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Wow.
This is _very_ relevant to the mjohnson household.
For the mjohnson household, money gives the freedom not to worry.
My wife was raised by a single mom on an extremely tight budget. Tight as in mom/three kids in a 700 ft^2 house, secondhand clothes and huge debts. She paid her own way through college with track/x-country scholarships and multiple part time jobs while graduating with a BS in chemical engineering (150+ credits) in 4 years.
I'm a middle-class kid, raised in a 1-professional household. I got pretty much whatever I wanted as long as I didn't want much and as long as I was willing to wait/save/earn.
We got married while we were finishing our MS degrees. We both got decent jobs and have progressed OK in our careers.
Thank goodness I married a sensible frugal woman with little interest in luxury or desire to keep up with anyone. We earn in 2 months what her mom did in a year yet our newest car is 9 years old and we live in a 55 year old government-built house worth barely more than we make in a year.
To us, the money we make is a buffer/security blanket from the uncertainties of life. Money is freedom from worrying about handling a kilobuck auto repair or the sudden death of our furnace - two things that would have absolutely ruined my mother in law's financial life.
Speaking of Mrs mjohnson, she is as of last weekend Dr Mrs mjohnson. At graduation, our meeting up with her faculty (my old advisors as well) and our friends that stayed in the Denver area made us recall our earlier days as graduate students (the first time around). Are we, as two decently paid professionals, really living 5 times better than we were in grad school 10 years ago with our meager stipends? Of course not.
Here's the dilemma: I'd love to go back for my PhD but our employer may not be willing to keep me on as a fully supported (at my current salary) grad student. I'm therefore considering quitting my job and becoming just a student. By the numbers her current income and my potential stipend would cover our "fixed" costs easily. While the numbers say so, I'm nervous about losing the freedom that our very positive cash flow brings. Rationally I know that we can handle it but still its sketchy. For us the downside of having money is that our risk-adverse nature makes us not want to potentially lose it. Thinking about it, it won't be a problem, but when it comes to money rational thought doesn't always come easily.
Yes, it is all quite silly this money stuff once you have enough for food and shelter. In school we dreamt of being where we are now yet this isn't exactly a dream. I'm sure people out there that use other orders of magnitude to describe their fiscal lives feel the same way.
meh!
mike
'78SC
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