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Yep, I'm Gonna Talk About It, Finances

The conversation most couples dread having or if your me, HATE having! I have always thought of myself as pretty independent, years ago I would of been the one to say "I don't need a man," and this great one "don't you know who I am?!" However as I got older, I realized that not only did I want one, I needed one, and when I say need, I mean I needed someone who would engage in conversation with me at 1:00pm or 1:00am, who would hold my hair (when I had some!) when I got sick, who would laugh and cry with me, who would tell me everything would be okay, and someone who really truly loved me for me.

So along came Scott, we decided to move in together, it was fun, we'd stay up late and talk about EVERYTHING, but money was never really an issue, then Jaxon came along and money became a huge issue. Why did we not talk about this before? Why did it seem so easy before? Sure sometimes it came up ie, you know rent is due today, or the car needs gas. We were financially immature. What I have learned from numerous arguments about where the money should go, ie. who's getting diapers and formula, is we should of sat down and talked about this before Jaxon was born, it would of saved us a lot of fights and extra stress that we didn't need.

See we bothed assumed things, Scott thought I was going to go to work right after Jaxon was born, what he failed to understand was that the cost of putting a newborn in daycare five days a week would of cost twice as much as I would of made, which would of just put us further into debt and what I assumed was that Scott was going to take care of me financially. What I failed to understand was that I was putting a lot of added stress on Scott by assuming that he was going to be able to make enough money to take care of all us. By doing that he worked longer hours, which meant less time together, which made him tired and grumpy and me angry because I felt like he never wanted to spend time with me or Jaxon. I have posted on here before that Scott and I split up for a while and this was one of the reasons. So to hopefully save some people the stress that Scott and I went through, these are some of the things I suggest you and your partner do. You should really sit with your partner and be as open and honest as you can, does he know what you want to do after your baby is born, do you have a budget, who is responsible for paying the bills and who for rent or is it a joint cost. Also the biggest thing for me about not working after Jaxon was born was how dependent I was on Scott and how crappy I felt about it, almost like I had lost my independence, and once I expressed that to him, it made him aware of how I felt and how much I wanted to contribute but that my contribution had changed. It took us a while to figure it all out and now we are in sync, and with another baby to boot!