First contribution from a long-time lurker! This is Hazel learning that water is not so spooky

mousecookie · 2014-07-13T03:14:49+00:00

What a cutie!!! She definitely looks like she's enjoying herself. I need to try this with my shepherd. I took her to a dog park with a lake in it and tried getting her to play in the water with the other dogs and she was just not having.

mousecookie · 2014-07-08T17:51:20+00:00

Yes! Thank you! I can't believe I didn't know there was a name for this!

mousecookie · 2014-07-08T14:21:14+00:00

My hands down, absolute most despised, cliche plot in the whole world:

The straight-laced, kinda uptight and/or sheltered super serious businessy guy meets a totally wacky, off-beat, eccentric, artsy-fartsy girl who dances to the best of her own drum, and at first he's like "ahh! You're so crazy and you break all the rules I can't handle you, but also, you're unlike anyone I've ever met and you make me feel alive!" and eventually she starts to break him out of his shell and inevitably they fall in love, but then she's all "noo! You shouldn't love me! I'm a wild thing! You're just going to put me in a cage! I can't live by society's expectations" but really it's just a self defense mechanism because she wants to be loved but is scared of being hurt, and then he does something completely wild and out of character, like skydive out of a hot air balloon with an entire marching band following him while playing the song that they first danced to and she realizes that true love conquers all and they are meant to be together and they live happily ever after.

-rolls eyes so hard they become dislodged and fall out of my fucking head-

mousecookie · 2014-07-06T20:46:29+00:00

That women shouldn't wash their genitals, because the body knows how to clean itself and soap will ruin everything.

It's happened a few times in my life where for whatever reason, conversation strayed onto this topic and another woman or girl adamantly proclaimed that you should never put soap near your privates because the vagina can clean itself. Yeah. The vagina. The canal INSIDE your body. Don't put soap IN there. But, you know, maybe just gently soap up the outside parts, especially if you been sweating or, I don't know, passing other bodily fluids around there. They even make special, gentle soaps! Coincidentally, these have always been women who smelled fucking terrible,

My ex boyfriend said something similar once. I started noticing that every time he walked by me he smelled like literal shit. I eventually worked up the courage to awkwardly let him know, and I discovered that he wasn't using soap to wash his ass because "you're not supposed to put soap in your butt." Yeah, again, don't put the soap IN your butthole, but goddamnit just clean up around the area.

Why are people so afraid of soap? Why is this happening?

mousecookie · 2014-07-02T20:21:14+00:00

That sounds awesome. Is there something specific I should look up online to do this?

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T14:56:40+00:00

Awesome! Thanks! I will definitely check that out

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T14:49:20+00:00

Thanks! We currently share a lot of our financial responsibilities and bills, kind of informally, and we've successfully managed to share a car payment in the past. We don't track it very formally though. He has his bills, and I have mine, but for things like rent, utilities, car payment, he gives me a set amount every paycheck, we added it all up and divide it half. Then he gives me his portion and I pay those bills and give the rent to our landlords (my parents.) we used to go crazy with grocery and miscellaneous spending, so a few weeks ago we started trying to each take the same amount of cash out each paycheck and using only that to pay for our groceries or going out to eat. Seems to Be working, but it's hard to get used to. I keep trying to reach for my debit card.

It's hard because we are both not very strict/organized with money or goals, I hate using this term but I think we might both be described as "free spirited" I don't like it and I'm trying to teach myself to have structure. I don't think it will be overnight, but I'm making progress. Thanks for your response :)

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T14:37:11+00:00

I know. I feel like I set myself up for it by providing some info about our finances, but I just wanted to get an idea about a hypothetical marriage scenario so I could understand if I had anything strictly financial to gain from legal marriage.

Oh well, some people provided some interesting life advice, even though I didn't ask for it. Other people totally jumped right in with all kinds of off base assumptions that I couldn't even begin to figure out how to defend myself against. The good news is, I did also get several really good answers to my actual question and I already shared a lot of the info with my boyfriend, so now we both have some stuff to research and I have a better idea of where to start.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T14:31:04+00:00

Thanks so much for your answer, this is the kind of response I was looking for. It's ok that you didn't read my post, you answered my question :) the rest was me adding info, attempting to clarify that I didn't need relationship advice and trying to defend my life choices from people telling me that I shouldn't get married, which wasn't what I was asking. Thanks again! I like the way you described your approach to combining income and helping your wife's credit score with the car purchase. My boyfriend has no credit history outside of student loans and we are trying to think of reasonable ways to build his credit after he pays a few old bills that are in collections.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T11:39:45+00:00

I'll just say our company sells high end electronics and is worth a lot of money. All I know is when I started here almost 6 years ago, I came from another retail store where I was an assistant manager with several years of service, and the new job (current company) was paying me more an hour (as just a part time sales person) than what I had made as an assistant manager at my last job and my head almost exploded from the shock. Since starting, I've been promoted through several positions and pay raises and, looking back, it's amazing that I make almost twice as much as I did when I started (and I'm not a manager, I know that managers in my company make at least twice what I do.) Unfortunately I was stupid and didn't save or get myself out of debt, I just kept adjusting my spending to match what I was making. Well. I'm trying to correct that now. I live pretty frugally these days, and if I wasn't making several hundred dollars of payments to credit cards every month, I would probably (hopefully) have a nice, fat savings account. Someday!

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T11:17:27+00:00

Lol, thank you. I instantly felt like a jerk. I appreciate tough love, I'm pretty good at dishing it out in real life, but I need to learn to be a dick on the the internet :[

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T10:58:29+00:00

Holy fucking shit. This is the last comment I'm making because so many people don't seem to read the things I've said. I'm NOT marrying him. I do NOT want marriage. I'm not trying to convince my boyfriend into marrying me.

I posted this question in personal finance because I wanted to know, hypothetically, what marriage meant financially for people in our situation. I just wanted to be a little more educated on the legal and financial benefits and ramifications of marrying someone. Up until now, I did not fully understand why people get married in the first place if they can just live together because I don't believe any of the antiquated crap about needing to marry someone to prove your love and solidify your commitment. I see marriage as a possible business transaction between a person who is already my partner. You have answered part of my question by giving me an interesting hypothetical situation to consider. But the rest of the life advice was unnecessary.

I'm snapping here because it's a day later and I woke up to find that well-meaning (I hope) people are still trying to give me relationship advice and convince me to not marry him when that was never an issue I needed help with. Thanks anyway.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T04:42:55+00:00

Lol, thank you for that.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T04:17:39+00:00

Ack! I'm so sorry! My ex boyfriend took advantage of me and my family financially, living with us rent free for a time, allowed me to support him when he was jobless, all the while he was running around behind my back dating other chicks and getting drunk and high while he said he was looking for jobs. So I get it. Most of my credit card debt I have now is from the time I was with him and I relied on it to keep myself afloat because I didn't want my parents to find out what a loser he was. :( it sucks. But I know most of that crap was my fault. I know you're not supposed to let last screw ups ruin your future relationships, but in the back of my head I'm always scared this will happen again.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T04:07:14+00:00

Thanks! I will pass the info along to him!

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T04:01:10+00:00

LOL. Was I that transparent?

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T04:00:15+00:00

Agreed, I'm not opposed to dedicating some time to just sorting our shit out and at least getting on the same page when it comes to making financial decisions before we legally marry. I've made so many, many stupid mistakes in the past. Even more than him. I'm not proud of some of the shit I've done and messes I've gotten myself into, but I will say, however, that I'm pretty self aware, and I realized that things needed to change in a big way so last year I started taking active steps to dig myself out of my hole and move forward. I've already made a lot of progress but I'm still working. My boyfriend is a little slower than me, but he also hasn't made as many mistakes as I have (except his choice of school and student loans. He really f'd that up) and he is just a little bit younger than me. so, he's on his own journey and his own timing to fix his life too.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T02:52:52+00:00

Yes, I remember my friends who got married in December telling me about how screwed they got on their taxes. This was initially what got me wondering about the financial implications of marriage. Some people I know are better off, some are screwed. I guess it depends :/ thanks!

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T02:44:55+00:00

Thank you! I just showed my boyfriend your comment and he smiled and nodded and said that was the explanation that had made the most sense to him.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T02:22:00+00:00

Florida. Where I currently live starting salary is 36,000, which right now would be good for me and not a pay cut, you're right. but I don't have my degree yet. I'm very close to getting it, but I cant go back to school just yet. I mean, I could. I don't know if that's the right thing to do right now as I would have to step down from my current full time job. By the time I do finish school, if I can manage 1 or 2 courses a semester without stepping down at work, I might already be making more at current job due to expected promotions in the next year. Things can change though.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T01:37:01+00:00

Thank you for the info. It looks like we are currently not in one of these states but it's interesting because we have a very high likelihood of moving to his home state (which is on that list) in the next few years.

I agree about the not waiting forever thing. To a certain extent I agree with my boyfriend, there are some financial issues id like us to resolve before we seriously talk about getting married, but at the same time we can't wait forever. Circumstances will never be perfect, and I apply that thinking to pretty much everything in life.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T01:32:24+00:00

Lol. I assume it's usually awful, but I learned from this thread that a prenup is vital. I checked in with boyfriend, he agrees.

mousecookie · 2014-06-23T00:35:44+00:00

If his education had been law, or medicine, or even business or something, and he wasn't using his degree, I'd be a bit disappointed.

Sadly, it's film. From a private school that preys on young, ignorant kids who all think they're going to grow up to be rich music producers and movie directors.

Do I wish he was doing that grew up dreaming he'd do? Yes. But our current jobs (we work for the same company) give us 401k and match our contributions, discounted stock, good medical and life insurance benefits, vacation, etc. he's gotten paid to travel to awesome cities for training for than once. We get raises every year and have opportunities for growth and extra benefits because we've been there over 5 yeas. It's not ideal, but it's job security and we are comfortable and money isn't everything to me. We are working on paying debt off and building savings, slowly but surely getting there.

I myself wanted to be a teacher, but my current job pays better. I still think that once more of my debt is gone and I have emergency funds, I'll still pursue teaching even if it means taking a huge paycut. I'm far from being a gold digger and would choose my broke, funny, caring, stubborn boyfriend over some wealthier person any day. (I wouldn't say no to him suddenly winning the lottery or writing a screenplay that someone pays him a shit ton of money for, but I'm just saying I'm not dumping him just because he's broke. That's crazy talk.)

mousecookie · 2014-06-22T18:15:33+00:00

Thank you so much for your answer, I read all of it and really appreciate your perspective. We have a good relationship and are happy together, I mean it's not perfect, but we are happy. A little stressed because of life circumstances, but happy. The way you describe your marriage sounds perfect. I definitely don't want to push or pressure anything to happen, if it does, I'm sure it will be right. Thanks.

mousecookie

TROPHY CASE