One day last September, I spent my lunch hour looking at bills?and spiralling into a catastrophic mood when I realized we wouldn?t have enough left over to pay down the line of credit we?d taken out to cover daycare. After work, I came home to our junior kindergartner screaming insults at my wife, who hadn?t slept well the night before. Dinner was a disaster?how dare I put sauce on his pasta!?and once we put the world?s smallest food critic down to sleep, we collapsed onto the couch, and I let loose my worries.
?We?ll never be out of debt,? I said. ?We have to change the way we do things.?
My wife was silently staring at her phone, so I peeked over to discover she was shopping for a new living room armchair. I snapped, accusing her of not caring about our finances, which led to her striking back that I let my overblown worries get me so down that I never do anything about the situation anyway. We both became defensive, ramping up the volume until it wasn?t possible to continue. Later, as we got into bed, we agreed, as we often do after these fights, that we shouldn?t be so hard on each other. As new parents, our financial reality was nerve-racking, to say the least. For the first four years of our son?s life, our expenses skyrocketed?bigger apartment, first car, diapers and daycare?while our income was dramatically reduced by an extended parental leave, my wife finishing graduate school and my lack of energy to take on the side gigs I used to do in addition to my day job.