The Then and Now

In several of the early articles of this blog (such as here, here and here), I mentioned that my husband loves numbers, analytics and investing. And he’s very good at all three. He started educating himself on personal finances, the stock markets and investing while in his mid 20s, and he continues to do so each day. Even though he’s not a day trader, he follows the markets (and major headlines) daily and analyzes our investment portfolio performance against several market indices. We use Personal Capital to track our finances and net worth. You can read my comprehensive review of this free online financial tool here.

From the start of our relationship, he’s always been the one that spends more time taking care of our equities (stocks) and fixed income (bonds) investments. This is still true even after I had my transformative moment (you can read about my story here). Despite my accelerated learning of the stock markets and investing in the past year, he’s still the more knowledgeable one.

One thing that has been different in our relationship since that transformative moment is that nowadays I take a much more active role making investing decisions with my husband. I have a desire to learn from him (and many others) and continue to build my financial knowledge. Whereas before, I was glad to let him take care of all investments-related matters. Even when he tried to get me involved, I quickly dismissed his efforts.

Two People in a Relationship

Two people in a relationship don’t have to be both good at everything. My husband has his best suits and I bring my own. Can you imagine how exhausting any relationship would be if you’ve to be good at everything your significant other is good at and vice versa? There would be a lot of expectations and unnecessary repetitions.

During the past 7 years we’ve been married, I’ve learned that it’s important that both spouses need to be in-the-know and on the same page when it comes to everything financial related. Certainly, managing personal finances is just one aspect of a relationship. Yet, money somehow flows through almost everything we do in this household.

My husband and I have short money discussions almost daily. I might not know all the stock tickers in his traditional IRA or my Roth IRA like he does, but I am fully aware of our general investing strategies (such as our asset allocations) and which directions (financial-wise) we’re heading in the next 5 years or decade. And this might be all I need to know. I don’t need to him to summarize every finance article he reads. That would just be too much.

Likewise, on the things that I’m good at financially, I don’t need to share with him everything I do on a daily basis. I just share my general strategies with him and gives him a chance to understand why and how I do those things. If one day when I’m not around, my hope is that he would have the knowledge, skills and wisdom to take over what I do best.

In the section below, I share five ways I’m currently contributing to my household’s scoreboard. These actions and strategies might appear small (by monetary terms) in the beginning or on their own, however, they do add up to some amount of value over time. The five things I’m sharing below aren’t currently my husband’s forte. He has his own, as already mentioned. Together, he and I each do our part to continue to build our scoreboard (net worth). We’re stronger together.

Five Ways I’m Currently Contributing to My Household’s Scoreboard

Handwashing laundry: As Ruby is a growing child, we don’t have much clothes for her to rotate. When I was working, it was easy to just throw all the dirty clothes into the washer and dryer and wait, even when there wasn’t enough for a full load. The thing about using a washer and dryer to do laundry is that both water and electricity get used. When I hand wash clothes (mostly Ruby’s small clothes and my delicates), I only use water and my time. I also enjoy using the drying rack to air-dry our clothes. Nowadays, I feel no pressure to buy my daughter more clothes just so I don’t feel guilty running a half-full washer. I just hand wash her clothes every four to five days.

Cooking meals at home: When I was working, dinner didn’t seem that important. It didn’t matter how easy my day was at work, once I arrived home all I wanted to do was rest and spend time with Ruby. My husband and I also tried to squeeze some exercises in every other evening. Nowadays, with me at home, we try to make dinner happen by 6 p.m. so that we can go to the gym at 8:30 p.m. and exercise for 45 minutes every day. When I was working, I also looked forward to dining out much more. As we were pressed for time in the evenings, cooking a nice, complete meal was rare. Nowadays, I have a lot more time to prepare ingredients and cook more complete, delicious, and healthy meals. And I rarely want to go out to eat. Most of the restaurants that I used to like to go to seem to disappoint nowadays that we’re having much better dishes at home. On average, I see us going out for one meal per month (plus the occasional dining out gatherings with friends and other family members). This saves us at least $150 per month.

Teaching my daughter Mandarin: Immersion preschools/programs are expensive, averaging anywhere between $1,500 to $2,500 per month (full-time). As it’s very important for both my husband and I that Ruby become fluent speaking Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), sending her to a day care where only English is spoken is out of the question. By being Ruby’s Mandarin teacher, I help my family save a lot of money every month. Eventually, my husband and I plan to send Ruby to day care three days per week just so she would have more opportunities to be around more kids around her age. And the rest of the time at home we would teach her Mandarin and speak Mandarin with her (my husband is also trying to learn what Ruby is learning from me).

Shopping on Craigslist: There aren’t that many things we need/want. When we do want something nowadays, I look to Craigslist first. I’m pretty health conscious, and being such, I’m picky with what I deem okay buying/using second hand. Once a while, I’ll get lucky and something I want shows up on Craigslist. This takes patience and time. It’s great that I’ve the luxury of doing this. In the past few months, we’ve bought the following items off Craigslist that were in pristine condition: Crate & Barrel picnic basket, Google Chromecast, TV stand, an office chair and desk and Ruby’s bike.

Shopping at grocery stores to take advantage of double discounts: A couple of the grocery stores we shop at have double coupons every Wednesday (where customers can shop discounted/on sale items from both the current week and the previous week). When I was working, trying to make it to those stores on a Wednesday was always a challenge. Nowadays, I go every week to fill up our pantry and refrigerator/freezer.

How’s the division of labor like in your household?

Which area(s) in your life would you like to devote more time to if you aren’t working?

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