Oh, I'm fuming. Please tell me why people feel the need to stick their oar in where it's none of their business!!
I've just come into a little bit of money through the sale of something. This is such lovely news, as it's been in the works for ever.
I bumped into two friends while out yesterday and they asked me about the idiotic grin on my face and so I stupidly blurted it out. They were delighted for me and asked me what I was going to with it to treat myself.
I said that the first thing I was going to do was to send my lovely mum a huge bunch of flowers and treat her to a spa day as she was the one who got the sale to go through, and then pay off my credit card and DH's because we both hate having debt and through various circumstances since DS was born we had to use them to pay for some things. Then I was going to think about doing something silly and wonderful for me.
Their faces just fell.
And then I basically found myself being berated and shouted at for wanting to do this. and
They said that if I wanted to pay off my credit card then I should but why should I pay DH's? Errrm because he's my husband and we share bills? They said that this money is mine and not a joint asset (as the sale had been in the works yonks before I met DH) and I should keep as much of it as I could and have a "nest egg in case something happens".
I absolutely agree that everyone needs to have some money of their own, and I have my own Savings account. As does DH. We decided it was better in the short term to have an emergency slush fund as we are both self-employed, and beaver away at the credit cards, than completely pay off the cards but have no savings. For us, in this uncertain economy, it was a peace-of-mind choice.
Anyway, back to the point - they told me I was mad for wanting to "piss away all the money right away just to be debt-free" and that my generous nature was fine but I needed to be more selfish in this case (WTF?) and that I needn't send my mum to the spa as she can well afford to take herself (and she can but that is not the point, I'm sending her for some lovely treatments she wouldn't treat herself to), and that I had DS and his education to think of, but most of all they kept going on about making DH pay off his own credit card and keeping the money for myself.
I will admit that I (actually, DH and I both) have a thing about being debt-free. We'll still have our mortgage and car payments, however the interest on those is manageable (and I couldn't pay them off anyway), BUT I'd like to be rid of high-interest debt. And I will put some money aside for DS's schooling (however the grandparents have already indicated that they would like to take care of this).
Am I being unreasonable? Are they right, should I just be tucking most of this away for myself (except for fleurs and spa day for my mum, I'm not budging on that). It doesn't make sense to me but am I missing something?