Fuller Wiser

Here’s a fact about me: I am criminally, unalterably horrible with money.

If there is a lobe of the brain which concerns itself with the management of fiduciary funds, mine is covered in some sort of sticky, caramelized plaque, not unlike Alzheimer’s goo. I can manage an office or writing project from stage 1 to stage 100, but I cannot get it through my head that when I spend twenty bucks, that means I’ll have twenty bucks less in my account. It’s not about what I actually have, it’s about what I should have, a level set arbitrarily in my head. Repeated overdraft penalties and weeks of poverty due to overspending have done nothing to correct this perception, so I have no conclusion left at which to arrive other than physical brain deformity.

And of course, as anyone who’s ever watched a Special Report on the news can tell you, money is the number one thing that married couples fight about. And unlike most things the news tells you (Democrats hate God, rock music makes killers out of your children, brown people are scary, etc.), the money/marriage thing is spot on. When arguments pop up in my house, you can be sure that there’s an empty bank account at the bottom of it.

The worst part is that my wife is no better. She’s no worse, at least, but setting the two of us loose on a bank account, or even two, is a recipe for deprivation and famine. Numerous reform programs have been instituted over the years, occasionally bringing about a momentary period of solvency, but generally the effects diminish within a month and we’re back to “oh shit, we’ve only got $5.00 until Friday?”

When my son was born, and my wife was the sole breadwinner while I stayed home with the kid, I decided to take primary responsibility for the bill-paying, so as to lighten her load of responsibility a bit. Predictably, all it did was lead to her cursing loudly upon receiving regular phone calls from me informing her that once again, we were flat busted.

So a couple of months ago, in a fit of overcommitment stress, I pleaded with her to take over the bills, as I was obviously no good at them. Two months later…we’re flat busted.

Well, not completely flat. But not as unbusted as last week’s estimates had surmised we would be. We won’t starve, but neither will be wash all the laundry or have fries with that.

In years past, I would have cast a great deal of moral judgment on myself, expounding on my lack of discipline and resolving firmly to take control of my life and actions. That is one of the primary differences between then and now.

I have what is commonly known in political and humanitarian terminology as “outrage fatigue.” You can really only get truly pissed off enough to make major changes so many times. If you do it enough, and the changes do not make a measurable difference, you stop caring. I have come to the conclusion that this will probably keep happening for the foreseeable future, and possibly for the rest of my life. I’m done stressing about it.

My wife, however, has not reached that point, and thus there is now a new tension. She wants hard analysis, to get to the root of our trouble and stamp it out, while I’m convinced that the root goes all the way to the core, and that nothing short of a brain transplant can remove it. For the past decade, we have been economically merged, and each of us have had essentially the same financial life. Why my give-a-shit gave out before hers, I’m not sure.

Perhaps it’s because I have many other things to berate myself about. I relax when I should knuckle down, I play when I should work, and I have leaned on others and never given back.

To an extent, these shortcomings can be evened out by other behaviors. When I have money, I’m apt to spend it to help friends who are even worse off than me, or to take the wife and kid out for something special. Yes, I’m that guy. But I’m also the guy who plays with his son every day after work, takes out the trash without complaining, and honestly respects his wife as a person, not just a marital accessory.

No special insight here, just stating observations out loud, in the hopes that I’ll figure something out. Once again, I’ve failed.