I'll show you mine...

Sgt. is still in Kuwait. The bonus to that is, with a lot of time on his hands, we get a lot of time to talk on messenger throughout the day. Even if we're not SAYING much... because I am working... he likes just being on at the same time... just doing something together.

The other day we came upon the topic of money. It was sort of those "are you ready to do this?" questions. We had never talked about our fiances in the large, out in the open, this is what I got, way. It wasn't that we tiptoed around the issues, we just... have our own lives right now. However the other night we took another step in our relationship and I am actually THRILLED we did it!

Money is a "thing" with me. A "thing" in the sense that, it's a big deal, I've seen my parents struggle with money management for most of their lives... and they still do to an extent. I never had good money role models and was never taught proper ways to handle it... I just sort of had to learn as I went along. Different things have come and gone, student loans, a credit card I shouldn't have signed up for freshman year, a surgery... etc. That coupled with the small income I receive is enough to make anyone kind of gun shy when talking about it. I think to an extent I was a little worried he'd be grossly disappointed. I am not BAD at managing my money, in fact, this is something we discovered about each other. I'm actually quite good at managing my money on a small scale, month to month, day to day. What I am bad at (and what Sgt. is really GOOD at) is managing my money on a long term scale. We figured out we compliment each other in that department so, score 1 for us.

We started getting into it with the "you don't have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable" statements but in the end we just laid it all out there. E-mailed our budgets to each other in fact and then went over them... how much we make, how much we're in debt, bills, savings, credit scores, etc. And it was.... refreshing! Neither of us is doing unexpectedly well, but neither of us is doing horrendously bad either. We're ok. We set individual goals for where we'd like to be in 6 months, in a year, and also talked about extra income or money that would need to be set aside for the undetermined move date waiting in my future.

Every time I think the man couldn't do another thing to surprise me, he does. It's doing normal things, like talking about our future life together, that reminds me how much I can't wait for when that is; Being honest about where we are in our lives right now, so we can make some space and or adjustments to merge the two in the days, months, and years ahead.

It's a good feeling.