Money and our love/hate relationship

The other day my mom commented on the fact that I talk about money a lot. I don't particularly like this trait about me, but I guess right now it's just a fact of life. See, when I graduated from my undergrad, I moved in with my parents and, lets face it, I had it good. I didn't pay rent, cable, internet or for food, most of the time. I had a full time, not so well paying job, and though I had my phone, car payment and car insurance, that was about all I had. How I wish I had saved back then!! But the past is past, and there isn't any changing those decisions.

I did move out in 2008, and started working and paying all my own bills, but rent was pretty cheap, and though I don't think I could have saved, I was able to pay most of my bills. I did rack up a little credit card debt that I'm still paying off, but aside from that, I was living fairly decently.

When I started school later in 2008, I had a scholarship and a stipend from being a graduate assistant. This stipend paid my rent and car payment, and all other bills were paid with the 2 part time jobs I had. I did take out more student loans than I needed, and this helped supplement as well.

When I got married, things got serious. I started following money-saving a frugal focused blogs, and between the 2 of us (OK mostly Geoff) I was finally making enough money to make regular payments into our savings accounts. This is when I became obsessed with money. Not so much in a bad way...more in a, "I need to save money" way. I started looking for ways to be frugal, making sure we didn't succumb to laziness and eating out (this has only worked recently!) and focusing on our financial goals.

Do I talk too much about money? Perhaps. I look at it as being focused on saving, keeping us out of debt and working towards paying off what debt we do have. Hopefully, over the course of our marriage, it will all pay off eventually. One can only hope.