'On time' and Fiscal Responsibility

If you’ve ground through this set of memories to this point, you’ve probably noticed the phrase “on time” too many times.

That was the phrase, in the ’50s and ’60s, for taking out an installment loan — having something now and paying for it in monthly payments for the next n months. My dad cosigned several installment purchases for me. It was perhaps one of his few shortfalls as a parent. I was hooked.

I brought the habit into my marriage to Kathy.

We have two different natures when it comes to “stuff.” I want it now and will pay later. Kathy is far more fiscally conservative and serves as a brake on my profligacy. Sadly, Dave Ramsey and his Financial Peace University weren’t up and running in the ’60s, and our one hour of premarital counseling never touched on fiscal policy.

By my sophomore year at Rice, I was largely independent of my folks financially — at least on the day-to-day stuff. They covered the car insurance and came through with “emergency” infusions of cash, but otherwise I was a free agent.

We married, I immediately added Kathy to the checking account, and we proceeded to live without a budget until 2003. We did a lot of “on time” for “absolutely necessary” items. Paying for Britany’s birth is an example: I was too proud to ask my folks or Kathy’s for the money, so Britany was delivered both early (mildly premature) and “on time.”

From our marriage right through 2002, our unbudgeted fiscal policy ran to all kinds of purchases — lots of new cars, credit cards, consolidation loans, and so on. Fortunately, I was in a career with good pay and good raises that bailed us out regularly. We had several “cut up the credit card” parties — none of which persisted.

We finally went on a budget when we joined Mercy Ships in 2003. Since we were asking friends and family to fund us, we wanted to account for every dime, so we began budgeting and tracking then — and have never stopped.

We’ve found budgeting and tracking to be an awesome communication tool: we both know where we stand and how we’re spending. Oh, that we had started the practice on 23 November 1967.