Day #10 - Pesky Dollars

"I'm so pissed!" he said, when I asked him if he'd just called me like two seconds ago. "Do you know that tickets to the Celtics v. Heat opener are like $400 each for the face value $20 seats?"

"I didn't know that, actually. How is that legal?"

"My point exactly!"

We used this as an opportunity to talk about finances and how we need to get better at anticipating our entertainment expenses for the year. I mean, we know pretty far in advance what games and events we're planning on attending, and we don't often have 'random' events that just pop up. He's really on top of the tour schedules of our favorite groups, so not much catches us by surprise here. Though it did seem a shocker to me that tickets to Electric Zoo actually cost me $324 by the time they added in the service charges and shipping fees, etc. I mean, yea that's $81/pp per day which for a music festival that's 12 hours long each day is a pretty fierce deal, but that's also quite a bit of money I wasn't expecting to spend. I seem to have forgotten that last year, we only attended one day.

So we worked out how we're going to use the nifty joint accounts that my bank opened for me today and I toyed with the idea of consolidating another account into our joint savings. I wasn't prepared for merging such things because we'd never intended to do so. However, when I went to the bank this afternoon, they informed me that the easiest way to deposit the gifts that people gave us to a woman who at that point didn't legally exist and included a husband whose name was not on any of my accounts prior to this, was to open new joint accounts.

I wonder if it's overwhelming if you've planned it out. If you've already had the discussion. But our plan had been to maintain our separate accounts only. We didn't think we needed joint accounts. It seems like every day I read something else that tells me that everything I thought was right, is in fact, wrong.

So there I am, sitting in the branch, reviewing the paperwork when I notice that when they created the joint accounts, they listed his name first on them.

"Excuse me," I said to the Customer Service Rep. "This is my bank. I've had multiple accounts here. He doesn't have accounts here. Why did you put his name first on our joint accounts?"

"Because he's your husband."

That's it. Because he's a man he gets listed on our accounts first. I'm sorry. I didn't know that I woke up in 1952. It was disconcerting. I'm sure it doesn't matter. Joint is joint. It's ours not mine or his, but it just felt like a slap in the face to be told I'm somehow second because I'm a wife. Maybe that's not the bank policies and this was the personal decision of the CSR, and for reasons I won't discuss on a public blog, I could see how that could be the case. But still, I felt viewed as somehow less instead of more.

I am keeping my own accounts. He is keeping his own accounts. We both believe it's important to individually have our own money and financial freedom. This is 2010, afterall.