Health and Fitness Journal

My wife and I just celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. The party was hosted by our son Jonah, and his life partner Alma. At one point Jonah asked my wife Patrice how we’d managed to stay financially sound all these years and she replied, “Coupons!” In the midst of all the shared laughter this evoked Alma took Patrice aside and I heard her whisper, “That’s very interesting, but have you heard about online coupons?” I was elated to observe that for a change the two of them really seemed to be enjoying one another’s company.

Thirty years is indeed a royal stretch of time, and I would be playing with the facts more than a little if I suggested that the whole of our married life together has been cream and gravy. There were, quite frankly, times when I caught myself openly questioning our commitment to one another.

Objectively speaking, the pair of us are solid proof of that ancient maxim that “opposites attract.” Patrice is French; I am English. She is tall; I am short. She is ten years my senior; people tell me I look young for my age. Perhaps most significantly to our current state of well-being, I am a splurge, and she is often teased, for being a bit of a miser.

This reluctance of my wife’s to loosen the family purse strings, in all fairness, while causing me a few minor moments of embarrassment, (as when she insisted I drive our car to France for Jonah’s wedding while most every other guest flew), enabled our little family to grow and prosper.

At this point in time, after a generally good thirty years of wedded life to the same woman, I am more than ready to doff my hat, and say, “Thank you Patrice, for keeping us in such good care, and clipping your coupons.”

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It’s Important To Stay Healthy For Your Financial Life

So many things are competing to stress me out – there’s work (obvious); the kids (yup); weight gain ( when did this start creeping up?); and that black box called personal finances (yikes!).

They say when you turn 50 you get the face you deserve, so maybe because it was my 50th birthday when I went to see my accountant John, he read me like a book.

We were talking about my retirement plan when he pointed out the window and suddenly asked me “Hey, isn’t that your car?”. It was, and they were towing it away, a group of ten repo men!

I tried asking John about his fishing trip but he wasn’t having it. He looked me in the eye and told me “It’s time you and I had a good talk about unsecure and secured loans”. “That”, he said, pointing out the window after my departing Fiat, “is an unsecured loan”.

He was right. But surprisingly, instead of offering me some sort of financial pep talk, John suggested we curtail the meeting and head over to the local gym, Cunnard’s.

“When I turned 50 I found myself bombarded with problems, coming from just about every angle you could think of .”, John said as he loaded a barbell with 6 70lb weights.

“ What I learned, by the time I reached 60, was the importance of staying healthy for my financial life”. With that he hoisted the whole apparatus overhead and pumped it up and down 10 times.

I was amazed. But more than what he’d done, what John had said stayed with me. It lingered. Like sweetgrass. And now I’m thinking of how I can tie it all together.

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