Cha-Ching

The (future) hubby and I had an interesting conversation the other night. It was precipitated by something I’d read in Dan Savage’s book (the Commitment). Early on in there relationship, he (Dan) is worried that his boyfriend is a golddigger. His boyfriend (Terry)’s response is quite simple: “If I were a golddigger, honey… I could get a guy with a lot more gold”. This got me thinking, “am I a gold digger? Did stephen ever worry that I was one”? now, our relationship is pretty straightforward, and I know I can ask him anything, so I did. His reply was just as simple as Terry’s: “Honey, you don’t have the financial sense to be a gold-digger”. My knee-jerk reaction was to be offended, but I tamped that down rather quickly because I honestly wasn’t sure what he meant. His explanation was that I didn’t value money enough to work towards the emotional and physical manipulation involved with being a gold-digger (that’s a paraphrased version of his explanation). The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right (which annoyed me because that meant I couldn’t be annoyed that he had insulted me).

I have a very abstract notion of money. It’s kind like god: omnipresent and integrated in every facet of human existence but in ways that are so subtle to me that I rarely feel affected by them. does that make any sense? Allow me to elucidate:

I’ve never really had to think about money. It was always there growing up, even when I was told that we didn’t have any. When I was a kid, there were very few things that I wanted; I was the kind of kid that was amused for hours at a time by Play-Doh, Matchbox Cars, a Slinky or Leggo. Beyond that I never really required big expensive toys and stuff. I was a very content little kid. My parents paid for 12 years of Catholic school and I never really gave it a thought they had to struggle to put us both through school. When it came time for college, I got loans and grants that (and I’m being honest here) I never thought about paying back. The same thing happened with the credit cards which were offered on campus. Years later, the specters came back to haunt me in the form of wage garnishment liens. But still, I never saw it as money being taken from me, just that there was less to spend. I think stephen put it best when he told me that I don’t think about money till I’m standing out side of Chipotle with three dollars in my hand trying to figure out how to buy the four dollar burrito.

So here I am at 29.9 years (I’m not 30 yet…I’m not 30 yet…); I’ve been working steadily since I’m 14 (except for the 6 month break I took after getting laid off from my last job) I’ve managed to pay off 3 of my credit cards and my student loan (after having my wages garnished). I’m reasonably certain that my credit is completely shot. I can’t bring myself to summon up my Credit Report from wherever one goes to do that. To me, the prospect of finding out is like going to the Oracle of Delphi or the local medium; I’d be trying to divine what my financial future holds based on the ghosts that haunt me. I know I have to, in case stephen and I can ever get legally married, so that there’s no chance of a bank trying to garnish his salary or take the house he worked hard to buy, just because of my inability to make money a more than just a concept.

“Money? Oh but whats money to an artist? To a philosopher? Its just green coloered paper that floats in and out of his life likfe snow. Its not anything you actually have to I don't know, work for, is it Troy?”~ Lelaina Pierce (Reality Bites)