Conversation with My Wife (48)
To anyone wondering about the construction gear in our back yard, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Since the mid-80s, I’ve been setting aside $100/month into an emergency fund*. Occasionally I’d drop some extra bucks in, but the idea was to have an (almost) untouchable block of money that would be available for unforeseen circumstances.** We only hit it up hard once, when our mortgage got sold to a sleezebag operation with a very bad rep, and we paid off the last few years of the loan rather than deal with them; we treated the withdrawal as a “loan to ourselves” and paid it back. But primarily it was there (mutual decision) in case Deb’s dad*** and mom needed it in their final days — which it turns out they didn’t, very much.
My original plan (that we maintained when Deb and I first married) was if we made it all the way to retirement with no emergency, the emergency fund would be rolled into the retirement fund category. Well… we aren’t “retirement” age yet, but both of us can now withdraw from our IRAs and 401Ks with no penalty, and Deb could start drawing early Social Security if she wanted (we don’t!).
So we were thinking… what exactly do we want to do in our retirement? What do we enjoy? There’s traveling (already budgeted). But also just sitting on our back deck and chilling in our back yard. This lead to our new 4-season porch in back to replace our tired deck + awning.
DEB: So we’re spending our retirement money on home improvements? Seriously?
ME: No, we’re investing our retirement money in something we will enjoy in our retirement. Only we get to start to enjoy it now.
DEB: I can live with that, honey!
However, our back yard was nice, but… overgrown. Not the lawn part, just the back bank, which was beautifully symmetrically arranged with flowers and bushes that complemented each other—20 years ago, by the previous owner. Nowadays, I can’t keep up with the weeding by myself,**** some bushes died while others grew out of control, trees that couldn’t get a firm footing in clay soil on a hill started toppling in storms… We needed Professional Help.
So we hired a landscaper. Last year. Who talked to us, came up with sketches, took lots of notes, and didn’t get started before winter weather moved in. Or before spring sprung. But we came back from vacation to a back yard that looked like this:
ME: So we’re coming along!
DEB: Okay, I’m finally starting to get excited about all this. Aren’t you excited, Jackster?
ME: Um, sure, honey. I’ll be more excited when our backyard actually starts to look like the sketch Zach showed us. Only in 3D and with more color.
DEB: This is so cool!
ME: Hey, do you think they leave the keys in the equipment?
DEB: No. Definitely not.
ME: Because of the liability?
DEB: (pause) Yes. Liability. I was thinking that.
*Sometimes goes by a different name these days, abbreviated FOF.
**So Nicole Dieker, are you proud of me? (Little bit?) [Nicole does a money column on Medium. It’s good. You should read it.]
***Retired pastor. Nice steady pension, health benefits that didn’t suck by 1990’s standards and were frakin’ awesome by post-ACA standards, but no equity in anything and no savings that wouldn’t get chewed through in two months in assisted living. Then Dad died, and Mom had all that plus a smaller pension, so we helped her out a little.
****Deb originally helped in the yard. Then something started growing back there that would make her break out in horrific dermatitis—rashes, open sores, itching like you wouldn’t believe—so she was banned from yard work. I, fortunately, was genetically gifted with a complete immunity from poison ivy, poison oak, you name it, nothing touched me.
Hey, did you know our body’s allergies change as we get older? Yep. So more and more each summer I was getting rashes, open sores, itching like you wouldn’t believe…*****
*****I did NOT make fun of my wife when she had her skin afflictions, it was age, NOT karma! Shut up.
