16 Mar Pre-Marriage Money Talks, Getting on the Same Page

This one is going to take a pretty big step back into history, to May of 2008 when my wife and I started dating and she was already witnessing my debt free journey take place it began to shape the direction of our future.  Interestingly while I remember telling her about the pile of debt and what I was working on, I don’t remember exactly when it happened.  I know it was very early on because I have a memory of asking her something about Dave Ramsey in advance of a trip down to her family farm which happened pretty early on in our relationship.  In any case, I remember feeling the need to “come clean” so she knew where things stood with me and what kind of dating experience, she could expect which essentially included one of very little cash out of pocket to do things.  She stayed by my side, and while we did do some things, we found ways to do them very affordably.

We began dating shortly after I had left Circuit City but before starting at my next career and hadn’t been dating very long when I met her parents.  In case anyone cares, we were enjoying our time together and thought we were fairly serious fairly fast and since her parents lived 2 hours away and happened to be in town, it made sense to meet them then.  At that time I had peaked in my pile of debt, had some cash and was inbetween jobs.  Eventually I found my new job, Dave Ramsey, and got to work on my mess.  Whenever I came clean about the debt pile and getting it under control, I just remember the support and understanding toward the goal.  It wasn’t some huge momentous event but to tell someone about it seemed to really take some weight off my shoulders because at that point all anyone knew in my friend group was that I made a lot of money for a young guy with no degree, and they watched me spend it.  What they didn’t know was that I had no idea how to manage it, and I was spending more than I had coming in.

This first year or so of us dating and being smart about how we spent money together when we did spend money together wasn’t really all that hard, she was in school and most people we knew didn’t have much money so we were all in the same boat.  The only change was I stopped spending money like an idiot and focused on paying off debt.  There were some challenges here or there where I’d want to do something and chose not to, and some other times where we took a moment and recognized I’d already gotten everything under control and had made massive strides and it was time to let loose a little bit and spring for 9 holes of golf together at a cheap $14/player course.  We talked more about money as a result than most dating couples probably do and we were seriously dating and talking about marriage early on but I wanted this money pile out of the way first.  I remember a number of times looking forward and talking about how much we’d both appreciate it if all of my mess is cleaned up going into a marriage and then we’d have two incomes and only her student loans to take care of.

Prior to getting married the housing market had tanked and was beginning to start its recovery, you can read all about our first house purchase in a post titled “Our first house”.  For the purposes of this current post its worth noting that we starting house hunting and had a purchase contract about 6 months before we were married, and we wanted to buy something so cheap that you couldn’t even rent for that rate so that if either of us were in a job pinch, we could get a job doing anything and have enough money to pay for it.  That plan worked and we ended up with a mortgage payment, taxes, insurance, and an HOA fee totalling somewhere between $775-$850 per month, at the time a 2 bedroom apartment would be around $900-1,050 for something below average in quality.

All these little decisions and discussions added up over time and we went into our marriage knowing that we were going to be financially fit, we were going to follow the Dave Ramsey Plan within reason, and we’d be putting ourselves in a really good spot for our long term future.  By the time we went to pre-marriage counseling we had sorted out a lot of life plans and I remember taking this test individually and our counselors telling us there wasn’t much to talk about because we were already so deeply aligned, and no we didn’t cheat on the test.