—Anonymous The eye-opening experience was shopping with my husband’s dad for the first time. He was explaining something to my husband and casually drops, ‘As you know I don’t really look at prices anymore…’ and then continues on. I’ve been with my husband for seven years and I’ve never forgotten that.Of course, these are two small bits of a much larger, complex story. My husband’s dad worked himself up to millions from nothing. His sweat equity, and luck, built his wealth. It wasn’t handed down to him, just as it’s not handed out to my husband. My husband’s parents didn’t raise him to think he’s better than everyone else (which is entirely why we became best friends in the first place; I didn’t know about the money for a long time). Although when we moved in together and were broke in our early ’20s, the first few ‘I know you want this but we can’t afford it’ conversations were eye opening for him. It didn’t take long to reorient his thinking about our finances, and that’s largely because our relationship is built off friendship, respect, and a mutual desire to build a lasting life together. I appreciate the fact that money is there when an emergency happens, but I never expect it. I don’t want us living our life as though we expect all our problems will be taken care of. We are going to carve our own way in the world as a family." —Anonymous I do all the cooking so it’s a constant bizarre experience." —u/TheLateThagSimmons
