Accountability

Money Talks

I can remember the day I received my first piece of mail at my new home.  I was so excited to see the new address associated with my name.  It felt very official.  The house was a buzz that day, filled with all sorts of family members as we were getting ready for a big family wedding.  I believe there were nine of us total all staying at the house in preparation for the wedding.  Hair and make up and shoes and dresses were everywhere.  I was sipping my coffee and opened my mail and was thrilled with myself.  I noticed quite a bit of mail had come for jolly guy.  I didn’t think to even mention it to him cause now we were splitting everything so I opened one of the bills.  That bill was the water bill.  It stated that the bill had not been paid in quite a while and that by 3pm that day the water would be shut off.  Not a warning notice, an actual notice saying it’s getting turned off.  We had a house full of people and everyone needed to shower and get ready and eat and wash hands and how the heck were we going to do all that with no water?  I started to panic a bit and brought the notice to jolly guy who seemed unfazed.  “Don’t worry about it” he said.  Really?  In a matter of hours the house would basically come to a stand still.  I said we needed to pay it immediately and he again seemed not bothered in the least.  I looked at the pile of mail that had been sitting for a while in the bowl next to his keys and for the first time noticed that the bills all had pink slips in them.  Now I’ve been broke many a time in my life and I knew there was a certain amount of time you could go without paying bills before they sent that pink notice. I b-lined it towards that pile and began to open each and every bill.  Everything was at shut off notice.  Not one bill was a warning or a missed payment or a regular statement.  Everything was with dates claiming shut off; electric, water, phone, insurance.  You name it, it was going off and fairly soon, like within days of that moment.  Jolly guy said “Let’s pay the water and get through today and then we will look at everything” again he seemed not worried or nervous or anything, but my blood was pumping and I was a wreck.  I paid the water bill and then asked about what was needed for the day.  Come to find out, he was a little short for the wedding.  No big deal I thought, how much do we need?  Ok, the gift, the limo, the hair the dresses, the card.  The wedding was not cheap and although Iit appeared odd to me, he always paid for everything so I shelled out the money in cash and we went on with the day.  The night ended and the next morning I couldn’t contain myself.  I had to get the bottom of the bill situation and figure out where we were.  After all we were now in this together so I would come up with a plan.  I made budgets for a living, I could arrange our money successfully being we had more than enough between the two of us right?  I didn’t think twice about paying off all the bills that were three months behind.  Three months.  But we had to come up to current because gone was the chance to pay a bit without getting everything turned off.  And more importantly then having water, what if we had no internet?  How would we survive?  Our lives were hooked right into that and without it our life, our kids lives would certainly come to a screeching halt.  Fine.  A few hundred for this bill, a few hundred for that bill and next thing you know a couple thousand later we were in the clear.  Phew.  Thankfully tragedy was overrated and we moved on.  The weeks rolled on and we were on track and then my birthday hit.  Jolly guy threw me a surprise 40th birthday party and it was incredible.  He took me to the nicest brunch, and when I walked into the party I was floored and humbled and happy.  My friends, my family all in one place at a beautiful wine bar with food and drinks flowing.  He did such a wonderful job, but where did the money come from?

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