What ever happened to the old way of your dad asking her dad to trade his daughter for two goats and a bag of rice?
If you aren't smart enough to figure out if your future wife has the same financial sense as you, treats money in a similar way, and can exercise fiscal responsibility and restraint... you are an idiot. A marriage is a wager, and that wager is 1/2 your gross pre-taxable income. I research my bets before I make them. After a few years when the butterflies in your tummy wear off, the rose colored glasses come off, and you are faced with the reality of the person you are betrothed to... I'd much rather know who that person is and not be surprised when they are financially inept. I've known a lot of people that found out much, much too late.' In my experience, those that get into marriage thinking with nothing but their heart end up very sad a few years down the line. Hormonal "love" only takes you so far. Just ask my buddy who came back to $100K of debt after a deployment because he didn't know that his wife, left to her own devices, was a compulsive shopper.
I repped you this BrianH, but I'll say it here too. It's less what you're doing but how you're saying it. The way you talk about your fiance is kind of condescending. I noticed it here, and I've noticed it in the R&R thread. It seems as though you have gone to great lengths to make sure that you are longterm compatible with her, and that's fine...but I sense very little love for her. Unless you mean love like how you love your pet.
That's because, on here, we discuss nuts and bolts of things and, when it comes to my relationship, I break it down into whatever chunk we happen to be discussing. Of course I love my fiancee. I would have bolted a long time ago if I didn't. She's the smartest, funniest, most awesome girl I've ever met. Doesn't hurt that she's hot, too. It all sounds very clinical because I for sure approached some of the aspects of our relationship in a very deliberate way. That was, of course, after the first two years when we couldn't do anything except hump like bunnies all the time. Once being in love stops being an all-encompassing feeling and starts being a CHOICE (and it does), I believe one needs to look at the long term aspects of the relationship in an empirical way. Long ago we sat down and wrote out exact expectations for the relationship as it progressed. I know what she wants, she knows what I want, and everybody is happy. Not the storybook tale the first year of our relationship was, but that's what happens after reality sets in.
I get this. I really do. (Except for the wager part. That's just too cynical for words.) Financial compatibility is important. Money problems are a pretty common cause of marriage failures, but 4 years? It took that long to figure out she isn't going to run off and spend your money on expensive cars, watches, and guns?
The reasons I waited so long to get engaged are myriad, not the least of which involved me being gone 9 months out of the year. On top of that, I didn't want to get married period so I put it off as long as I could (she finally won that debate). And you'd be SHOCKED how long I've seen the women my friends married hide their crazy. Sometimes well past 4 years. If I'm going to get married, I'm going to do it one time. I see nothing wrong with the fact that I'm 100% sure that she is a well-reasoned, non-crazy, financially responsible, honest woman. Not many people can say that.
Huh? Do you just invent things in your head, and then blurt them out at random? At no point did I say she was an automaton, or that I controlled her, or anything like that. I observed her behavior for an extended period of time and let her know my expectations of her. Seriously, dude... get back on your meds. Your little smurf-vendettas here are tiresome in the extreme.
Um, yes. She observed my behavior because she is a functioning human, and (as I wrote earlier) we have at multiple points in the relationship expressed, in the clearest possible terms, our expectations of each other (to include a division of labor in the household).
What do you mean by this? "Has the same financial sense as you" can go a lot of ways. Are you a miser looking for a fellow miser? Are you looking for someone who can calculate tax percentages in an instant, or someone who can evaluate the stock market accurately and purchase stocks accordingly? Someone who can simply talk about money? Same goes for "treats money in a similar way." I know I'm terribly jaded from a previous abusive relationship with a man who tightly controlled the household finances, but to me this phrase screams must only spend money on things I agree to/approve of and it makes me jumpy. I'm sure you're not a jerkface, but elaboration would probably dispel that impression.
No amount of due diligence you can do on a woman (or man) is going to be enough to tell you without a doubt that the person you are marrying is the right person for you. I will say, however, that the older you get, the better you become at weeding through the bullshit and knowing yourself well enough to invest in a relationship. 90% of the battle is learning what your own boiling point is....not theirs. The only advice I have for people is to definitely live together before getting married. It is fucking hard, especially if you are used to having your own space and your own stuff. I'll take it one step further and suggest moving together once. You really find out what your threshold for compromise is once you've had the 'pleasure' of making major household purchases/decisions together. Financial arguments are the worst kind. Far worse than those youthful jealousy arguments you have when you're 20. You'll get over your wife having her own friends and her own social life at some point. As a matter of fact, you'll crave it. Not being able to stick to a budget or avoid impulse spending, on the other hand, will smother you with stress.
I believe that you save before you spend. I believe one should never carry any unsecured debt month to month. I believe in having 6 months worth of living expenses liquid in a savings account for a rainy day. I believe in investing wisely, regularly, and early for retirement. I also believe that, once you've met those requirements, go fucking nuts. Money exists solely to do with it what you please, as long as you are a good steward of it first. My fiancee makes 3 times more money than I do. I'm going to be overall in charge of finances, but that only means I will make sure that our nest egg is doing well, we were spending money at a reasonable pace, and we are well hedged against future issues. She can buy whatever the fuck she damned well pleases, especially taking into consideration that I probably didn't even earn the money in the first place. She and I have almost identical financial philosophies, so there is rarely any question about anything money related. And I'm glad that I know we do, because many couples don't (it sounded like you didn't). We will run big purchases by each other but really only as a sanity check (I bought a beater truck last week, for instance, and while she would never had said "no", it would have hurt her feelings if I had done it without running it by her first). There are people I know in relationships where one person runs all the money, or the wife runs amok with credit card, or the man has a gun collection that is running them into the poor house. By "vetting" my fiancee, I made sure that, once we combined our finances (which we did a few years ago), I wouldn't check the rainy day fund and find it at zero.
What's wrong with wanting someone who is of like-mind financially? I was engaged to an accountant who knew I was shit with money. So when we sat down and started to figure out how our marriage would work, he literally put all of our finances on a color-coded spreadsheet. We made goals, figured out what we could and could not spend on, and got on the same page (literally). I found it intoxicating. I didn't give a shit that he was going to be the one handling the finances...someone has to. I think BrianH is perfectly sound in his reasoning which is in stark contrast to the rest of the board who all seem to have a terribly romantic approach to the whole deal. Finances, household chores, mutual future goals are all pitfalls of a marriage and the ugly truths that need to be and SHOULD be sorted out before the deal is done. I knew exactly what was expected of me when I was getting married and he knew exactly what I expected of him. Taking the grey out of an incredibly serious decision only serves as a positive and can help your relationship grow. The less time he's pissed at me for not taking out the trash or the less time I'm pissed at him for not doing the dishes is more time that we can hang out, have sex, giggle, and enjoy each other. I give you kudos, Brian. Well done.
I think Brian and his woman have worked through a lot of the stuff that makes marriages suck, so that's good. It DOES sound clinical, but we're not here for fluffy bunny I love my person shit. It's a very A, B, C, D thing - and discussing things that ARE pitfalls almost overwhelmingly in relationships prior to making the decision to become married is a very good thing.
Well, I don't see those as mutually exclusive ways to discuss the topic. Personally, I rather like seeing people write about their marriages in happy and romantic terms. Especially if that is, in fact, how they came to realize they should get married which was the original question. People come to the decision in different ways. Anyway, regarding the nitty gritty, my wife and I have talked about all sorts of stuff over the years in this regard. Those talks served as mounting evidence of how right for each other we were and so when the time came where i felt that our marriage was inevitable it was also after a great deal of discussion about practical matters. But no, not everything was in stone at the time of engagement and things change even now. We discussed how to handle a joint bank account afterwards and as time moves on and we're adapting to changes in our lives, how we handle our finances changes as well. Nothing wrong with mapping it all out beforehand at all, I commend it, but it's not a death knell if every "i" is not dotted prior to popping the question. Part of knowing I wanted to marry my wife was knowing that we could, and would, discuss things and resolve them in a reasonable fashion. We hadn't covered IRAs yet, but I think we'll be ok.
Not speaking for him at all, but in my case, I've become increasingly protective of my discussions about my life. The Guy, New Guy, Minime, etc., are all referred to in a way that doesn't disclose much about them, but conveys my relationship(s) to them. His is just...dryer...I guess you could say. I've had enough pitfalls in relationships that I recognize that I'll never be "sure" again...I'll only be 'mosty sure'. Talking about things that I've seen cause problems in the past (chore divisions, or expectations, or finances, or cars, or whatever) is a great way (for me) to feel better about not being a total fucking dumbass when it comes to relationships. I love loving someone. I love being loved back. I love having someone who wants to come home to me. I love having someone I can curl up against at night, and having him reach out and do the same in his sleep. Because I love those things, it's easy for me to make some pretty stupid decisions. I prefer to recognize that weakness in myself and to try to make my decisions a bit more rationally than I have in the past.
Yes. Yes I do. I've BEEN THERE. I've been married to someone who said all the right things, and for awhile did all the right things. Proclaimed his love for me loud and proud, talked about how much our marriage meant, talked about our commitment to one another and what that means when it comes to priorities and decision making. Then life kicked him in the nuts a couple of times, and we ended up - literally the last time I saw that man - with me standing in the kitchen with a 12g pointed at me, less than 6 feet away. *I* could deal with the problems, and he SAID he could, til he actually had to. Then he cracked. Hard. Addiction to alcohol and prescription meds, rage issues, delusions, paranoia, violence. ALL things that NONE of us saw coming. NONE. It sounds rad to say "I KNOW my partner, this will never happen..." but goddamn dude. It does happen. It happens without warning, it happens despite a bone deep certainty that it would NEVER happen. That's what it's supposed to be about. Ideally, life's nutkicks don't detract from that. But sometimes they do. It's supposed to be about being together, and wanting - not needing, each other. But sometimes life gets in the way. It's insidious, and it fucking sneaks up and jumps at you and one day you're in bed cuddled together and you love each other, then 20 months later one of you is trying to find a way to NOT get shot. Fuck that shit. If talking through things I know can come up, things I know because of my personal experiences, makes me feel better about what I'm doing and where I'm at, we're going to have the discussion.
Shit my parents did it the simple way. 50% of what they each made went into the needs pot to cover general living expenses, our education, retirement etc. The other 50% they got to keep for themselves and spend it as they wanted. If they weren't spending it they'd invest it. Neither could get upset when the other brought home a new gun or baby grand piano (they weren't spending addicts either and were pretty conservative in general with money). Shitty that their model worked out so well as now I probably have inflated expectation of trying to follow through with it with equal success myself with any future wife....