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" Ben and I had our first big talk about money last night.  It started with this statement, from Ben: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think we should spend more than $10,000 on the wedding.&amp;quot; This is a thing I&amp;#039;ve noticed that Ben does. He arbitrarily decides how much money he wants to spend on something, be it a hotel room or a pair of jeans, and then stubbornly holds onto that number. He does this without having any idea of how much things in that vein should cost. It&amp;#039;s not that he&amp;#039;s cheap, either, because he&amp;#039;s not. He just has very strange notions about money in a couple of very specific ways. &amp;quot;Well, Jenna said we should probably be thinking more along the lines of $20,000,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Yeah, but she&amp;#039;s an event planner. She&amp;#039;s used to big, fancy parties with lots of bells and whistles that we don&amp;#039;t need.&amp;quot; I want bells, I thought. Whistles, too. &amp;quot;I told her we&amp;#039;re on a budget,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;But we need to figure out what that budget is.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;$10,000.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Ben!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t even decided how many people we want to invite. How can you possibly know what&amp;#039;s a realistic estimate when we&amp;#039;ve done no research?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How about 100 people?&amp;quot; I sighed. &amp;quot;Ben, we need to sit down and make a list of everyone we&amp;#039;re obligated to invite, everyone we want to invite, and everyone we&amp;#039;d invite if money weren&amp;#039;t an option. Then we have to figure out where we want to get married, and see what the average cost per head for a wedding reception is in that area. Then, and only then, can we come up with a realistic budget.&amp;quot; We spent the next hour going through our finances. When we got to the debt portion, we realized that we both had large outstanding bills\u2014student loans for me, and surgery bills for him\u2014that we were paying down monthly, with interest, even though we each had more than enough in savings to pay them off. &amp;quot;I think we&amp;#039;re both money hoarders,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;We throw everything into savings, even though we could probably put it to better use elsewhere.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;At least our kids won&amp;#039;t have to worry about paying for college,&amp;quot; he said with a grin. After doing some math, we realized that while we couldn&amp;#039;t afford to both close out our bills and pay for a wedding, we could double up on our monthly payments, and pay off everything within a year, year and a half, max. &amp;quot;My dad said he was going to give us money,&amp;quot; Ben said. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s for a house or condo.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We couldn&amp;#039;t use that for the wedding?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Well, he said we could do whatever we want with it, but I don&amp;#039;t want to use it for the wedding.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;But once we set up our joint account, doesn&amp;#039;t all the money in it just sort of become the same money?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t really think of it that way.&amp;quot; Hmm. On the bright side, Ben is 1) employed, 2) well-compensated, and 3) good at saving money. On the not-so-bright side, he is so weird about spending money. Having the wedding of my dreams might prove harder than I initially thought it would be. Posted at 9:01 AM "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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