The World According to Angela

I was 50 and he was 52.  It was love at first bifocal.

Yes, my Newlywed at 50 (N@50) posts are back!  I had to stop posting for a while because things were getting a bit too personal.  In telling the story of my first marriage at age 50 I found myself telling other people’s stories as well.  That’s what happens when your husband has an ex-wife and children and you are much too close to your mother and brother.  Well, I realized that some stories were not mine to tell and it was too difficult to figure out what not to write.  That all changed when my husband and I saw his cousin and her daughters on Jerry Springer.  Yes, Jerry Springer, and even though there is a youtube video of the segment I refuse to link to it.  Let’s just say my blog posts don’t come anywhere close to what we saw on Jerry Springer so N@5o is back on.

Another reason that N@50 is back on is because my husband and I celebrate our second anniversary next week.  Yes, that means I’m now 52, but don’t tell anybody.  We’ve had a year of celebrations and challenges.  While I couldn’t share them with you while we were experiencing them, I look forward to sharing them with you now.

In my first post of the re-started series, which will be up on October 20, I write about how my husband earned his hero status during the first year of our marriage.  Stay tuned!

You can catch up on the original N@50 posts HERE.

Insurance and taxes. Yes, I’m going there.

In a lot of ways, marriage is not a financial winner. In terms of insurance and taxes, I think, you lose more than you gain.

In our case, our combined health insurance premiums have gone from about $210/month to $360/month. We now pay the family rate, which is the same rate that a couple with children (any number of children) would pay. I don’t really complain about this because I understand that with insurance risk is shared so some families subsidize others. We took the $150/month hit in stride.

Then there are taxes. We’re doing ours now. We’re going to take a hit here, too. It doesn’t matter if we file jointly or separately. We still take a hit.

There are some people who figure out this penalty and decide that marriage is costly. As I understand, there are quite a few folks forgo the bonds of holy matrimony because of the cost.

Marriage is a legal bond and spiritual bond. The legal bond seems to have more value for younger folks. I encourage marriage on legal grounds to everybody know who is in child-bearing age or who has children. You need the legal protections that come with marriage. These protections lessen as you get older, but they’re still of some benefit.

Marriage as a spiritual bond is something totally different. It really does make you one. The other day hubby thought he overheard me telling someone something negative about him. Of course, I wasn’t. I explained to him that doing something like that would be crazy. Talking him down would be talking myself down. It makes no sense and it’s something I would never do. He understood and apologized for even thinking it. Of course, I graciously accepted.

That said, there are some folks who think that putting down a spouse makes them look bigger. It doesn’t. Even before I married that kind of talk disturbed me. You’re married to him/her. You sleep with him/her. You have a life and maybe kids together. So what’s with the putdowns? If he/she is that bad, what does it say about you?

As women, we tend to share stories about our spouses with our close girlfriends. Well, some of us go too far. I had a girlfriend whose spouse I could barely stand to look at. Why? Because she had told me all the awful things he had done in the marriage. I’ve learned not too listen too closely to those stories because a lot of times they’re exaggerated.  What happens is that she forgives him and I’m still angry at him.  At some point, I also become angry with her because she’s still with him.

I’m not saying that we have to pretend that our husbands are perfect.  But there is a way to lovingly tell a story about your man without dragging him and you through the mud.  And if there are negative things  we need to say, we need to learn to say them to him and not to somebody else about him. Then there are the serious cases where we need help and we need to get it and not be ashamed to tell the truth of what’s going on in our home.

My husband has figured out that I tell my mom everything.  And it’s about the same with my brother.  It’s just something I’ve always done.  Now that he’s in my life I end up telling his business right along with mine.  It’s not like I do it behind his back or with malicious intent.  I just tell my mom and brother what’s going one with us.   I do this on the phone with him in the room.  We are learning to deal with this.  I’m learning that I don’t have to tell everything.  And he’s learning that I’m going to tell some things just out of habit.  We’re a work in progress.

Yes, this post started with insurance and taxes.  How do you like the way it ended?

We like to cruise. Does that mean we’re an “old” 50? Sometimes I think we are.

Regardless, we just booked our annual Carnival cruise. Telling you that it’s a Carnival cruise tells you what kind of cruisers we are.

We cruise during that low season, between the week after Labor Day and the week before Christmas. We have a strict budget. Our limit is $200/day, including tips. So for a 5-day cruise, the most we’re going to pay is $1000 for the two of us. That’s for a stateroom with a balcony and includes $100 ($20/day) for tips.

We usually wait as late as we can to book, looking for a price drop. We learned our lesson last year when the price went up instead of down so we booked early this year. We’re doing an 8-day Southern Caribbean and we’re within our price window, including tips AND cruise terminal parking. Not bad at all.

A colleague of mine regularly does the Tom Joyner cruise. He paid over $4000 for the trip. I’m hoping that’s for him and his wife but I’m thinking that was per person since he said they had either a suite or a balcony. I almost fainted. That’s a lot of money. He reminded me that a portion of the cost was tax-deductible because it goes to the Tom Joyner Foundation to fund college scholarships. He also said he had a great time so the cruise was worth the cost. I just nodded. By the way, Royal Caribbean calls this year’s cruise an 8-day cruise. Carnival would call it a 7-day cruise since you really come back home on the 8th day.

On our last cruise, we met a couple at one of the tourist sites in Mexico. It was supposed to be a Mayan ruin but I think it was a tourist trap. Anyway, back to this couple. We were sitting (of course) at a bench along one of the paths when they joined us. They were on Royal Caribbean. The wife proceeded to tell us how much better Royal Caribbean was than Carnival and encouraged us to cruise Royal next time. They were on a 6-day cruise and we were on a 5-day cruise; we both had a balcony. Guess what? We cruised on Carnival for less than half the price they paid on Royal. Their eyes widened when they learned that and I got the feeling they’d be checking out Carnival next time.

Price aside, cruising works for us because it cuts down on the decision-making. We don’t have to decide which restaurant to go to or which show to see. We just go. And the variety of activities is so great that we each get to do things we want to do. We also like that they make up our beds twice a day. I know this is a small thing but it’s nice have a freshly made bed in the morning and right before bed, especially if you take a nap during the day the way we do. We also don’t have to cook. Food is always available, which is good and bad.

We also like the different cruise destinations. On our last cruise, which was out of New Orleans, we visited Cozumel and Progresso, Mexico. On our upcoming cruise, we’ll be leaving from Ft. Lauderdale and going to St. Maarten, St. Lucia and St. Kitts. We want to do a South American cruise sometime in the future. Those are about 15-days one way so we have to figure out how to do it.

There are some downsides to cruising. People can be rude. Children can be rowdy. And some people drink too much. That said, a cruise is what you make it. We haven’t had much interaction with the rude, the rowdy or the drunk. You can have a good time on a cruise or you can have a bad time. It’s really up to you.

Does anyone else like to cruise?

Before my hubby was my hubby, we had the “money” discussion. It wasn’t a difficult discussion to have, but it was a difficult one to schedule. We both knew we needed to do it, but we kept putting it off.

In preparation for this talk, we agreed that we would each pull our credit report and share it with the other person. Talk about feeling naked! When you start looking at your life in terms of those 20+ pages from Equifax it’s a bit unsettling. Once the credit reports were printed, we had to share them. Then we had to look at them. All that took a couple of months!

Once we finally sat down for the talk, things went smoothly. Given that we are both older, we each had made long-term financial commitments to others in our families. He had obligations to his children and I had obligations to my parents. We discussed those and what they would mean to us and our financial future. It wasn’t a painful discussion at all.

Because of that discussion, we were able to plan our budget and individual contributions before we were married. We share expenses but we both keep our individual financial accounts. This has worked out well.

We don’t have his and her money when we vacation; we have vacation money. That led to an interesting “encounter” (I don’t want to call it an argument) during our last vacation. I’ll have to tell you about that in another post.

So did you have the “money” talk before you married? If so, how did it go? If you didn’t have it, do you wish you had?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of my Newlywed at 50 posts. I admit that I haven’t posted because I was a bit embarrassed by the incident that I needed to share. Well, today I take the leap and tell the story.

Confession: I’m a 50-year old married woman but sometimes I act like a high school teenager.

There I’ve said it. Guess what caused this bit of insight?

Recently George went on a 10-day out-of-town trip, our first separation since our marriage. Guess what I learned from that trip? It’s good have mutual expectations for calling. You can see where this is going, right? I told you it was high school.

Anyway, the first day he was away, I would guess he called me about one hundred times. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but he did call a lot. A whole lot. At one point, I might have asked, “Why are you calling?” I didn’t add “so much” but I was thinking it.

Well, the next day he called about 4 or 5 times. Guess what? I started wondering why he wasn’t calling me more often. I told you it was high school. The good news is I didn’t comment on this to him.

The next day I had to call him! Now I’m getting angry. Can’t the man pick up the phone?

The next day he called so early he woke me up. What was my first thought? Why is he calling so early?

Lesson learned: He can’t win when it comes to calling me when he’s away because I can’t be satisfied.

Had anyone told me I’d be this silly at this age, I would not have believed them. Somebody please tell me they’ve been just as silly.