Chapter 901 - Part 2:
After waking up earlier than expected, with coffee in one hand and electronic devices in the other, we were both suffering from morning grogginess just waiting for the caffeine to work its magic and force our brains to kick in. We shared a few kisses and the lady told me about a dream she had the night before. We turned on some light music and just sat together in relaxation mode as the day started to unfold. Eventually I brought up my future living situation which brought us directly to the topic of money.
As the lady and I looked at apartments, condos, guest houses, cabins and other residential options, we kept discussing my budget. She has a tendency to select and tour places a little more expensive than the top of my desired monthly allotment, giving her the impression that perhaps I don’t have very much in the way of financial resources. What she doesn’t seem to know is that my time as a military contractor and later as a full time security contractor involved me banking the majority of my income and living like a broke college student. When your life revolves around work with only a few weeks off here and there, you don’t care about posh living quarters, big televisions and nice cars. Plus my current savings and investments did not include the payment I will inevitably receive for my property when everything is finalized. I decided to remedy this and brought out my expanding folder full of bills, receipts, balance sheets and my checking account ledger with checks. I am not saying this was a mistake, but I am saying that while this lady struggles with doing dishes and occasional bursts of attitude, she does not struggle with money management and fiscal activities. In fact she seemed to actually enjoy it.
Before I knew it she had everything laid out, was writing checks on my account to pay my bills, had reorganized my binder, created a new budget on HER laptop, found ways of improving my return on investments, laughed a few times and essentially became the Chief Financial Officer of ‘me incorporated’. That seemed like a really good time for me to just go into the kitchen and start making breakfast. I heard every word she said while I was cracking eggs, dicing ham, chopping broccoli, shredding cheese and putting together a crust-less quiche, it was just that most of it went over my head or sounded like a foreign language. She compared her ROI to my ROI and while mine sounded good, hers made mine sound pretty darn average. As the quiche went into the oven and I started washing strawberries, blackberries and blueberries she revealed her personal financial status to me. I am not going to turn this into a ‘you know what’ measuring contest, mainly because I would lose by a large margin. It was like someone excitedly telling me they had over a dozen guns, before I opened the gun room and the heavenly lights of John Moses Browning & Eugene Stoner began to shine all around them as harp music played. I am okay financially, she is considerably better than okay, and I think I will leave it at that. She is going to start paying my bills, using my money of course, and managing my investments through my wealth manager. I suppose that means I have to keep cooking her meals, doing her dishes and protecting her car from delinquent Instagram models.
As the quiche cooked in one oven and some from-the-tube buttermilk biscuits cooked in another, I got out some place settings and put the berries on the dining counter. The lady texted her daughter advising she was getting yet another home-cooked breakfast and as expected she joined us shortly thereafter. I found a variety of jams and preserves to put out, as well as some soft butter. The lady had money on her mind and kept thinking of additional things to ask or tell me of a fiduciary nature. The daughter laughed and made a crack about her mom thinking that budgeting was fun and exciting. The conversation turned to my living situation again and the places we had looked at together and separately. I decided to reschedule the walk-through of the rental house planned for later in the day and instead I would spend the afternoon looking at places online and relaxing. I don’t feel a sense of urgency as I am perfectly okay with checking into a pay-by-the-week hotel and renting a storage garage until the right place becomes available. We also talked more about college, which is starting up again in just a few days, and about the daughter leaving the fast paced world of coffee slinging to take a job at the dental practice to gain experience.
After our meal I cleaned up as the ladies went right back into the places that provided them the perfect ratio of comfort, access to entertainment and inactivity for a lazy Sunday. I joined them a short time later, carving out my own cozy space, and we proceeded to just let the day go by, one smart phone tap, one touch pad swipe and one keyboard stroke at a time.
