The Road to Today-”A life Complete”
“Addiction of Instant Gratification”
In the spring of 2004 I found myself on my own once again. My divorce split my debt, as well as my savings in half. It was an amicable divorce. Though I was devastated with the discovery of my soon to be ex-wives’ relationship with someone I considered a friend, making the process filled with animosity and anger, it was not going to help the situation at all. I decided to let it go.
I found myself enjoying the single life. I was home in the evenings and relieved to not have to try and make small talk with someone I had nothing in common with. There were plenty of nights I found myself eating a dinner of cereal, because I wanted to.
Financially while there were effects of now being a one income household, I was not in the red, though I was not overrun with extra money. I put the customary 10% in savings each month. I paid my bills, and took my life one day at a time.
I never became a partier. I never went back to my old ways. I allowed myself the occasional wants, but generally concentrated on my needs. I was content.
Then in 2005 a life changing event happened. I met someone. She was very different from my ex-wife. We were almost exactly the same age, and talked for hours. I heart we both had the same dreams, the same aspirations, and the same moral fiber. The only sticking point was the fact that she had two children.
I was still in a place that made me unsure about dating a woman with children. But the more time I spent with them the more I felt that something I had always felt was missing wasn’t missing anymore. Time went on and we grew closer. The situation was made easier by the fact that the boys father wasn’t in the picture. They hadn’t seen him in a year, and neither was anxious to. We began to do things together, and function as if we were a family. She was successful at her job, and had a great head on her shoulders.
I was in love, deeper that ever before.
In February of 2006 I proposed. We had both had our “big” wedding, and decided we would cap out wedding cost at $3,000. The cash we had to spend. Also in order to make sure it would work for the children we rented a house that we got an incredibly good deal on and moved in together. In the moths prior to the wedding we saved for our honeymoon, which we paid cash for, and saved for a family vacation.
While we couldn’t pay cash up front, we utilized my timeshare as a trade keeping the lodging cost down. Me being the ever diligent budgeter we were able to pay it off within 60 days, which was acceptable by my standards.
We were married in a small ceremony in July of 2006. We had our family vacation, and readied ourselves for our new lives. We decided that the children who had been home-schooled would return to the public schools, and life was good.
Then September came, and everything changed.
More Tomorrow.
~Another Day