Getting Organized

My wife went back to work two weeks ago and there's been an adjustment period. She was so used to doing all the bills, keeping the house in order, and doing most of the cooking that it was hard for her to get OUT of the habit of still trying to do all that AFTER being out of the house for 10 hours each day. I had to sit her down one day last week and say "Don't you get it? All of this is not solely your responsibility anymore." It was like I lifted the empire state building off of her. Then she asked me to make her an apple martini.

Before I met Roseanne I had a pretty automated setup going where all of my bills were paid automatically and everything was nicely kept in Microsoft Money for me without me having to do much thinking about it. Sure, I'd download and categorize my transactions every one or two weeks, but that was no biggie. I also had someone to come over once every other week to help with the cleaning.

Right after Roseanne and I were married, though, we moved away and changed banks and the whole system went to hell. Then we moved AGAIN, changed banks AGAIN, and it seemed that there was really no hope of getting back on track.

I'm happy to say that I'm getting it all organized now and the automatic bill payments should start in the September timeframe. I can't wait to get that out of our heads so we can focus on fun, cool things to do with our evenings and weekends as opposed to having to do housework and bills.

For those of you who live in the LA area I'll be giving a talk at the Orange Country C# Developers Group on the 17th. You can find out about all of my upcoming and previous talks as well as my writing and webcasts over on my web site www.nemhauser.com.