So I'm excited for this next post. For years I've looked for some kind of vindication for some of my ideas or opinions on this blog especially concerning some of my more selfish "rules". At least I thought they could of been a little bit selfish. These rules were put in place usually because My wife and I had been taken advantage multiple times. This could be from our own family, from a buisness, from friends neighbors, even our own government in my opinion has taken advantage of us.
This past week I have a Facebook friend, a husband and wife (why do husband and wife's have the same account when it's only the wife that post?) who shared a quote on personal boundaries and then shared a blog post on the subject of personal boundaries titled "Enough, Already"
Written by Katie Barrett
To summarize it, Katie, who describes herself as a people pleaser took on a project to help with a fundraiser for her daughter's kindergarten class. Not thinking it through, the project stretched her thin. In the end her attitude changed from a good happy attitude to one of misery.
Wow have I been there!!
It goes on to talk about boundaries.
From the article
"When I say Boundaries, I mean what we're are willing to take on and we're NOT willing to take on. When we have boundaries, we set ourselves up for a life where we're able to trust and care for ourselves and others without being captured in the cycle of exhaustion and burnout."
So I have alot of thoughts while reading this article. Again like some of you I have been there, especially duringe the first part of my marriage. We didn't set boundaries and we're taken advantage financially and emotionally. I don't think my wife realized she had the ability to set boundaries with her parents. For years they had the controls. Until we were married. I remember vividly setting a very firm boundary with my father in law one night.
My mother in law was very controlling when my wife was growing up. It was to the point where she wouldn't allow her to get a driver's license. My wife didn't get her liscence until after she was married to me. Yes I taught her to drive. I helped her get her liscence. Something I will dive deeper into because it also had to do with these so called boundaries.
Up until I read this article, I called them rules but I really like the word boundaries and oh am I setting a few more when this is done so keep reading, I may surprise you
Anyway.
When my wife and I were within our first few months of marriage when her and my previous MIL got into a disagreement. Instead of letting it go and trying to work out their differences my MIL told my FIL to give my wife a call and tell her to come over so they could "talk". It was a trap. She berated my wife to tears making sure her point of view was the right point of view. When I came home that night to a very sad wife I called my father in law and set one of many boundaries. I told him that that was NOT going to happen again. "You don't treat MY WIFE that way." As I was still talking he said fine live your life the way you want and hung up.
Guess what, I gained respect and that NEVER happened again. In fact my wife's relationship somewhat improved (until the divorce). I believe my previous MIL actually apologized later on.
For this next story I hope to let my emotions on this not get to me. I have refrained from telling this story simply because it makes me so angry and had an affect on me for 7+ years. It has caused many marital fights and to this day I have not forgiven my FIL for this.
Before we were married, I owned a 96 Suzuki rodeo. I was pretty proud of that purchase and so was my girlfriend (wife now) at the time. The guy who owned it before me decked it out with a cb and a radar detector. I drove it through 2 years of college and my wife and I had many adventures in it. When my wife moved to Pheonix area so she could work and find a place for us to live. I stayed at college still delivering pizzas until she had found a place. The day came where it was time to move. I packed up, drove two trips to our new place and lived there while my wife lived at her parents until we were married. After weeks of sitting at home and hanging out with my wife I started working. Eventually my rodeo ran into a problem. Someone had smashed my side window on top of that the muffler needed work. My registration expired so I couldn't drive it and I needed something to get me to work and back. My FIL came up with a solution. He had a car that we occasionally borrowed. He didn't need it for a time so he asked me if I would want to use it for the next few months. All I had to do was pay the 212 dollar car payment. I was reluctant because I had never had a car payment. At this point in my life I didn't want a car payment but I saw it as a good will gesture. I had a job and with both my wife's and mine income we had more than enough to cover the payment.
This went on for 2-3 months. We got married had our short one night wedding night. (Still have not had an actual honeymoon) and even got my Rodeo repaired. My FIL in the meantime became interested in his FIL truck. He couldn't get it because he still had financial obligations to the car I was driving. My FIL talked to my wife and asked her if we would be interested in buying the car. At first I was kind of excited about it. I had never had a newer car and I did like driving it. There was still one major problem. It was a standard transmission and my wife COULD NOT drive standard. On top of that she only had a learner's permit. She had no liscence. I tried and tried to teach her yet it seemed I was dealing with two issues first she needed practice just driving an automatic car to gain confidence in a busy city and second was driving a stick shift. After a month of going back and forth on buying the car, she was for it I was against it, I finally made a deal with her and her MIL. If we buy it my MIL would teach her to drive.
One night while crunching the numbers and realizing it would cost us around 350 to insure and pay the car payment a month, I started looking at car selling websites. My FIL wanted the payoff amount of around 10500 for the car. I was finding cars just a year older for around 5000 with automatic transmissions. After discussing it with my wife and some persuasion I convinced her to shop for a less expensive car. Our minds were made up. We were not going to buy the car.
On a Sunday night we went over to visit with my wife's family. We told them our decision. My FIL seemed ok with it my MIL was mad. "Oh great" she would say. "Now we need to try and sell it and you know we're not going to get the amount to pay off the loan" We left that night knowing we had made the right decision. I soon found out how much of a hold my MIL still had on her step daughter.
Later that night my wife received a phone call. My FIL told her that we needed to return the car that night because they needed to post it for sale. He also warned her that she could be burning bridges with decisions like this meaning it would put stress on the relationship with her parents.
Mad yet? I'm trying not to be.
My wife caved. She told them we would be buying the car and a week later, we did.
That's unfortunately not the end if the story.
Remember how I said my MIL agreed to help my wife get her liscence and teach her to drive the car? Did not happen. I tried night after night to teach my wife how to drive that car. Every morning I woke up and took my wife to work in a car she could not drive. Every night after I got off work at 8:30 we would head over to the mall parking lot and try driving. We tried on trips we tried on less busy roads. My wife could not do it. I personally think had she lived in the country with no or little traffic she would have learned quickly.
We soon learned that through the car purchase my MIL still had her control over my wife. I don't if it was intentional, we didn't have the freedoms we wanted. My MIL and wife worked at the same company and my MIL would take my wife home because my wife didn't have a vehicle. After we bought the car she did have a vehicle, just one she couldn't drive. Who was driving the car he didn't want? That would be me. There were days my wife would be told that my MIL could not take her home so on my lunch break around 5:30 I would eat while driving to her work to pick her up and take her home then go finish my shift.
I hated our situation. I wanted it to change. I felt we needed our freedom. My wife and I were realizing to get that freedom we needed some changes. We needed to get her a driver's license and we needed to distance ourselves financially from her parents. On Labor day weekend we went car shopping. Our goal was to get a car my wife could drive. We pulled into a Hyundai car sales lot and took a look at their used cars.
Now this is where I made a quite a few mistakes in a desperate situation. Even though I admit that some of this is my fault I contend that had at least one thing gone in my favor, my wife knowing how to drive the car, her parents helping her get her liscence like NORMAL parents do or her parents forcing her to buy a car she couldn't drive, this would probably not have happened.I bought a brand new car we could barely afford. Not only did I buy it but I got sucked into almost every upgrade they offered. My loan amount went from 10,500 to almost 24000.
You know how people say they bought a house at the top of the market? I bought a car at the top of the market. Our interest rate was 8.99% The average interest rate was around 7. That is more than today's current average of around 4.75.
A year later, the same car I bought was being sold interest free.
Anyway
we did gain freedom and we learned quite a few lessons. There were a few of these so called Boundries (previously called rules) put in place to prevent this from happening again. We don't do any buisness with family. We don't buy or sell anything to family if we can avoid it. There have been times where my now MIL (different person) would offer to sell us something such as a laptop or camera. Although they were good deals we told them no. We've set a boundary for a reason.
I do want to mention this before I move on. While this was all going on her family did sell a used mattress and t.v. to us. I explained to my wife that although I wanted to show responsibility, self reliance and earn what we own there's also a thing called compassion, help, and the Craigslist Free adds were a new thing. We paid her step mom 50 bucks for a used t.v. when not a month later we got a biggger one for free. I personally think her step mom wanted to prove to us how hard life was rather than help us make life easier even if she had the opportunity.
So Boundary #1 we don't do buisness with family.
Boundary#2 we don't do car loans.
Alright I actually got through that story without being very Angry at the end. I think that's due to the fact that my wife and I are more financially sound than her parents are. Things are in reverse. They have car payments and student loans they can barely afford. Us, were doing great.
Read up on it if you wish but the boundary is simply this. Because I don't trust my in-laws on how they handle money I am more careful when it comes to letting them take any financial advantage of me. This includes not letting them barrow money or even barrow our car. This again is due to bad experiences where our judgement was wrong. To summarize what I wrote, they came to visit, told us they didn't have slot of money (due to my MIL going to a funeral of a family member she had never met) we paid for their meals and let them barrow our car with a full tank. When they left I had to put gas in to get them to the airport. This all due to them not have alot of money right? Not a month later they upgraded their perfectly fine cell phones. To upgrade they had to pay off their old phones. Because I had access to their phone bill was able to see what they had done. After paying hundreds of dollars to pay off both phones they upgraded to a nicer phone. This upgrade added a 1400 dollar loan to their phone bill.
No money huh.
About a month after this they hinted they were going to ask for a loan. We were prepared. We simply told the truth and let them know we had expenses we were expecting.
Boundary#3 I don't lend money or my car to my inlaws
I even set boundaries on how I pay my tithing. This is due to me losing my testimony on tithing. I took a serious look at tithing and realized that through different types of incomes tithing was paid differently. I've wrote about that too I may link it later.
I'm happy to announce as of today I am a full tithe payer. I'm not saying my testimony is completely restored but I am seeing blessings
So these last few boundaries I want to talk about I have given alot of thought. Now I want to warn these may seem selfish and rude to some but then again this author Katie did share this.
I argue this justifies my next few harsher boundaries.
Even if this this Katie disagrees with me here they are.
I keep it no secret that I had it rough throughout the great recession. It's no secret I have vented for years that I felt the hand delt to me was unfair. It's no secret that I felt that certain people had taken advantage of church welfare programs while years of financial habits were a major contributing factor of why they went broke during the recession.
The church within the last 2 years have come up with a financial training course. I have somewhat skimmed through it and I like what I see. In my opinion they are doing this to remind their members that they need to practice SELF RELIANCE. Imagine if every major purchase or major financial decisions you made came with a clause that stated you cannot ask for assistance if you make this decision. You cannot go to your bishop and ask him to help you make your mortgage or car payment or assist you with food. Would that make you rethink your decision? What if it was a pet dog or a horse. Would you ask yourself can I take care of this animal and provide for it without any financial help for the rest of it's life? Probably not. No one thinks of those things. I do.
I've probably told this story before. I have a cousin with a medium household paying job. One summer his wife and him decided to go and buy a camping trailer for around 21000 dollars. This is after his wife went back to her country twice to visit with her relatives, so at the time they were not hurting at all for money. They went through a divorce. My cousin kept the trailer the house and his impressive gun collection. He couldn't afford the trailer so his parents took over his payment. He was strapped for cash so instead of selling his ATV or his gun collection to help catch him up he went to his bishop and got 2 months mortgages paid for. Hardworking self reliant people paid for his mistakes!
These paint a grim picture for these two young families. They can't make it without suplimental help. Again what
e seems like newlywed couples in poverty was not the picture in real life. The 2009 couple was at Disney world not 2 months later (source via their blog) the husband went on a guys fishing trip to Alaska, the wife was able to visit family in California. This while their appartmet was being suplimented their food was being suplimented their doctor bills for 2 births we're being suplimented their tuition being suplimented not only by government grants but I'm assuming from tithing donations too?
I ranted about this here.
http://viscarjones.blogspot.com/2015/07/what-does-byui-students-life-in-poverty.html?m=1
I have a question for these two couples. Was it possible to find jobs and pay for all of your expenses while putting off college? Absolutely. I know because I did it.
So I've come to a conclusion. I know there are people out there that legitimately need help but I also know there are people out there who voluntarily put themselves in financial danger to keep a mirrage of artificial wealth. Bigger house nicer vehicles better vacations even animals they probably should not have. I for one am not going to supliment your food, mortgage payment, hay for your horse or dog food for your dog. Having financial independence means preparing for your future while taking care of your needs today.
In the church's new financial classes they have a financial stewardship success map.
May I point out two facts. No where in that map does it say "ask for help". 2. Even though the church asks you to pay tithing and offerings, it's not until ask to give until step 5.
I like this but I'm adding one more step and here is where my Boundary is being laid. In between step one and two I'm putting down "go on your honeymoon" it's that important to me. There's many reasons why I haven't gone. Life happens. I've paid over 80000 dollars in medical expenses. Four kids are expensive! So here is my Boundary that I am setting today. May I add that this boundary is temporary. Just like Kate. I'm not putting a perminate boundary.
I am stopping all personal donations to all public or major charities until I reach level 5 on my financial stewardship map.That includes going on my honeymoon.This excludes tithing but does include fast offerings and food drives. Instead all charitable donations will be on a more personal basis. Of course after thinking about this I can't simply tell my kids they can't take food from our pantry to take to their school and I'm not going to tell the deacons to not come to my house. My wife's buisness is not going to stop donating. I have a few plans in mind that I will not discuss here but the boundary is in place and it's there for a reason.
Well that's all guys. I hope that this will work out well in the end. Like I said I'm not saying this is perminate. Like Kate mentioned in her article. We put boundaries in place to set us up for life. I'm not doing this to be rude, I'll admit I do feel somewhat revengeful. I also feel I deserve a few things I have missed out on.
