Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Pre-Marriage Counseling, Part 2

The second part of our pre-marriage counseling session (not second session, just next 20 minutes) focused on the financial planning aspect of our relationship. Now, my fiance and I are 25 and 26, respectively. He's been in graduate school, but I took a few years off when before I came back to school. He's been financially on his own for 3 years and I have been for 4, ever since we graduated from college. The point of that is, that we know how to pay rent, car insurance, car payments, etc.

Our marriage counselor asked us who was going to pay the bills. We said that we hadn't discussed it, but that Fiance had been, and so he may as well keep doing it.

Marriage Counselor -"Well, that's fine, but the bride should know how to pay the bills."
Fiance-"She's lived on her own, she knows how to pay her bills, she's done it for more than 3 years."
MC-"Groom, how would you feel about showing the bride how to pay the bills, so she knows how you do it?"
F-"Sure, fine."
MC-"I'm just concerned, because I've met couples where the husband never showed the bride how to pay the bills, and then he died, and the wife didn't know how to pay the bills."
Me -"Well, I'm a business, student, so even if he does die, I think I'll be able to figure it out."

Marriage Counselor: "Well, the next topic is that I see that you two haven't discussed the use of credit."

Note - My fiance will say that this is completely my fault, because I didn't lie and say that we had discussed and agreed on this. I'm thinking that this question involved how quickly we would pay off our student loans, buying versus leasing a car, etc.

Marriage Counselor: "Well, let's talk about it - would you two be OK with using credit cards?"

Seriously - that's all she wanted to know. We answered yes, and she was totally and completely satisfied that we had discussed it. So, that was another 20 minutes of our lives wasted.

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