The Event ~ A Dowry for Pigs

I think I was born financially accountable! I’m surprised I didn’t choose accounting as a college major or career. However, I am getting enough pencil pushing running the finances at the office, the farm business, the auction business, and our own personal budget.

As long as I can remember, I have been an astute saver (finances, not junk). One of my first jobs (not counting babysitting) was a dishwasher at $.50 an hour when I was an 8th grader. Then I progressed to waitress and cashier in a little hometown family café (I can’t even remember the name of it now). I worked there for three summers. The only thing I really remember is that I saved for a long time to buy a two-piece red samsonite luggage set. I don’t remember what else I spent my hard-earned quarters on back then.

When I went to college, I found a part-time job working for a collection agency. I was diligent and would walk daily the ten blocks to and from work for the three-hour-a-day job in the afternoons. Walking back from work one day is when a good-looking guy offered me a ride back to the dorm. I ended up marrying that guy.

After two years of business college I went to Denver to get a city job as a legal secretary at Holmes, Roberts & Owen law office for $475.00 month. That was in January 1970. I was self-sufficient, and still managed to save. I went to Denver because I had this dream of living in the city in a cute house with a white picket fence ~ a setting similar to Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewives, but without the trash. However, the guy that picked me up off the street in college was a farmer not at all willing to live in the city for any girl! By the time we got married, I was ready to kiss the city goodbye and embrace the life of a farm wife.

I left Denver with this huge savings account of $600 in my dowry (along with the china dishes that every single young girl bought from a door-to-door salesman back in those days). Being accountable as I was, it would be spent wisely. Then the reality of farm life hit this young new bride, and our first big purchase was some pigs ~ with my dowry to pay for them! Except it was “our” savings now. I was assured that starting a pig operation would be a good investment!. Welcome to the world of a farmer!

I totally agree that both husband and wife must merge their funds into one in marriage. Marriage ~ merge. They go together. It was easy for me to do that since I no longer had any!   I was a stay-at-home farm wife for the first 16 years! Tim made the income ~ I spent it. A good merge!  I was always very conservative, though, and not at all  high-maintenance. 

I still like to keep a contingency fund for emergencies and special occasions; and I never pay a penny interest to credit cards. I’ve tried to instill that same philosophy of financial accountability to my children through the years.

Our pig operation grew and grew for several years into quite a large farrowing and feeder pig operation. Pigs were part of our history on the farm. And to think I helped make it happen with my dowry.

Well, anyway, I must have told that pig story to my kids, because they seem to remember that little story.

I looked up dowry in the dictionary. dowry: the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage. Interesting. Back in earlier days it was an event to build a dowry. Today, I’m not so sure.

P.S.  Is is my imagination that this entry is off the cuff a bit ~ from an 8th grade job, to china dishes, to buying pigs, to Desperate Housewives, to teaching my children financial accountability, to a dowry???  Wierd!  Maybe that's what makes for eventful reading!