{"id":325,"date":"2013-03-04T22:57:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T03:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/?p=325"},"modified":"2013-03-04T22:57:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T03:57:06","slug":"unbalanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/","title":{"rendered":"Unbalanced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"Tonight I started on my 2012 taxes.\u00a0 You might think I\u2019m so responsible\u2014after all I\u2019m over a month ahead of deadline!\u00a0 Butthis year, I\u2019ve hit the natural consequences of not keeping on top of our finances\u2014and I may be lucky to turn in our taxes on time.<\/p>\n

For the first 8 years of our marriage, Scott took care of all the money\u2014paid the bills, balanced our checkbook, took care of our taxes\u2014and I was completely happy with that arrangement.\u00a0 After all, I figured he was the one who majored in engineering.\u00a0 I stopped taking math after my senior year in high school.\u00a0 Surely divvying up tasks within each person\u2019s giftedness was wise and prudent.<\/p>\n

But after blissfully enjoying Scott\u2019s money management for 8 years, he announced that it was my turn to take over the money.\u00a0 He said I should manage the money because I care more about spending, I\u2019m way more frugal, and given that the portion I contribute to our family income kept shrinking in proportion to his, he thought I would feel more empowered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s power if I control the spending\u2014paying bills is just scut work,\u201d I bitterly replied.<\/p>\n

But despite all my arguments, somehow the money management landed on my shoulders anyway.\u00a0 And I did pretty OK for many years.\u00a0 I rarely forgot to pay a bill.\u00a0 I got our taxes in on time and my pake<\/em> Chinese nature eked out every dime in tax return it could find. (click here to read about what pake<\/em> means and to also see an excellent recipe for mango lassis<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Then Microsoft discontinued supporting MS Money, and with the demise of that program which I had learned to master, came the steady erosion of my financial management skills.\u00a0 I switched to Quicken but somehow never got our accounts to balance.\u00a0 Then I switched to Mint.com.\u00a0 But using 2 different money management programs just didn\u2019t work very well.<\/p>\n

So over a year ago, I kind of gave up.\u00a0 I periodically downloaded information to both Quicken and Mint, but I stopped categorizing things, especially my checks.\u00a0 Then to make matters worse, because I wasn\u2019t keeping track of checks, I somehow re-ordered checks with the same numbers just used.\u00a0 But because I didn\u2019t make the time to figure out what got used and what didn\u2019t, I now have months on end where checks with the same number have been written within months of each other.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, I\u2019ve had a gentle foreboding that this could be bad. \u00a0After all, responsible adults keep track of their finances\u2013right? \u00a0But I just couldn\u2019t face it so I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We tell our kids how there are natural consequences for bad behavior. \u00a0Tonight I face those natural consequences. \u00a0Thank God online banking means I\u2019ve paid most of our bills and given most of our charitable contributions away\u2014although I did just realize I forgot to give our March and May gifts to our church.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve spent the last several hours going through check statements and updating them in both Quicken and Mint because I can\u2019t decide which one I\u2019ll ultimately use.\u00a0 I\u2019m up to February 2012.<\/p>\n

Just a year to go. . .<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight I started on my 2012 taxes.\u00a0 You might think I\u2019m so responsible\u2014after all I\u2019m over a month ahead of deadline!\u00a0 Butthis year, I\u2019ve hit the natural consequences of not keeping on top of our finances\u2014and I may be lucky to turn in our taxes on time. For the first 8 years of our marriage, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,17],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-money-management","tag-taxes-2013"],"yoast_head":"\nUnbalanced<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Tonight I started on my 2012 taxes.\u00a0 You might think I\u2019m so responsible\u2014after all I\u2019m over a month ahead of deadline!\u00a0 Butthis year, I\u2019ve hit the natural\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unbalanced\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tonight I started on my 2012 taxes.\u00a0 You might think I\u2019m so responsible\u2014after all I\u2019m over a month ahead of deadline!\u00a0 Butthis year, I\u2019ve hit the natural\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Wordy Nerdy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-03-05T03:57:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.smartgivers.org\/uploads\/j0316868_4.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kathy Tuan-Maclean\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kathy Tuan-Maclean\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/\",\"name\":\"Unbalanced\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-05T03:57:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-05T03:57:06+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/#\/schema\/person\/23e53cd002ff6883e366c69cffd3d3f0\"},\"description\":\"Tonight I started on my 2012 taxes.\u00a0 You might think I\u2019m so responsible\u2014after all I\u2019m over a month ahead of deadline!\u00a0 Butthis year, I\u2019ve hit the natural\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2013\/03\/unbalanced\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Unbalanced\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/\",\"name\":\"Wordy Nerdy\",\"description\":\"Musings on faith, motherhood and thriving in our multi-cultural modern world\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/#\/schema\/person\/23e53cd002ff6883e366c69cffd3d3f0\",\"name\":\"Kathy Tuan-Maclean\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e59901f3c782954c3787365f4eda7acc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/e59901f3c782954c3787365f4eda7acc?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kathy Tuan-Maclean\"},\"description\":\"Kathy Tuan-MacLean is the mother of 2 teens, 1 \u201ctween\u201d and wife to one husband. 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