely though, as revealing as we had been with other corners of our lives, I felt it taboo to pry further about her money.  These days when I want to rile her up, I imply that she hoodwinked me about the debt (and then dodge whatever item is closest to her in return).  In reality though, I refrained from asking proper follow-up questions during our courting phase because I didn’t understand the importance.  Of course, with hindsight I wish I had followed-up, but hindsight as they say, makes an ass out of you and me.

Coincidentally enough, the same year we got married, Utah State staff produced a study in which they determined:

… both husbands and wives who brought even relatively small amounts of debt (e.g., $1,000 – 5,000) into the marriage had significantly lower … marital adjustment and marital satisfaction scores than those with no debt. In addition, husbands and wives who entered marriage with the highest amounts of debt (e.g., $20,000 – 50,000) had the lowest marital satisfaction and adjustment scores of all participants.

Mrs. Grumpus and I can confirm that the beginning days, weeks, and months of our marriage were stressed by the debt.  It was a needless early test of our matrimonial bond.  As I related in An Unintentional Meander Up Grumpus Avenue Part 1, I purchased a condominium in late 2004.  I did that in preparation for Mrs. Grumpus emigrating from her home country to Southern California in early 2005, and as a result, we were not flush with cash when I finally came around to inquiring about the sum of the debt.  We eventually sorted out a plan to transfer the debt (it resided in Mrs. Grumpus’s home country) to a US credit card with a 0% introductory interest rate, and then pay it off with a home equity loan once the introductory rate ended.  I think it took us about a year to pay off the loan once she started working, which wasn’t straight away since we had to wait for her green card.

Looking back now the challenge that debt created almost seems laughable in comparison to some of the other money issues we’ve since tackled together.  At the time though it was a brutal clash of money cultures between someone adverse to debt, and someone who had grown comfortable with the idea of carrying debt.  Being the manly man that I am, I addressed the issue the only way I knew how: head on.  Also like a man, I did it with the subtlety of a brick through the front window of someone’s house.  In other words, I immediately put us on a budget.

It didn’t go so well.  In fact, that might be the understatement of the decade.  It went horribly.  It went so bad that the shock waves were still emanating up until that aforementioned email.  Don’t get me wrong, developing the budget was not hard.  As I discussed in Track Your Money (Part 1), I was a devoted user of Microsoft Money (MMoney) at the time, so drawing up a budget was no issue at all.  To be honest, Mrs. Grumpus could’ve drawn up the budget herself, since one of her former jobs involved developing line by line budget plans for large group travel events.  Thus, she understood the importance of coming in under budget.

Sticking to the budget was not all that hard either (although she might have a different opinion).  No, the real issue was the resentment the budget generated.  As someone who had worked her entire adult life only to give up her career to emigrate to the USA on a fiancé visa, marry a serviceman, and await a green card; she had already experienced a significant shock to her identity and psyche.  At best she viewed the budget as my attempt to metaphorically shackle her to the house and kitchen, hearkening back to a time before women had the right to vote.  At worst, she viewed it as punishment for a mistake in which we were both culpable.  In fact, considering her resistance to the budget it was probably both.

From my perspective, I could not understand why she was so resistant.  We had a problem and it was the debt.  We needed to solve that problem and the solution was the budget.  But when I said (up above) that “we” drew up a plan to eliminate the debt, what I really meant was that “I” drew up the plan since I was quickly becoming the accountant for the family.  As a result, it became my budget and the cause of a lot of friction in our marriage.  She got upset every time I entered the expenses into MMoney, and asked her what category I should label her receipts.  We argued over a reasonable spending limit for groceries.  In fact, we argued over pretty much everything related to spending.  At a time when I expected a “thank you” for being such as awesome problem solver, what I got was a big “F-you”.  Like two bighorn rams we kept clashing and clashing, neither of us willing to yield.

You ready to give up yet? Nope? OK, let’s go again.

Did I mention that besides my above-mentioned subtlety, that some of my other finer qualities include humility, empathy, and understanding?  Didn’t I?  Huh.  There may be a reason for that.

Better Ways

I would love to say that we eventually resolved our differences over the budget amicably, but we didn’t.  What really ended most of the arguing was Mrs. Grumpus getting her green card and landing something akin to her dream job.  Once she felt she was contributing financially to the relationship, she became a lot less defensive when I questioned how we were spending the money.  As DINKis (Dual Income No Kids) we easily paid back the home equity loan.  We loosened some of the budget categories to create fewer clashes, but we still kept the budget going.  I began reviewing the budget with her annually, and updated her monthly on any categories we overspent.  While Mrs. Grumpus insists that I continued to “pick, pick, pick” at her spending, what I was really doing was asking the questions required by MMoney to correctly track where our money was going.  It kept us honest, if not conflict free.  As a result, our savings rate expanded significantly, and has stayed healthy throughout our marriage thus far.

Now some of you may be reading this and thinking “what an idiot”.  Don’t worry, I get that a lot.  And you are right (savor that feeling, I don’t utter those words frequently).  As I already pointed out we could’ve avoided the whole situation by talking about our specific financial situations during our courtship.  If there is one piece of pre-marital love advice I am going to give the Grumpus Minimi (pronounced MIN-ee-MY), it will be to discuss finances prior to engagement.  Maybe I will just Facewhatstimetweetbook them this article via our neural links (the future will be so cool) if this article still resides on the interwebs in 20+ years.  Hopefully, they will be more subtle and thorough than their Old Man when they inquire into their potential future spouse’s spending history.

And then Daddy foolishly put Mummy on a budget and she never, ever forgave him. The End.

I could’ve also backed off aggressively tackling the debt until Mrs. Grumpus had settled into her new environment.  Marrying an international wife is a common occurrence within the military.  There were resources I probably could have sought to better prepare myself for some of the challenges.  A more emotionally attuned husband may also have seen the signs that Mrs. Grumpus had already experienced a significant shock just by moving to the US, and given her some space.  Instead, I metaphorically clubbed her over the head like Captain Caveman.  I might’ve also taken the time to understand that I was the odd one in this situation.  Carrying a commercial debt load is a rather common occurrence in the Western world.  Not everyone is as anti-debt as I am.  With all that said, each of those solutions would have required a certain amount of introspection that I am unsure my younger self would’ve been capable of at the time.

What was within my limited capacity was working with Mrs. Grumpus to solve the debt problem together.  As previously stated Mrs. Grumpus had prior work experience putting together budget proposals for large groups.  I should’ve played on that strength, which would’ve allowed her to feel like part of the solution.  Instead of going away, figuring it out on my computer, and imposing a solution; we could’ve sat down and worked out a budget together on paper.  Then I could’ve gone away and input the numbers into my geeky money program.  Doing that would’ve been a far gentler and more acceptable way of introducing her to the fact that while we were (and still are) a comparatively well off military family, we were (and still are) a family of finite means.  Thus, everything we do must be considered from a cost vs. benefit perspective.

Had I approached the problem in the above manner, I probably could’ve saved us the 12-year battle before Mrs. Grumpus finally succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and … Did I just say “battle” and “Stockholm Syndrome”?  Pardon me, I never meant to imply she was my enemy and/or captive in this situation.  Of course, I meant a journey of self-discovery in which Mrs. Grumpus finally came to understand my core beliefs about money (he says sarcastically).  Although had I approached it in the above manner, I never would’ve gotten to do my touchdown dance.  And as my new introspective, self-actualized, empathetic, and chastened self will tell you, it’s damn good.

Yep, it looks a lot like that … but better.