Am I A Cheap Non Loving Husband?

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Alberto

Hello

First a few details about myself and my wife.
We are both 29 and got married in 2007. We do not have any kids but 2 dogs. We both work. Me full time as a contractor / and landlord. She works part time locally for an airline. I do not believe I am cheap but I do believe I always get a good deal. My wife recently has been going on an on about me being the cheapest man on the planet. Ok so here is my side.

Engagement : When I proposed to her I spent about $10,000 on her engagement ring. I bought the ring in the diamond district NYC and haggled my way down from $19,000 for very high quality. Dealer said I am a very strong negotiator.

Marriage : Then we got married in The Palace in Somerset NJ. Since the hall wasn't open or complete yet I booked 2 years in advance while they were building and paid only $138 per plate it is now over $250 a plate for same night same dates. I paid for the entire wedding spent about 70k. Before we got married I bought a 4 family home for us to live in. Again I explained to my wife that if we bought a nice four family home the tenants can pay our mortgage and we don't need to spend all our money on a house. Previous to the marriage I owned another home and WE currently still own the other home as well. Then in 2008 I bought my wife for valentines day a brand new Honda CRV base model (I would never buy a premium model) and again negotiated aggressively online with the dealer and paid considerably less than what an average person who just walks in the dealer would pay. I own and drive a used 2001 Jeep Cherokee and a 2002 ford van for construction.

I prefer to buy high quality products when they are on sale and can wait for something to go on sale before I buy it. Examples our TV a floor model 50% off, Our living room and bedroom furniture paid about $900 less because it was a discontinued line. I never buy clothes new I usually buy high end brands gently used never stained in local thrift stores. (biggest score a $300+ pair or Armani Exchange jeans for $29.)

We vacation often and because my wife works for the airline we don't pay for flights except taxes. Some places we have gone in the last 2 years. London, Thailand, Hawaii , Texas, Florida, California, Rome, Punta Cana, Santo Domingo. I usually wait until a hotel goes on sale on a deal website and then we book it. I have never paid full price for the hotels and I usually find amazing local restaurants that are not touristy aka not expensive but have amazing food.

So now it is 2011 and here is the situation. We have zero credit card debt, no car payments, a healthy bank account over 100k in bank, healthy 401k, 3 vehicles, (2) 4 Family homes and 2 dogs. We live in 1 of the apartments in 1 of the 4 family homes. It has 2 bedrooms, huge living room. I totally remodeled the kitchen and bath. Huge open basement, backyard, fire pit, pergola, and is situated 1 block from downtown major city in NJ. Very safe neighborhood.We don't plan on having any children. We are just enjoying life.

Now here comes where my wife says I am cheap. This is the complicated part. My wife is starting to complain. HUH! She wants to get rid of her Honda CRV and wants a Nissan 350z. (Because she never had a nice car as a child. I guess she doesn't think the Honda CRV is nice. Sorry Honda I still like your 31mpg city) She keeps on complaining that we need new furniture in bedroom and living room. I already swapped the bed out once just cause the first one I bought didn't have foot boards (Why do we need foot boards and columns we are not Romans.) She doesn't know I bought the new one on Craigslist used. I'll keep that a secret (Score!). Her mother constantly says to me you should buy her a nice little townhouse. She means the type of townhouse that is attached on both sides. I said I own a house already and I only have a tenant to one side and one on top. The mother and my wife both say its not the same "we have an apartment not a house" (Funny cause I pay a mortgage every month not rent.) The townhouses she wants us to get are smaller than our apartment and can't possibly have the yard we have. Her family and her sisters always have new cars every 2 to 3 years. Her Brother has a 2009 Mercedes CLS but works in a Hotel for $14 an hour and mom and dad have to pay the insurance cause he can only afford car payment. Her sisters and mother constantly change out furniture, new clothes, coach bags etc. But they are also all broke massive credit card debt and live check to check. Can someone please tell me or help me.

Am I a Cheap Non Loving Husband because I don't want to get my wife an attached townhouse, or buy her new furniture every few years when ours are still beautiful, or buy her a new sports car and sell her safe suv. Please help me make sense of this. Thanks Yahoo. Hopefully some women can give some insight to this.

Answer
No, I don't see you as a non-loving husband, I see you as a frugal man who has done well for himself and his wife. These days, you have to make deals and watch your money closely because you never know what could happen. I think the issue with your wife is that she feels that you have all that and she still can't keep up with her family. She wants to show off that she can afford such nice things as them. I wouldn't do it. It's not about what you can afford, it's appreciating what you have. Just because you can afford a beach house in Maui, does that mean that you should buy it? Not really. I pat you on the back and say good job and if she doesn't like it, then she needs to take check of what is really important to her.

Do you think this is scary or calming?

Kreutzer

This is a long one and yes it really happened. I am now 20 and live in a dorm at New York University, but when I was maybe 16 or 17 something happened that I can't forget. First let me fill you in on the details. When my parents got married they lived in my dad's condo here in NYC, but my mom was a country girl and when her parent's died she wanted to move into their house in the country in upstate New York. It is a beautiful Victorian house in the woods about 5 miles from anyone, and it's gothic. My grandparents loved this house and mom wanted to keep it. So they moved into the house and had 3 kids, one is me of course. Nothing real strange about the house started happening until I was about 16 or 17, and only that one time...so far. I was in my bedroom and my parent's had gone out for their anniversary. My brother wasn't home because he was staying with his best friend, Tod. Tod and him were real close, not in a gay way though. It was just me and my sister, Julianna, at home. It was about 9p.m. Not late, but it was dark. To beat it all it started raining and lightning and the lights started blinking. So Julainna ran to my room and said that she wanted to stay with me. She was pretty young then. I told her it would be okay so I lit some candles and turned the blinking lights off. She calmed down and she helped me study for a music test that I was going to have the next day at school. Then after she had calmed down completely I took her to bed-around 9:45. It was still raining hard. So I kept studying and after I got finished with the music book I decided to try some pieces that my music teacher told us to study. It was very boring, so I started improvising and I made the piano vibrate cause I sometimes get roused up in the music. Then I heard my glass of water, or apple cider or whatever it was, fall. I thought that it fell because of the piano's vibrating, but it was on my nightstand on the other side of the room. I brushed it off. But I had to take the broken glass downstairs to the kitchen garbage. On my way upstairs I saw my sister had gotten out of bed and was in the family room cozed by the fire. She knew not to light the fire by herself, but she told me that she didn't light it, but I knew that we were the only ones in the house. I thought that she was lying, but I said nothing and went back upstairs. Then on my piano stand that holds music I seen the Turkish March by Mozart, I knew it wasn't mine. So I went downstairs and asked Julianna and she said it wasn't hers-I thought she was lying. So I put the fire out and told her to go to bed. She said okay and as she went up the stairs, I went in the kitchen to get some water. Then as I went upstairs again I saw that the music had been taken. I knew it wasn't her this time. When my parents got home I told them about it and mom said that the Turkish March was her dad's, my grandfather's, favorite piece. She thought I was playing a trick on her of course. Then as I was going to my bedroom I looked at our family picture. my grandfather was in it holding a piece of music, I never noticed it before because it was so small. I looked real close and seen the music he was holding was by Mozart. I thought "Oh Brother!" I was kindly scared, but not hysterical. I didn't sleep that much that night. The next day in school I sat near an open window in music class because I was hot- I get hot easily. Before the test the teacher said we could take a few minutes to look over the text. The wind blew and turned my books pages to the chapter about Mozart. Then a few seconds later it turned it to the one about Haydn(a classical composer). The thing about Haydn is that his first name was Joseph, and Joseph was my grandfather's first name. It made me wonder. I kept it to myself, who would have believed it?! So was it a coincidence? Was it just the wind? Was it my sister playing a trick on me? Then, a few days later or so, I remembered that Julianna told me that she didn't turn the fire on the other night when it happened. I asked her who did it, and she said that that never happened that she never went to the family room and that she never left her bedroom after I tucked her in. To this day, I don't like to listen to Mozart that much!
I am not schizophrenic because this only occurred once and with that it occurs more. I know about mental illnesses because my mom is a supervisor of an asylum and my dad is a doctor there. Plus others have noticed things in my house.

Answer
holy s*it. ok i stopped at the fire part. i thought my old house was scary, that just freaked me out. like my house faces slightly down on a hill. we had this ol dpiece of furniture with doors on it that faced down hill too, but each day , a few times a day the doors would open, they wouldn't just 'hang/open' and face the bottom of the hill, but go all the way back and touch the furniture,which was freaky. then i hear noises around my house too. but your's is just crazy.

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Title Post: Am I A Cheap Non Loving Husband?
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