Taking the Plunge
I wrote a few weeks ago in “Separate But Equal” that it’s harder, I think, for gay couples to know when and how to merge their lives (especially finances) without being able to get formally married”except in Massachussetts!
Well this weekend Rob and I took the plunge. It was during a conversation about another couple he knows, a married couple back in Scranton struggling with power and trust issues. This couple continues to maintain separate checking accounts a year after being married. They both work, but she is supposed to pay “her own” bills while he pays for the house he owned before they got married.
I said to Rob, I don’t ever want us to fight about that. And Rob said he had been thinking it was time for us to really combine everything: bills, family obligations, everything. That was kind of it: a quiet agreement, and hey, what else is on TV?
A few days later we sat down in our study with a few 3×5 index cards and wrote out (separately at first) our individual financial goals, both short-term and long-term. (This is a tip I got from Money magazine a few months ago). Then we compared notes, and found we had a lot of overlap. Short term: to pay off all the cars, student loans, and one remaining credit card in the next three years. Longer term: we both wanted some kind of vacation home, and to own our own business, say in the next ten years. On top of that we’d like to give significant financial help to my niece to get through college, starting in 5 years, and to both our sets of parents just to help them in their old age.
It was really good to find we had so much in common in terms of our future goals, and that we were both willing to budget and plan to make it happen. Well, Rob was willing for me to do the budgeting. So I pulled out the trusty Quicken software, and permanently added all of Rob’s assets, loans, and bills to the program. It now shows combined assets, combined debts, all our monthly bills, and a joined up net worth.
To be honest I still feel a little bit of trepidation. Having been on my own so long, it’s quite a change to now be in a partnership: what’s mine is his, what’s his is mine. I know it’s not legal or anything, although we can register for a civil partnership in NJ. The difference is really psychological and emotional. We have agreed to be responsible for each other, to provide for each other, and to make long term plans together. Here I am 37 years old and it’s the first time in my life I can say that.
Where can I get a ring?
See, joining up financially isn’t hard, it’s very Quicken (I crack myself up).
On a serious note, I would never partner with someone who didn’t have a joint relationship with me, to me it’s about trust.
Usually I do the financial stuff, but with being so busy the last few months, Surfgirl, has been doing to bills and such and then I will look over them if she wants me too. Like you said, it is “really psychological and emotional”, the rest is easy.