Money Matters

I read an interesting article this week about the value of stay-at-home moms. It claimed that if you were to add up all the billable hours of work you do each week (things that you would likely need to pay someone else to do if you were not doing it), then you would most definitely make as much, if not more, money than some working mothers.

I decided to give it a try and entered in my zip code (it’s prorated for your local area), then tried to honestly asses how many hours each week I spend doing the tasks specified (ranging from housekeeper to event planner to psychologist. It provided an hourly rate for each, then averaged the hourlies together to get your overall hourly rate. According to my (modest) assessment of my contributions, I should be making almost $43k a year.

Thought would then say that I should only agree to take a job that was willing to pay me at least that much, yes? Too bad the real world is never that clear cut.

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In light of this article, I have been working diligently on our family finances. We agreed to a joint account when we got married, but have yet to fully establish said account. Since Joe has been paying his bills on auto draft for the last 10 years, he had some accounts he couldn’t even tell me how to log in or how much he still owed (case in point: our mortgage). I had to take all of our statements and create log ins so I could change the payment account to our joint one.

THEN I had to inform Joe of our total expenditures. I had created this nifty little excel spreadsheet that detailed all of our bills (I tried to pull the highest of a three-month average) and a small contribution to savings each month. GASP! He said…that seems like a lot. I said, “Yes, well, I do have a ridiculous car payment and we now spend (at least) $500 a month on groceries, so…” We still have not worked out exactly how much he needs to put into our account every month because it’s kind of a touchy subject.

You see, I used to be in a not-so-good relationship when I was younger. He was quite a bit older than me and we lived together. He had money (because he was able to work). I didn’t (because I was still in school), so he pretty much dictated where we went, what we ate, etc… I felt like a prisoner and vowed to never be financially dependent on someone else.

So when I was out of work (while I was pregnant and such), I was not making any money. I relied on Joe to pay the bills and take care of the family. It was not a good feeling for me…I don’t even like to have conversations about money, much less ones where I have to say, “You have to pay my bills too because I’m a loser without a job.” So it was tough to have the conversation. And it still is. I don’t think we are putting enough into our account, but thankfully it hasn’t mattered yet because our mortgage has not been added (still trying to track that one down).

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Added to the mountain of money matters, is that I am quite the Type-A, little-miss-organized, and Joe – eh, not so much. So I am very particularly about paying bills on time, keeping these up to date, etc… I check my credit report every year, line by line and I don’t think he’s seen his in the last 10 years. I file my taxes as soon as I get those pesky little W-2s (why so slow?!?!?!) and he hasn’t filed taxes in years (this is largely due to his business and partnership, so it’s legit, people). All these little things can make a Type-A-er like me a little bit uneasy…

Point of this whole blabbering blog post: Money matters are tough. But it’s the number one reason married people argue, so it’s important to get over those communication hurdles. We’re still a work in progress, but I’ll keep you posted.