Money Matters

The few days following our wedding were a little awkward.  We were in a state of honeymoon limbo.  The out of town guests had left but we still had three days until we were scheduled to depart on our honeymoon trip.  We were out of town “guests” ourselves, spending those few nights in the Fort Lauderdale hotel where the wedding had taken place.  Instead of enjoying this interval as bonus time at the beach, we were quickly pulled into the mire of errands that follow a big event.  Thus, we were tasked with returning tuxedos, transferring gifts from the hotel to my parents’ home, and cleaning my father’s convertible multiple times until (on pain of death) not one grain of celebratory rice remained.

One of the more pleasant tasks was recording the inventory of generous gifts from friends and family, allowing me to get a jump on thank you notes before our trip.  We sorted gifts by size for shipping back to Boston, and stacked the many checks for deposit. I endorsed each check—excited to practice signing my new name—and then carefully wrote out the deposit slips, stuffing everything into the envelopes I had brought from my Cambridge bank.  We had not yet set up a joint account, but decided that since I had done business with this small bank since freshman year of college and had a relationship with the manager, we would use my accounts going forward.

I was pleased with the efficiency with which this task was dispatched, and prepared to move on.  I had not noticed that my mother was growing more and more disturbed, pacing a small hole in the floor.  She pulled me aside and admonished me with her “scolding whisper”—a voice manifestation that is uniquely hers.  “You are just married,” she said.  “How do you expect to keep a husband if you don’t let him do the things that men do?”  I blinked in bafflement.  “He is supposed to do all the finances!” she clarified.

There are a lot of jobs that I count on my husband to perform, most notably taking out the garbage, lifting and carrying heavy things, and reaching objects on high shelves.  I do not encourage him to cook, as I enjoy eating flavorful, evenly cooked foods and I do not enjoy scraping burnt spills off the stove.  I’d like to be able to send him to the supermarket with a shopping list, but this requires a certain level of specificity and having the time to answer at least two phone calls for each item on the list.  On the other hand, my husband is capable of things that elevate him to superhero status.  Once, for example, I had a fever of 104 degrees and could not hold anything down; he brought home a box of medical supplies and started an IV on my listless carcass, saving me from admission to the hospital.  On a few other occasions, he was kind enough to remove stitches and administer flu vaccines, tasks better tolerated while gazing into his blue eyes.

But financial matters?  My husband not only has a general distaste for managing money, he is genuinely bad at it.  When we first moved to San Francisco, for example, he wrote a $750 deposit check to our landlord but failed to record it in the checkbook.   We then opened a local account and eventually transferred our money from New England to California.  Unfortunately, the check I wrote to close out our old account was off by the amount of the unrecorded deposit check.  Before this was discovered, I had mailed a whole stack of bills drawn from our new account, which began bouncing one by one along with the large check that funded the account.  It was a nightmare!  Fortunately, because I had a good relationship with my old bank manager, he allowed me to write a check back to his bank to cover the shortfall and instructed Bank of America to resubmit the large check (acts which, I am quite certain, must have been illegal).

If my husband had been only financially wary before, this check episode caused him to surrender his financial license permanently.  I am certain that this has more than a little bearing on his decision to enter an academic career rather than private practice.  The thought of managing his own business makes him visibly ill.  Of course, this means that I have had to assume the role of financial manager for our household.  On those occasions when I must call a creditor to resolve a bill that is in my husband’s name (because we all know by now that bills are the man’s job!), they invariably refuse to deal with me until he has weighed in.  “ABSOLUTELY!” he barks into the phone when they ask if it’s “OK to talk to your wife about this matter.”

I have gladly taken on the role of financial manager, but it has not always been easy.  I dreaded “that time of the month” when I was forced to spend five or six hours sitting with a stack of paperwork.  Fortunately, online banking has made the job much easier; it not only takes no time at all to pay bills, but the process itself produces a precise non-paper trail.  There is no longer any doubt about what checks have been cashed, which is fortunate, as my husband’s record-keeping has not improved in thirty years. 

Despite the convenience of the electronic age, there is still one yearly financial task that I abhor: taxes.  Although we long ago delegated the preparation of our taxes, there is much to do before our materials are ready for the professionals.  This process drains me of my life force.  I suppose it should be a valuable exercise to review one’s financial status, taking stock and adjusting strategies for the future.  For me, it is disheartening to view this financial extract of our lives: monetary detritus devoid of all that is qualitative.  While I am engaged in tax matters, my husband and I have an unspoken understanding that he at my disposal.  He brings me drinks, and treats, and uncharacteristically spontaneous expressions of love and devotion.

I daresay that my husband does not find his manhood threatened one iota by my management of this, the most odious of tasks.  Indeed, I imagine what it would be like to hand this off to someone I trust and I sigh audibly.  From where I sit, he is a lucky man.

(Our tax packet was posted at 9:37am today to the accountants.  Happy tax season everyone!)

Tomorrow's blog:  The Snow Line