There we go, didn’t I say I would stop polluting the bits and bytes of the internet when I got busy! Brief respite for you. My pleasure.
Now, without getting too personal, I have a problem with my wife.
This woman is perhaps the greatest being on this planet, at least as far as I and my boys are concerned. She saw through all of my character flaws (or didn’t notice!) and if not chose, then settled for me as her long term life partner, co-habiter, vital chromosome to her children, blank cheque book (errrmmm, unsecured banking app on my phone seems more appropriate in 2017) whatever other terrible cliches I can come up with.
Honestly she is great, anything misogynistic above (“Blank Cheque Book” being very untrue) I apologise for. Suffice to say, I got lucky.
You have a good idea of my feelings towards her now, but I do have to talk about one particular aspect of her that could do with improvement. When I say this, again, its knowing that we all have a list of improvements we could make, and my own personal one is loooonnnnggggg. Anyway, to put it bluntly, her financial education was rubbish, and her knowledge and attitude towards it now and going forward is not getting much better.
I don’t think she is unusual in this, I have known a fair few people, men and women, who struggle, and perhaps, like with computers, it isn’t always necessary to know the inner workings of things, just so long as it does what you want (sorry, laboured analogy). The big thing between us of course is my saving and investing plans (ok lets call them ideas), and her lack of errr…..ambition in that area?!
When it came to my light bulb moment of FIRE, and the browsing of websites far and wide on the subject (note to self, post list of blogs I lurk around) I was immediately keen on the idea, and comfortable with the concepts. As mentioned before, FIRE might be a bit ambitious for me, but certainly a bit more active care taken in the planning and implementation of saving and investing would be wise.
Mrs Serus however, well she is not too keen. Its not that she doesn’t like the idea of saving, and wouldn’t dream of stopping me investing etc, its just more, well she just hasn’t got the mindset (yet….if I am lucky). My first conversation with her about FIRE, investing, passive income, budgeting etc went down like a lead balloon… My second attempt was to talk to her about CHIP, the auto saving app/bank/financial site/startup and that was met with a look of panic….(my first link! anyway, if you wish to sign up to CHIP then when it rather painfully asks you for a referral code, it was so subtle in my case I missed putting it in and had to go to live chat, tell them its KDC01K, and we can both get 1% extra interest on our accounts).
One thing about my wife, she has a very high EQ (emotional quotient), she is brilliant with people of all ages, and in all situations. This is somewhere near the top of my list of improvements, to get somewhere near a 10th of her EQ. I am reasonably intelligent, as is she, I am not going to blow our Mensa trumpets, we don’t have them (I dont think they give them out!?), but my EQ is not good. I am fairly ok at communication, my wit and charm gets me by in a cheeky sort of way, but it isn’t natural, its learned behaviour. So its quite possible that someone better than me at talking to my own wife would be able to communicate things like this better…..
Anyway, her idea of finances is, get money, put a little away, spend the rest, so long as there is more in the pot than you need to spend, that is fine. I have over a long period (pre-FIRE, just behaviour I picked up from my parents), encouraged the use of savings pots. We have successfully saved for a wedding, sofa, kitchen, new house(s), saved to cover maternity, but nothing really long term.
My first step was to encourage saving and budgeting. So not having a bill for a car service or insurance, that you hoped didn’t coincide with another expensive item so you could pay it out of “now” money, but having a savings pot, all there and ready topped up and drained as necessary, with a rough goal of covering all expenditure over the year. For this it would and does require pre-saving. My simple idea of getting a few hundred quid a month, directing it into some individual pots (savings accounts), building it up, then paying out of that for expected expenses was met with disbelief. My idea of saving money from her bank account before any expenditure came out (ie just after pay day), was met with incredulity, and not a little bit of upset and confusion. “Why would I save like that, I just get paid x, spend y, and then save z (the amount left)”……My next idea of CHIP, a cheeky little chappy that could drip feed savings into an account just for her, almost so she wouldn’t notice, well that was deemed more like witchcraft.
Where does this get me? Well my next step is to work a little on my own with this. Lead by example. I have setup a savings account that I am going to drip feed an amount into for my car expenses. I have CHIP leeching away a few quid here and there for a purpose that I haven’t yet decided on. When I deem it to be a success, I will try and demonstrate the concept to her in a better way. Graphs, PowerPoints, shiny presents bought with the savings…..whatever motivates her and captures her interest best (hint: not the first two things in that list, and apologies because “shiny things” makes her sound vacuous, which she is not).
For now, in public at least, I will go back to moaning about lights not being turned off when people leave the room, doors not being shut, food not being eaten and my own personal favourite, children not knowing how lucky they are…..yes, in other words, I am going to be my Dad.
Thanks
Serus
Too Late to Start..... 