If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon

by Jenna McCarthy

  We had the banking thing dialed in, but that wasn’t the last of our money issues. I became acutely aware of this the night Joe made the following gruesome announcement over an otherwise lovely dinner:

  “We need to create a family budget.”

  My skin prickled, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I broke out into an uncomfortable and unattractive full-body sweat. I’m the person who, when she sees a DO NOT TOUCH sign, has to immediately stroke the off-limits object. Rules and restrictions piss me off, so telling me not to spend money was just asking for disaster.

  “A what?” I asked, feigning vacuity. On some subconscious level, I am sure I knew this was coming.

  “We have nothing saved for our retirement,” Joe was fond of reminding me. “We spend more money than we make.” “Your highlights cost how much?” Although I was appreciative that someone in the house was concerned about these things—and grateful that it didn’t have to be me—I certainly didn’t want anyone poring over my receipts, calculating how often I actually used my health club membership, or worst of all, putting the kibosh on my monthly pedicure.

  Joe began establishing the dreaded budget by enlisting a financial planner I’ll call Satan. After great effort and expense, Satan charged us the equivalent of several hundred cups of designer coffee to tell us that we spend too much money. Believe me, the irony of this shocking epiphany was not lost on either of us. In particular, the Angel of Darkness suggested we eliminate our child care budget (which included the cost of preschool) entirely. The fact that we’d have significantly less money without the income our jobs produced while the kids were being cared for by someone else didn’t seem to be taken into consideration. Though we were going to be allowed to continue to eat (in moderation), Lucifer also recommended not just curtailing but eradicating the entire personal-grooming category. Now, I’d consider walking around with ragged toenails for just about any worthy cause, but revealing my sad salt-and-pepper roots was just not going to happen. The Antichrist would just have to peddle her sensible living plan somewhere else. Like Mars.

  Thankfully, even Joe realized the absurdity of Beelzebub’s recommendations, and I was allowed to continue to enjoy regular meals and maintain my lifelong charade of “naturally” sun-kissed tresses. We agreed to the pleasantly unrestrictive plan that we would “try to be more frugal.” I still had to submit all of my receipts to my husband, but Joe agreed to a no-judgment policy. To show my team spirit, I started to stretch out the time between hair appointments—fortunately I have a pretty nice assortment of hats and look okay in most of them. I even let my beloved New Yorker subscription expire.

  I also started paying for some stuff with cash. Nothing major or illicit, just things I’d rather not have to admit to buying. Before this I was the poster girl for credit cards, the gal who swiped her plastic to buy a single greeting card or a scoop of ice cream. I didn’t charge exorbitant things I couldn’t afford, and I paid the bills in full each month (well, technically Joe paid them—but I made sure I didn’t spend outside of our means), but I liked my cards for the easy record keeping and of course the frequent-flier miles. But now that someone really was taking note of every lip gloss and latte I bought, I felt like Big Brother was breathing down my neck in every checkout aisle. Tiny cash purchases here and there were like a few stolen bites of someone else’s dessert: They didn’t really count.

  “I’m not trying to get you to cut back on spending so much as I am trying to get an idea of where all of our money goes,” Joe told me sensibly when he clued in to my petty-cash habit.

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “But if I get grilled about a single pack of Trident, I’m going back to the squandering-cash plan.”

  I found it interesting—but not all that surprising—when I read the results of a recent global study by the infamous media giant Nielsen. This time the researchers determined that women will fare far better in the current recession than men because, quite simply, we put less emphasis on money. Rather than judging our worth and potency by our bank balance, women derive their happiness from personal relationships and meaningful communication. In other words, as much as we gals may pine for a rock the size of a golf ball on our fingers or a glistening new Viking range or those slutty clip-in Jessica Simpson hair extensions, we’ve also discovered—long before our blockheaded partners—that money can’t actually buy happiness. It just lets you look better in your misery.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  My husband spends all of my hard-earned money on his boat. We are

  at about $10,000 at this point. He continually asks me for more money

  for his boat and lovingly calls me his “sponsor.” It probably has

  strengthened our relationship because his extended time on the watercraft

  continues our “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”

  philosophy of marriage, but it is still annoying.

  HANNAH

  Even if your partner is the generous sort, here’s what happens when you are working with a field of pooled resources: You can’t just go out and buy whatever the hell you want. (I know!) For instance, Joe believes you should wait until your current car is officially pronounced dead, and then go out and pay full price for a brand-spanking-new one, which you will then be expected to drive into the ground. Using Joe’s method, one might have the privilege of driving two or three different cars in a lifetime. Conversely, I was raised to believe one should never purchase this year’s model (“It costs you 20 percent of the price just to drive it off the lot!”), but to buy a wellmaintained two-year-oldv vehicle—preferably from an eighty-seven-year-old grandchildless woman who only used it to get to her weekly bingo game up the street. You would then drive it for exactly two years before trading it in for another gently loved toddler model, thereby dodging the bulk of that bothersome depreciation.

  “Why would I want to buy someone else’s headache?” is Joe’s cynical argument whenever I buck for a trade-up.

  Because of this, I am the proud owner of a nine-year-old SUV. The goddamned thing works perfectly and has never caused us a day’s headache. It’s only got 75,000 miles on it (because where the hell do I go?), and I am sure it has another ten years of life in it, possibly more. The mats are stained and ratty, there are Goldfish crackers and bits of string cheese ground deeply into the seats, and it doesn’t have any of the fancy bells and whistles—like built-in DVD players in the headrests, an in-dash navigation system, or gloriously heated seats—that they’ve come out with in the past decade.

  I drop hints about wanting a new car frequently. These “hints” include e-mailed links to Craigslist listings and oneday-only tent sales; laborious, gushing descriptions of other friends’ new cars and all of their swanky features; and casual statements like “For the love of Lexus can I please just get a new car?” I know I am setting myself up for failure here, but I have fantasies of being awoken on my birthday with some bogus request to come see the new birds’ nest in the yard or to check out some silly thing the dog is doing in the driveway. When I shuffle outside in my slippers, I rub the crusty gunk out of my eyes to find a brand-new (well, two-year-old) Mercedes parked out front. Of course it’s wrapped in a giant, obnoxious red bow. A flying pig winks at me from behind the wheel.

  Now, I make my own money and could easily go out and buy myself a new car any old time I please. (Well, maybe not easily, as I am really bad at all of that tedious paperwork rigmarole and have a habit of signing things I haven’t quite read, but you know what I mean.) But I haven’t and I am almost positive that I won’t, and not because I believe that blessed Benz is ever going to appear on its own. I know, in fact, that it isn’t. But until Joe goes out and buys the motorcycle I don’t want him to have, I just don’t have enough ammo to do it.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  My husband was about thirty pounds overweight when—with his thirtieth

  birthday fast approaching—he decided to diet! Ex
ercise! Get in

  shape! Most would chalk this up to being an early-midlife-I-should-

  get-healthy crisis. But no. It wasn’t for his health. It was because the

  only thing homeboy wanted for his thirtieth (not sixtieth) birthday was

  an oil motherfucking painting of our family to hang over our nonexistent

  fireplace. He lost more than thirty pounds and said that once we got

  the oil painting done, he would stop dieting and eat whatever he wanted

  again. His birthday was in June and there have been no plans for an

  oil painting and there never will be. He’s still exercising and being

  healthy because I’ve seduced him with a trip to Hawaii in the fall.

  Because seriously, I’d rather dole out the cash it’s going to take to see

  Maui than have to stare at our family in a painting on a wall where a

  fireplace will never exist.

  MEGAN

  My friends Jenny and Rob have an interesting way of handling their money. And by “interesting” I mean “Holy shit, this seems wacked to me, but hey, if it works for them, who am I to argue with it?” Jenny and Rob have been married for nearly two decades and they still keep all of their money separate. They both make around the same salary and each writes dozens of checks a month, for exactly half of all of the household and family expenses. When Jenny wanted to repave the driveway and Rob didn’t really think it was all that urgent, Jenny saved up her own money to get the job done. Jenny drives a beater and wears fabulous clothes; Rob pilots a tricked-out Saab and hasn’t been spotted in a new shirt since his teenage kids were toddlers.

  “That really works for you?” I asked Jenny earnestly.

  “Totally,” she replied. “You know what the best part is? When we buy each other gifts, they’re really meaningful. I mean, if you get Joe some sweater he doesn’t like, he doesn’t just have to wear it, he has to wear it knowing that he paid for half of it.”

  Jenny had a point—and it would sure make things simpler if they ever got divorced, knock on wood—but I still had concerns. What if one of them broke an arm or got cancer and couldn’t work? What if the house needed a major repair and one of them couldn’t afford their half? What if Rob had some massive midlife crisis and went out and bought a dozen fat gold chains or decided to get hair plugs?

  Jenny just laughed. “We’re still a team,” she insisted. “Neither of us would do anything the other was really opposed to with our money. But if I want to get a massage a week or send my mom a plane ticket for her birthday, I just do it. I can’t imagine living any other way.”

  I still thought it was weird, probably for the same reason purple hair and those gross earring holes the size of quarters still strike me as weird: I am a creature of habit and I don’t really embrace change. In my mind, marriage is when you throw all of your respective shit—your cats, dogs, pots, pans, furniture, quirks, neuroses, and checkbooks—into one house, where the whole mess magically morphs into a home. Call me crazy, but I like the perks of commingled currency. You know, the familiarity and consistency, knowing someone’s got my back, not having to write a dozen checks a month, oh, and having unrestricted access to half of someone else’s money.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It’s My Potty and

  I’ll Cry If I Want To

  After seven years of marriage, I am sure of two things:

  First, never wallpaper together,

  and second, you’ll need two bathrooms.

  Both for her. The rest is a mystery.

  • DENNIS MILLER •

  Though I have found that my husband can insult and infuriate me in just about any room in the house, the injustices that I suffer in the bathroom are uniquely revolting. I say this while fully acknowledging the fact that Joe never ever leaves the toilet seat up means that relative to many women, I am married to a living saint. (I had one boyfriend who never ever put the damned thing down. You’d think that after a year or so of plunging assfirst into the frigid bowl in the darkest hours of the night, I’d have learned to check the seat status before sitting down, but that’s where you’d be giving my half-asleep self way too much credit. His recurring response was, “At least I’m not peeing on the seat.” Gee, dear. Thanks for the surplus of courtesy!)

  It was actually a restroom incident that almost thwarted my relationship with Joe before it ever really even started. It was our very first date, and Joe came to my apartment to pick me up. We may have enjoyed a glass of wine on the patio or a quick chat on the living room couch, I can’t recall. What I do remember is Joe asking if he could use the bathroom before we left for dinner. Naturally I’d spit-shined every inch of my apartment in anticipation of his visit, so I led the way to the tidy little jewel in my apartment’s admittedly dinky but nevertheless spotless crown.

  He was in and out in a flash, and off we went to dinner. The food was lovely and the conversation flowed easily; Joe steered me through the crowded restaurant with his hand placed gently on the small of my back. I felt like royalty. When we finished dinner we made our way back to the car and shared our very first, very memorable kiss in the corner of the parking garage. Afterward Joe drove me home, kissed me again (even more memorably, for the record), and left. I bolted to the bathroom to make sure I didn’t look like Courtney Love after our little liplock, and there it was, a neon sign heralding my utter incompatibility with this otherwise staggeringly perfect man: The soiled hand towel, scrunched up and wadded down behind the towel bar like an oversized terrycloth spit bomb.

  Oh bloody hell, he’s a slob! was my first thought. Why would I think anything else? I hadn’t seen his apartment yet (not that that information would have helped in his defense), so all I had to base my judgment on were two meetings where he’d managed to project an orderly appearance and seemingly meticulous grooming practices. But anyone could pretend to be neat and conscientious twice. I wasn’t sure if I should see him again.

  “Are you out of your demented, irrational mind?” my sane friend Andrew asked kindly. Andrew had enjoyed the privilege of listening to me gush about Joe since the day I had met him, and even though Andrew wasn’t gay (he had a very nice girlfriend himself), he had been almost more excited about this date than I was. Which was saying a lot. “Jenna, you’ve had the hots for this guy for months!” my friend went on. “Maybe Joe’s not a pig. Maybe he was just so excited to get back out of there and be with you that he wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe he really is a filthy, disgusting slob. Who cares? You’re neat enough for fourteen people anyway. You can’t seriously be considering writing him off because of a scrunched-up towel!”

  Because Andrew had effectively made me feel like a threearmed circus freak, I promised him I’d give Joe another chance. (I should probably mention here that Joe emphatically denies any recollection of or involvement in Towelgate. But why on earth would I have dreamed this up? I’m telling you, I was smitten.)

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  Every single time my husband uses the bathroom, he stays in there for twenty to thirty minutes. No one really knows what he’s doing (okay, we actually do), but we know better than to disturb “the king” on his throne.

  CHERYL

  My reservations reared their ugly multiple heads once again when Joe invited me to his place. I was impressed to find that he lived in a storybook Spanish-style house in a great part of town, even if he did share it with a roommate. Then I saw the inside.

  His bedroom furnishings consisted of a single mattress on the floor wrapped in a faded plaid flannel sheet, a tiny nondescript desk, and a couple of dusty plastic milk crates doubling as a dresser. A giant beach towel was tacked to the wall above the single window, where someone with a different decorating sensibility might have hung a rod with curtains on it. The living room was home to the smoked-glass coffee table and armoire he’d built in high school. (I admit I was deeply impressed by the meticulous craftsmanship, even if the style wasn’t exactly mine . .
. or of the particular decade we were living in at the time.) The seating consisted of a pair of itchy brown couches draped in even itchier Mexican blankets. I think there may have been a beanbag or Papasan chair, too. And then there was his bathroom.

  “I didn’t even know they made blue grout!” I said obtusely, studying the charming Spanish tile chamber closely. “Oh my God, that’s not grout, is it?” But I was young and in love and Joe was like a supercharged human magnet to me. I wanted to be near him at all costs, even if it meant rubbing elbows—literally—with a room full of filthy fungi and their kabillions of tiny airborne spore-spawn. I went through gallons of mildew remover and shredded several towels in the process, but all of the elbow grease in the world plus a chemical cocktail that could kill a horse couldn’t restore that grout to its former chalkiness. It was too far gone. A four-dollar pair of shower shoes was a quick and easy temporary fix; insisting on showering at my apartment was the long-term solution.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  The most annoying thing about my husband is that he has a very slight

  touch of OCD, which means, among other things, that I am not allowed

  to get the bath mat wet. Ever. I am supposed make sure my feet are

  dry when I step onto the mat. Isn’t the purpose of the mat to dry your

  feet?