My wife and I dated for about eight months before I asked her to marry me, and we got married 4 months after that. During this entire time I think we had one disagreement, but I don't remember what it was about. We were both undergraduates at BYU at the time, I was 23, she was 19, strike that she was 20. We got married, and went on a very cheap honeymoon and proceed to live a blissful life with only the stress of college to deal with. It was great!
We literally only had 1 disagreement in the first year of marriage and that was about starting a family. We had discussed waiting a year before we thought seriously about it, but God had other plans. He told my wife that we should not wait. I could not swallow this and things got a little rough until I was able to determine why they were rough, and it was my fault for not trusting God. From then on we had about 10 years of bliss. I'm telling you it was bliss! At least for me. Melissa and I agreed on almost everything excepting a few tiffs every now and then about whether the kids should be allowed to eat cheese.
Well the kids got older and we had progressively more disagreements about various forms of cheese that the kids were eating or not eating, or maybe it wasn't about eating cheese at all, maybe it was about whether they were allowed to make cheese before making their bed, or maybe it was that they were treating us like cheese, or maybe they weren't doing their chores and they were melting cheese for crackers instead. The point is there have been a lot of cheese disagreements between us about the kids in the last 5 or so years. Although we have had some serious difficulties because of our thoughts on the relationship between kids and cheese, on the whole I blame the children for that, and myself really. But that's beside the point, a diversion not necessary for this post, but it came out.
The point is that because Melissa and I agree on most everything I had the opportunity withdraw $11,500 dollars cash from the bank in February. Here's the photo of 11 piles of money.
Ten piles of 10 and 1 pile of 5 $100 bills.
You may ask yourself, "Why would Jimmy need so much cash?" The answer is that I was going to Las Vegas. You see my wife and I both woke up one morning and thought, "We should get some cash and book a flight to Las Vegas today for Jimmy." So that's what we did. It turns out that at some banks you can only withdraw $5000 at a time. Who knew? I had to go to two banks to get that much money. After getting the money Melissa and I struggled with how it should be carried through the airport and what I would say if I were asked by security about it. But then I figured lots of people going to Vegas probably take that much cash with them right?
We decided to make a money belt out of an old tote bag. She got the sewing machine out and sewed the bills into a rectangular pouch, which I then tied around my waist under my shirt and tucked into the front of my pants. Then I went to Vegas.
I know what you are thinking. Jimmy you didn't really do all of this, but it's true I did. I went to Vegas with $11,500 cash under my shirt tucked into my pants on a same day flight. That all really happened. And I came back with no cash.
So now you're thinking it would be better if you and your wife disagreed more often about things besides cheese and children and you might be right. But I will give you the whole story and it will be a lot less exciting.
Our first car we bought together we paid $6,100 cash for. I still drive it it has 219,000 miles on it. Our second car is a mini-van that we got a loan for and paid about $15,000 for. It took about a year to pay it off, but neither of us liked getting that loan. Well that car is a Plymouth Grand Voyager and it has 222,000 miles on it.
That second car is breaking down slowly. It still drives great, but it needs more work and the windows don't roll down anymore. It's been a great car, don't get me wrong, but we have to drive across the country in May of this year, and neither of us wants to be stranded in West Tennessee with a broken car and be forced to buy a new one that day.
So we had been looking for a newer car and found a 2006 Toyota Sienna with 78,000 miles on it. The van was in Vegas and they wanted $11,500 for it. Well we called them and moved the money over from our savings account and it ended up being Saturday when it got there. We called the seller and asked if he wanted cash or a cashier's check, and he said cash. I think that was the right decision since I was not going to get there in time to make it to a bank to verify the funds. Cash was really the only way. So I flew to Vegas and came back with a "new to us" van.
It's nice. We have 3 vehicles now and the new van stays in the garage. We think it was the right decision, but if the '99 Plymouth goes to 300,000 miles with out any major problems, then I'd say we should have saved the money. We'll see. In a few years our oldest son will be 16, and he will hopefully be driving an old car with a lot of miles on it. Actually in 3 years I hope I will be driving an old car with a lot of miles on it. It's much cheaper that way, which is why I am so lucky.
My wife loves saving money as much as I do. We didn't ever even talk about this stuff before we got married, but it is one of the many areas where we have no disagreements. Now if we could just agree on the cheese.
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