Changed da house,
Changed da look.
BTW, my bathrobe's usually pink
and we don't have a fireplace.
Other than that,
it's pretty accurate...
Psst...click the words above to navigate.
Best viewed, unfortunately, in Internet Explorer.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
~ Minding Money ~
You know what I love and detest about being married? Having horribly adult choices land on my lap when I'm not quite prepared for it. These six months have jolted me into carrying out sensible adult decisions I can scarcely make sense of. I think the only coherent decision I've really made thus far is deciding to marry Tony. The rest of it is coming hard and fast and is all looking rather blurry.
Suddenly, I have to think about writing a will, sitting down with the family solicitor (!!!), talking to Tony's accountant, and inviting the financial planner over for a chat. If you really know me, you know numbers are not my forte and by that extension, talking about money actually intimidates the living daylights out of me. It is highly ironic that my mother is a financial adviser, because I don't share her love of discussing money.
I am acutely aware that I possess a large Ostrich head (which is actually still small and rather flat) and I'd sooner dig a deep hole and shove it riiiiight in than really talk about stocks and shares and how to avoid tax and combine my superannuation funds. I think I've only been used to handling my minute, koochie-fied POSB/Commonwealth account with $$$ that vaccilate between a few hundred dollars and $0.32. I left the inner workings of insurance and CPF whatevers and all that jazz with my mother for the few years I worked, secretly putting off the day when every money detail had to be handled by me. I've always known I was a fairly sheltered single woman in my early twenties - I think a lot of my peers (save the few more conscientious ones) tend to be fairly sheltered as well.
Thank GOD I married Tony.
My problem, I think, is that I've always lived to stretch the dollar and now that I have to think farther than the mere end of the month, I am resistant, petrified, and clueless as a kangaroo caught in headlights. What the heck do I do with all this information the husband keeps throwing at me!!! It's daunting enough as it is figuring out Australian laws on taxation and trying not to get a cardiac arrest or denounce the government everytime they rudely take out some exorbitant figure from your pocket to pave a road. Now add to the mix the straddling of two countries and all its money laws, and it just takes the wind out of me.
You might be thinking, "Well DUH, didn't you talk about this BEFORE you got married?" Yes we did, smarty-pants. Did I understand it then? Probably thought I did. Could we have done things better before we got married? Prepared me a little better, being as phobic about finances as I am? Possibly, yes. But could we have discussed it at greater length at the time? Probably not. Nothing like actually DOING it to make you realise what a lot of hooey talk is.
I'll say the same thing here as I did when someone reproached me for not pre-empting stuff like this - there is NO SUCH THING as being completely prepared for a marriage. Really. You can discuss which side of the bed you sleep on, how you plan to combine your assets, how you want to split up the bills, when you want to buy a house, how many children you want to have, how much money you should ethically spend on clothes when the other party hates shopping... You can talk and write it all down on paper and build a gantt chart and a spreadsheet and congratulate yourself on being SO organised, but it's only until you live in the same house and actually sit there and write your first will that asks you about children you haven't even spawned yet... that you realise how little you'd prepared before you got married.
It blows my mind away, just exactly what I got myself into.
But I love it because that's what it's all about. I'm having fun, chickies...
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