Merger Announcement

Hey everybody, this is Dave, here to make an announcement: We're Joining Forces.

Yeah, I know we're already married and all (although Jessica's technically still a Raychek - perhaps more on that in another post), but I've realized that I post way too sporadically to actually keep up a blog on its own. So I'm joining this one as a contributor, womany blog decorations and all.

I thought I'd do my first post about my dear, lovely wife. Many of you have witnessed her trials first-hand (or blog-hand) as the wife of a debt-weary husband -- the budgets (Ah!), the bills (Boo!) and everything in between. It's true -- I hate making payments to The Man (or Men, as in CitiBank and Sallie Mae mostly. Perhaps they're The Women instead? Discuss.) instead of to my retirement account or for a new car or some other fun thing.

So we've got a Big Budget (the master spreadsheet that gazes over our entire debt-ridden domain with worksheets, formulas and charts), and then we have a Baby/House Budget (for our transition into a house 1/3 the size of our current one, and the addition of one tentatively-named Annelise -- yes, I like it with an "e"). This, my friends (well, mostly Jessica's friends), is where my wife has shined.

When we started talking about baby stuff and house things, I put a stake in the ground that we were paying cash for our stuff, and we weren't going to dip into emergency funds either.

Jessica asked how much money that left for our budget; I sheepishly answered, "$X." I didn't actually say "X," I said an amount, but you catch my drift.

Jessica was laying on the couch, and the look on her face was as if I had just eaten Pixie's head.

It was soon clear that she was expecting "$5X" at least for this project, and that was if we went Swiss Family Robinson on the place and used emus as dishwashers or something. She was silent for the better part of the evening, morosely poking around "Free Stuff" on Craigslist as if "X" were the same as our couch cushion change. I felt bad, but what can you do? You have what you have.

But then, my pregnant, semi-morning-sick wife rallied. She flipped a switch. The gong went off. She started scouring the furniture pages of Craigslist and found an apartment stager selling off her Pottery Barn furniture that had never been used. Sold! She found a never-used armoire being sold for 1/4 its original price. Done! She held up an 18-wheeler carrying kitchen appliances and scored us some sweet stuff (well, no...). And before we knew it, our "X" didn't look so small anymore and we even bought her dream chandelier NEW from a website.

So here's to my dear wife who swept the proverbial leg of our budget and walked away with the All-Valley trophy in hand. Nice work, my love.