My wife and I were married 44 years ago today. She is just as amazing and patient today as she was when we were dating in college. Neither of us had any money when we graduated. I was debt free, except for my car loan on a very used oil drinking Toyota Celica. She had twelve hundred dollars of student loan debt, that was still less than $4,000 in today’s dollars, so not much at all.
I graduated a semester before her, and she wouldn’t get married until she got her degree because one of her sisters had done that and never finished college. She had promised her parents she would wait until she had the degree which meant we would be apart the last few months of our engagement. This was back when unmarried people living together was very rare, and we were even more straight laced than most. I took a job clear across our state from her and for a semester we were engaged while five hours away from each other by car. When she would come to see me she stayed with the plant nurse who had “adopted” us and who made sure we behaved. When I went to see her at college her two roommates performed the same function. We are all still good friends these many decades later.
After that last semester she graduated, we married and moved into an apartment and then a trailer for the first year and a half. I was making great money at the time, $18,000 a year. Sounds ridiculous now but in today’s dollars that is equivalent to an $80,000 starting salary. She picked up a job at the county extension office and then later became a junior high school teacher. Our starting combined income was over $100K in today’s dollars which would be outstanding, even today. And this was in a small Arkansas town where rent was maybe $150-$200 for a decent apartment. We decided after renting for awhile to buy a used mobile home/trailer until we saved up a down payment and then we’d sell it and get back all our “rent”. I received a small inheritance from my grandmother and we found a small house just outside of the city limits mostly in the woods. We bought it with a 5% down payment and an 8.75% thirty year mortgage. We qualified for a government subsidized loan, a normal mortgage had a ten percent interest rate back in those days of high inflation! How high was inflation? CD’s were paying double digit interest rates. What we are seeing right now would have been considered moderate at the most.
The house was a four bedroom two bathroom 1,440 square foot single story on one acre. Our house payments with taxes and insurance included were $300. Later when we doubled the size of the house to get some space for three kids we refinanced to a ten year loan at the unbelievably low interest rate of 6%. I think our payment jumped to maybe $600? In any event we paid that off in maybe four or five years and never had a single debt after that. Other than that first wreck of a car I bought we paid cash for all our vehicles and everything else we purchased. We never ran a balance on a credit card, except I think there was one time when a statement got lost in the mail, so technically I guess we did that one time. I maxed out every single retirement savings vehicle at work or offered outside of work. There were no IRA’s or 401K’s for the first ten years of our careers. She had a teacher pension program and I had this crazy good company savings plan where you could invest up to twelve percent of your pre tax pay and the company matched it 100%. You could also withdraw it after you were vested with no penalties except you had to pay the taxes. It was a big amount of free money and I’ll never forget shaking my head in wonder at one of my fellow engineers who said he “couldn’t afford” to contribute, and then went out and bought an expensive sports car.
We started having kids and my wife elected to become a stay at home parent. My next raise was equivalent to her entire paycheck so we never felt the loss of income. She was and is the consummate domestic engineer and manager and I believe she worked much harder than I did with a focus on raising our children and managing our budget. We were a great team and each contributed to the others success in life. I am certain her skillful parenting was the main reason we never had to spend any money on our kids’ college. Even though we were in the two comma club by then our three kids each obtained free rides through scholarships to the state U. Two became engineering graduates and one obtained a business degree. They all went on to pay for their own graduate degrees.
My career went well as I rose from an entry level position to running the company. I had bosses but I was the highest level corporate officer in my state and was not closely supervised. It was a lot of fun, I always felt over paid and highly appreciated. Our company changed hands twice going from being owned by a Fortune 500 publicly traded corporation to being owned by a wealthy family back to another set of publicly traded megacorp overlords. I thrived in both worlds and found things to appreciate in both. Eventually I retired, six years ago. My wife never rejoined the work force so we are both retired going on seven years now. We have a lot of active hobbies including running, tennis, pickleball, fishing, hiking, off roading, skiing and travel. Our kids are scattered so some of our travel is to meet them at vacation spots. We used to have outdoor pets but did not replace the last three when they passed on. We just prefer to be able to travel on no notice and don’t feel the rewards of pet ownership offsets the hassles.
I know all these details about our lives are probably of minor interest to you, but that’s OK. This blog has no ads, no affiliate marketing, no SEO and purely amateur content because it’s just for me to express my thoughts. I guess it’s my form of journaling. Plus I do believe my spouse and I have done a lot of things right over the course of our marriage. We stayed out of debt. Lived well below our means. Yet we still lived rich lives centered around family and friends and active recreational hobbies. This is a much different world than the one we navigated, yet some things don’t change a lot over time. If you choose the right person to partner with, make growing that relationship a priority, determine to serve them above being served by them, spend less than you make, make more income each year, develop some side hustles to take into retirement, well, all those things still make sense I think.
If you’ve read this far, wow, you are a focused individual, and maybe as patient and long-suffering as my wife!
What about you, do you think marriage for decades is still a reasonable prospect or is marriage even relevant in today’s world?
Do you think today’s world is harder to succeed in than my Boomer past life was?
Are single earner families even possible in today’s economy with housing costs and inflation so high?
As usual, if you don’t see a comment box, just click on the title of the post.
Congrats on the anniversary! I’m coming up on 26 years of marriage next month. No one in my family (siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins) are divorced (a couple never married) so IMO, family influences and good role models have something to do with with lasting marriages.
I have a kid graduating from HS in 2023 and likely going into a STEM field as a career. I think there are more opportunities in tech today than in my day. The world is different today than my generation but with careful planning, guidance and self-understanding, there are plenty of ways for hard-working and motivated individuals to succeed. IMO, in this great country, every generation in recent history has their fair share of advantages and disadvantages so it all evens out.
Hey Phillip, you know, nobody on my side of the family was ever divorced either except for a niece. Pretty much the same on my wife’s side. I believe that’s a a big part of making marriage work when you don’t think of divorce as even being an option. If it isn’t an option then you just don’t have any other choice but to make the marriage work. Good point on opportunity, it has always been there in this country and still is. And a STEM degree is a great start for a young adult.
Congrats on 44 years.
We just passed 24 years in April. We are still old school with marriage being decades long. Obviously, the key is finding the right person. Life is hard no matter the time period. Ir is what you make of it and how you respond to it. We still remember how saved and cut costs when we were younger. A lot of trial and error financially, but we managed to succeed.
Now, we don’t do that as much since we have slowly built up our net worth and increased our income over time. Of course, we are not high maintenance folks either.
It has been fun “chatting” on MMM with you.
Toast to you and your wife!
Thanks RE@54. 24 years is also quite a milestone. Finding the right person is a big part, and being committed to making it work no matter what is the other part. I think starting out very frugally and holding that lifestyle creep to a much slower rate than your income increases is a good balance. I love low maintenance people, we are like that too. I think many, if not most, financially successful people are that way, it’s part of the secret of success that you can take care of your own needs and be happy with less.
I would love to hear a guest post from your wife about her experiences and reflections on staying home. I stay home with my kids and I know it is the right choice for our family since my husband’s job is not very flexible. I never expected to stay home though – I am educated with a masters degree and worked in my career for all of my 20s before marrying and having kids. I don’t regret my choice to stay home, but I do often feel insecure about it since the majority of families in our area are dual-income. We work hard to live below our means and we have more time together as a family because of my choice to not work. I am fortunate to have the choice, but I struggle with my self-worth in a community that values careers and high earning (and spending).
Hi J.B. I know there were times in the past that she considered starting a business and I was 100% behind whatever she wanted to do. I did enjoy the fact that having a stay at home spouse really did work for us. I don’t think she’d ever blog or do a guest post. In fact she does not know the name of my blog. Nobody does except for my son and my brother who sleuthed it out on their own. My generation saw stay at home wives as pretty common, stay at home husbans much less so. I am sorry you struggle with the self worth issue, but your choice is so valid. My kids are so much better off as adults because of the amount of oversight she had over their education. And while she wasn’t earning money in the form of a paycheck her frugality and the three free college degrees our kids earned contributed hugely to our financial success. I admire her so much and try to tell her as often as I can.
Happy anniversary.
I want to thank you for your beautiful blog. The way you end the blog with questions makes me think, react and enjoy your blog even more.
Thanks so much baransam1, very nice of you to say. I enjoy engaging with anyone who reads and comments.
Wow 44 years! Happy anniversary!
My husband and i are just at 6 years this year.
Thank you for sharing your story, sounds like you make a great team.
I sure hope decades long marriages still exist, I think it really depends on who you choose. As Warren Buffett says the most important decision in your life is who you choose to marry.
I think you are right, but there is a lot of luck involved. It’s hard to know if that other person will grow in the same direction as you over the decades or if you will grow apart. I was very lucky!
Congratulations on the anniversary! You’ve led a rich life regardless of any money that’s come with/during it.
We have had a great ride so far, with decades more to come! Thanks Fi for.
Happy Anniversary! We’re behind you at 35 yrs married. We started in a mobile home. Finished our degrees. Only bought one car with a loan. Moved to a house sold to us by a relative who moved to a nursing home. Worked for years. No kids. No debt. Built another house in a rural area. Pulled the ripcord and retired early at 53. What a journey! Certainly had some disagreements. But what a pleasure it’s been with a person who has the kindest heart of anyone I know to this day.
We sound a lot alike! Congrats on your long and successful marriage. And on your early retirement, Maverick. A kind hearted partner is a blessing indeed.
Hmmm… maybe I’m the only happy divorcee who reads your blog! LOL.
Like you, I’ve run my finances through a credit card for decades. Only missed TWO payments by the due date in all that time, and boy did I beat myself up over them!
Frogdancer, always good to hear from you. And I think there are plenty of happy divorcee’s and even more unhappy badly marrieds out there. Being happy either way is the main thing and living an intentional life which you certainly do! Although I just remember the one time it would not surprise me if there were a couple of other times we missed a payment due to losing the invoice or something like that. Yeah, when you have a firm habit and miss it just one or two times it really stings! And that’s why you are successful, you held yourself to a high standard. Thanks for commenting!
SteveARK—- 44 years of marriage! Impressive!
July 9th, we will celebrate 39 years of marriage and almost 44 years of togetherness—-
We just sold our Houston home and today, we plan to head to Nashville, TN for a few days —- hope to meet up with you someday soon!
Crockett, congratulations on the house sale! And on nearly 39 years of a great marriage. I can’t imagine my life without my spouse, and I know you can’t imagine yours alone either. We kind of watch over three widowers here locally, have them over for supper, get them out to play tennis and things like that. It was very tough on them losing their spouses and I hope mine outlives me!