Not My Job

To make life a little easier, in our house we have divided up the various to-do responsibilities. For example:

• Food – my job
• Finances – Kelly’s job
• Shopping – my job
• Insurance and Taxes – Kelly’s job
• Laundry – my job
• Ironing – Kelly’s job
• Birthday cards – my job
• Mavericks ticket sales – Kelly’s job

And so on. It’s not that either of us is unable to do the other’s job, we’ve just found that it’s faster and easier if one of us has primary responsibility.

The day before Kelly left for X, we sat down so I could learn how to maintain the Hayley family finances. It was an exciting time for Kelly…and a laborious one for me. I took copious notes, hoping and praying I wouldn’t mess things up.

• Enter detail on this spreadsheet.
• Enter detail in Quicken.
• Download from the bank’s website.
• Don’t forget the password or our secret confirmation picture!
• File receipts here.
• Make sure to write in the checkbook register.
• Keep an eye on the account balance!

Ugh.

Wednesday evening, several hours after Kelly left, I sat down to make my first attempt at the finances. I wrote checks for various beginning-of-the-month things (watch repair, dinner party reservation, contractor’s first draw on the house, etc) and carefully followed my notes to enter everything into our finance files.

Success! The balance tied correctly. All was well – no problem to keep this up until Kelly returns.

And then Thursday came along and I had a surprise call from Kelly. He was still in route to X and was able to get a call through to me.

We talked about several things, mostly about how much we already missed each other, then I decided to share my happy finance news with him.