Home > Marriage > Spring > Gimme Some Credit!
Gimme Some Credit!
How I taught my wife the virtues of impulse buying
By Dave Meurer | posted 9/12/2008
 2 of 4
She made me put back the helmet.
Snap decisions and other tales of woe
Dale likes to mull over her spending decisions, sometimes for years. I mulled once for about five minutes, but I didn't like it, so I stopped. It isn't as though I overspend horribly or don't pay my bills. I do pay them. I just don't monitor them as closely as Dale. She thinks we should track all our bills monthly and know precisely how much we owe. She also thinks it's a good idea to balance the checkbook—the most boring task imaginable. "We still have checks, so what's the worry?" is my financial motto.
When it comes to fiscal matters, I'm way more flexible than Dale. But because I want to be happily married—as opposed to hospitalized—I've had to do some changing in order to adapt to her comfort level.
For instance, I've learned that my impulse spending can ruin a vacation for her. If there's ever a time when I'm tempted to go into spending mode, it's when we're on vacation. Many activities or purchases I consider fun (wind-up chattering teeth, for instance), she considers wasteful and even stupid.
Dale can't really relax and have fun on vacation unless she incorporates at least a measure of frugality into the planning and execution of the trip. So if we're driving to our destination, she'll pack food. My tendency is to pull into a burger joint along the way. I've gotten used to the fact, though, that we're going to have cheese and crackers, salami, apple slices, carrots, and trail mix in the car on a long trip. If we do that, then Dale can enjoy eating out periodically without worrying about how much we're spending.
Frankly, Dale's approach has saved us a lot of money over the years, and I have to admit I haven't suffered many ill effects from missing those fast-food joints.
But while I've learned to moderate my purchasing habits for Dale's sake, she's likewise moved in my direction. This was nowhere more apparent than when we were trying to purchase a house in the middle of a hot real-estate market three years ago. Houses were selling within days of being listed—sometimes within hours.
Dale and I had been looking at houses for weeks, but other buyers kept beating us to the finish line. We had to completely reorient our lives so that the split second our agent phoned us, we could drop whatever we were doing and race to another newly listed home before the mooing stampede of buyers arrived.
One day our agent called, and even though the timing wasn't terribly convenient, I leaped out of the chair and told the dentist he could finish the filling later.
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