Milestones

I'm in Belgium this week, at a week-long Dutch language course. (Half of Belgium speaks Flemmish, which is just a dialect of the Dutch they speak in the Netherlands).

June 1st (yesterday), was Spender's and my five year anniversary. We now know each other better than we've ever known anyone else, though there are still occasionally surprises. We're still complete opposites in almost every way, but now are differences are much more likely to make us crack up laughing than cause a fight.

I still am working on the the balance of where to accept that we'll always be worlds apart (i.e., Spender loves to go out and hang out with friends all night, I like to go to bed around 10:30) and where try to bring us closer together. To be clear, I know Spender is not going to change much of anything just because I want him to. But by setting a good example and being supportive and showing him the benefits of certain lifestyle choices (not to mention working out the math of paying only minimum payments) I do think Spender may eventually become Not-such-a-Spender or even A-little-bit-of-a-Saver. (In Dutch that would be Saverje).

Not related to our anniversary, we decided we would have a new focus on having a budget and saving money. Going forward, we are tracking every penny. We set up a spreadsheet on google docs to keep track of spending and budgeting. I had made a fairly fancy-schmancy one in excel, but that could only live on my laptop. Instead, I've now made a much simpler version that lives online in google spreadsheets. This was Spender can not only update it with his spending every night, he can also see the status of the budget whenever he wants. If I can figure out a way to make sure it stays anonymous, I'll even post it for everyone to see.