A Short Story
My husband and I got engaged at the age of 20. Neither him nor I had much financial savviness. My parents had run a business for as long as I had recollection and my siblings and I always worked and helped with that. But once I got engaged I got a retail job while also attending college full time. My husband had also held jobs but he would give his mom most of his check to help with rent and bills. I had about 2 years left of college, by the time we got engaged. He and I planned to get married after I graduated college. But being from a Mexican household things don’t always go the way you might imagine. My family said why wait so long, might as well get married in a few months. So we did!
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the idea of getting married sooner but reality would soon set in a few days after the wedding. My husband and I had saved some money but it was not much. Less than $1000. About a week after our wedding, my husband was laid off from his job. The income I made on my own was not enough, and in our first month we already could not afford rent. We had to talk to our landlord and with a lot of feelings of shame asked if he could please give us a month to pay him in full. Thankfully, he was the nicest oldest gentleman we had ever met, an ANGEL in our lives and replied by saying, “it’s ok you're just starting out”. I wanted to cry, I did cry.
I felt the biggest shame, I never thought I would not be able to afford rent, I never imagined having to ask for help from OUR LANDLORD. This was my first time ever handling money like this, paying for rent or bills. Up to this point my parents had taken care of everything with the household. I grew up not asking for much because I saw how hard they worked. To me, helping them in the family business was part of my duty as part of the family. They would buy me clothes when we went out, I had no car so I relied on rides from them, I would occasionally get paid $100, or if I was going out they would give me some money.
But now all of a sudden I was in charge of a household. It was a few difficult months, after a few weeks my husband was able to get another job and we were able to catch back up on rent. I promised to never not be able to pay rent again, but unfortunately things don’t always go as one hopes. And TRUTHFULLY, we are the ones to blame. Shortly after this is when we fell into a vicious cycle of debt. Believe it or not it all started around Christmas gifts.
Our financial journey has not been easy. Some are habits that came with us as children but others are us just making bad decisions as adults. I wish I had decided to learn about finances 10 years ago. But you can’t go back in time, so what I have decided to do is cherish my memories. Though we had a difficult beginning, because money stress most definitely leaks into your romantic life, in the end we were brought closer together. And today, when we talk about the past it’s like re-reading a favorite book that you don’t get tired of reading over and over.
