In the Balance

I was standing in the kitchen trying to come up with an idea for dinner. My husband, Bob, walked in, trailed by our kids, Daniel, Philip, Bethany, Jonathan and Joshua. The kids looked really excited.

“How about McDonald’s tonight?” Bob suggested cheerfully.

“Yeah!” echoed the kids.

I shot a look at the six of them. And not the happy look of a wife suddenly freed from cooking. “Bob, it’s Thursday!” I exclaimed.

“Huh?” Bob said.

The kids’ faces fell.

I continued, measuring my words. “Bob, they do the ninety-nine-cent Happy Meal deal on Tuesdays, not Thursdays.” We ate at McDonald’s only when the kids—and I—could get those discount meals.

“Ellie,” Bob said slowly, “I think we can afford two-forty-nine for a Happy Meal. Are you sure everything’s okay?”

Of course everything was okay—or so I thought. Given all we’d been through, it made perfect sense to save a dollar fifty on Happy Meals. In fact, it made sense to save on everything—garage sale clothes, used furniture, leftovers.

It hadn’t been that many years since Bob and I had literally run out of money for groceries. As in, a bank balance of zero—no, less than zero if you factored in thousands of dollars in debt. Who could blame me for restricting McDonald’s? It was the smart thing to do. If we weren’t careful, we could slide right back into debt. That was not going to happen—not on my watch!

When Bob and I met, I was an insurance broker making a good living. I saved, invested and spent money wisely. Maybe it was my confidence about finances—or maybe just true love—that caused me to overlook Bob’s occasional references while we dated to “loads of debt” left over from his first marriage.

Bob was a man with solid faith, which mattered a lot more to me than his finances. Besides, he was an engineer making a good enough salary that, early on, we decided I would stay home to raise the kids.

Of course, what I also loved about Bob was that he’d graduated from the Air Force Academy, dreaming of flying fighter jets. He’d flown while on active duty, but had scaled back and gotten the engineering job to stay near his daughters, flying part time for the Air National Guard.

I told Bob that he should feel free to fly full-time again. Soon after our wedding we were living in military housing on a single Air Force captain’s salary 15 percent lower than Bob’s previous income.