May 21, 2007
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Women and Finance.
The other day, I sat at the dinner table rapidly chipping away at my dinner as I normally would to avoid any eye, word, emotional contact with my parents. But because I was curious about the family finances, the only way I will know is to initiate a conversation with my mom with a question. I asked:
“Mom, do we have a mortgage?”
“No. We paid it off.”
Surprised, I blurted out,
“Then what the hell are complaining about money for? Shouldn’t we be sitting on cash right now??”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
By now, I’m thinking, DAMN that Home Equity line must be one, thick, piece of meat. I wonder how much equity is in our house…
“Mom, how much equity do we have in our house?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? How come you don’t know anything about the finances?”
“Because this is your dad’s problems to care about, not me. I don’t care about these things.”
My jaw just dropped wide open, hitting the ground, and my respect for my mom also droped 1000 points – hitting its all time low. How can ANYBODY in this day and age NOT care about the finances in the house? Or at least have some kind of idea? My mom didn’t even know how much my dad makes every month. It’s really not that I hard, “the product of the hours worked and hourly pay equals his salary.”, I said. She felt non-chalant about it. I cannot believe that my mom complains about the finances in the house and never took the step to get to know it a bit better, so at least she can win arguments with my dad about money. How can you win, when you literally don’t even know what numbers to blurt out?
My mom needs to be updated and upgraded. Indeed.
Xangans, what do you think about women and finance? Should it always be 50/50 in the household? What if the woman makes more? What if the man makes more? What do you think will be YOUR rules in your household? What’s your core belief about relationship and money? I think guys should always pay for the food bills.
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“If you’re not taking someone else’s money, know that they’re taking yours.”
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Home and Gardening.
As I was watching Oprah, I suddenly realized how much influence that woman has on me. Whatever she says, goes. Whatever she tells me to buy, I will get off my butt and go to where ever the product is being sold. However, I will never read another Oprah’s Bookclub book ever again because they’re horrible. I truly believe that, that woman does not read the books that she recommends. However, I still love Oprah to bits.
So she had one of her Gardening shows, and after watching that, I had more shame than what I had before towards the front yard “garden” and the current backyard situation. It’s a fucking mess. I tried to do some topiary (shaping bushes) and obviously, it didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. That was years ago though, I wonder if my topiary skills improved with no practice. Anyway, this summer, I decided that if my mom is willing to throw me a budget for the front garden, I will do some designer landscaping myself. I just can’t stand that huge ass bush in front of my house. The bush is huge.
The left side of it is half gone because it was trespassing on my neighbour’s “side” of the lawn. I bet they regreted saying that because we just literally chopped off one side and no matter how much my anal Italian neighbours fix up their garden, the ugliness of our lawn will creep up beside them. It will definitely decrease their real estate value having our bush paint up beside their garden master piece.
I love clean, simple, modern gardens.
This is not called redecorating your backyard, It’s called demolishing it. I consider redecorating involving some patches of grass left at the end of your project. But hey, it’s still nice.
Comments (5)
regardless of who makes more money, i think its definitely important for both parties to be able to support themselves financially, independently of each other. sure, joint accounts are good but i’d always, always make sure to have my own account. divorce ain’t cheap.
i actuallyu like the pics. i’d say women should have financial education too coz the long-term investment and financial-wise knowledge pays off in the long run.
my rule of thumbs: equality is a joke. women want to be considered as an equal, but they –under no circumstances– want to ever be treated as one.
the contributions frmo each person would be proportional the the salary they’re making.. and one of the above commenters made a good point… being able to support yourself financially on your own is important….AND….have a joint account, but make sure you have separate accounts as well1!!!
People bring different value to a relationship. Money and status are most visible, but sometimes the person making the money needs the unrewarding support of the person not making any money to succeed. I don’t know if that makes any sense. The moral supporter, their behind-the-scenes contribution can be immeasurable. If it happens that the man is the moral supporter, then he’d have to be someone who’s very secure with himself. Not everyone can handle being the valuable non-breadwinner.