I Want Fresh Buns!

Filed in archive Marriage and Finance on May 30, 2006

My wife and I have different ideas. And, like a lot of couples, one of the places where our ideas differ is money.

This is not a hit piece on my wife, or a confession of my money sins. We're both pretty good savers, and we both enjoy spending as well.

The difference is what we think is a good use of our spendable dollars. I tend to have apoplectic fits when it comes to large purchases, convinced the used car dealer (never a new car dealer, btw), appliance retailer, realtor or whoever's doing the selling is out to bilk me. My wife's willing to pay a little extra to get what she wants. She's also willing to do things like pay $800 for body work to the car to fix a few dings that don't bother me a bit because they aren't affecting the car's functionality.

On the other hand, I don't mind paying more for smaller things that I find pleasurable, especially certain foods. I like microbrewed beers; I'm past the stage of drinking Keystone Light thank you very much. I don't like eating leftovers for days on end; I might eat it the next day but after that I'm moving on. And I want fresh buns.

My wife wants to freeze the buns to make them last longer, because inevitably we don't eat all of the buns before they go stale. I understand her frustration at wasting money on two or three buns per pack that don't get eaten, but I don't want to thaw my buns out of the freezer. They never taste as good as fresh once they've gone frozen. I'm willing to lose the cash on a few stale buns if the ones I eat are fresh and puffy instead of thawed and droopy. We fight over the buns every so often, with both of us accusing the other of being an obsessive freak.

Every once in a while my wife buys new buns before the old buns are used up based on the fact that we're running low and she doesn't want to constantly run to the grocery store, especially with our children begging like pathetic dogs for something new in each aisle. When she buys the new buns, I open the new pack and use them even if there are buns in the old pack--there's no way we're going to eat all those buns in both packs, so why not get started on the new fluffy buns? This drives my wife freaking bananas.

The moral of this story is that marriage is a pain in the ass a union of personal finance and living habits as well as a union of hearts and souls. Money is the number one issue that causes divorces. If you are newly married, getting married, or have been married for many years but have never done so, now is the perfect time to sit down, hold hands, look into each other's eyes, and have a talk about your buns.