My wife is in the hands of a remarkably thorough financial planner who in turn referred her to an estate attorney. The two of them are insatiable about information; every datum I toss them results in yet more requests for financial reports, income and expense reports, balance sheets with notes, graphs, and document copies. So I was spending my thanksgiving afternoon locating records to establish whether particular properties are titled in her name, our names, our trusts, her trust, or LLCs, and feeling rather bitchy about it. So much for shooting the crossbow. So much for a pre-bloat workout on a sharp clear fall afternoon. Then I thought, shamefacedly
-- we have the means (computers and a scanner) to calculate and keep those records
-- we have the resources that the records exemplify
-- we have the mental capacity to maintain a complex and lucrative financial life
Then I recollected my first wife. During that marriage she lived us within our means, to the annual penny, and actively resisted saving. Demanded that I not save or invest. I hid my first IRA from her. And she still does - long after our divorce, when their financial lives had been on the move toward freedom for a few years, she found out the kids were saving and investing, and tried to keep them from it, snapping, "No. NO! You shouldn't be saving, you should be ... enjoying life." They have ignored her dictum and kept at it; they do well financially, and somehow manage to enjoy life too.
It was Ilana Stern, on one of the old rec. groups, probably rec.investing, who wrote "Choice of spouse, and whether to spouse at all, is the most important financial decision you will ever make." It was about the last thing she wrote on that group, before retiring at 36 (her husband was 43) to sail all over the Caribbean and coastal Atlantic for the next 5 years.
My first and second marriages underscored her statement, diametrically. So, today, I am very thankful that at last I found and spoused the one I did, a saver and financial conservative, physically adventurous and non-dramatic emotionally. Nearly all the first-world problems that I whinged about above have afflicted us since we married.
