Timeline Rant

GoldenPenguin · August 2014

@justbeingme93

loves2shop4shoes · August 2014

I 100% agree with @GoldenPenguin.

I think making him pay back over 12k of student loan debt before you get married is really unreasonable.

I know many people who will have student loan debt well into their 40s! You can't put your life on hold because of student loan debt.

justbeingme93 · August 2014

@loves2shop4shoes

I agree with what you are saying. Check out my previous posts. I am not "making" him do anything. He made it his goal and has developed a way where it could be possible. Ultimately, if something changes and he can't feasibly accomplish his goal...we will not put off getting hitched because of debt. Hell, I would marry him tonight if I could!

morphemes · August 2014

@Justbeingme93 I realize everyone has very different views on the living together before marriage conversation. While I know it was the right decision for my partner and I, and I know I have learned more about him in the process (and about myself), I understand it is not everyone's preference.

I just wanted to add that I completely respect your desire to learn to take care of yourself before moving in with your SO. I think this is SO IMPORTANT (yes, enough to warrant italics and capitalization!). I think living independently before living with an SO is one of the most important things a person could do. I lived on my own (ok, with my cat) for 3 years and it was the best experience. Just knowing that you handle everyday issues on your own, and take care of yourself, is a huge growing experience. Honestly I kind of miss having my own place sometimes!

lilacck28 · August 2014

Warning: Haven't read through the responses yet, so I apologize if this is redundant.

1. we did have a timeline. We started talking about potentially marrying each other about three months into dating. It was a conversation something like "well, this is really great. If it stays this great for a few years, then I think about 3 years of dating is a good amount of time, and the right ages, for us to get married." Things stayed great, and we pretty much followed the timeline to a tee. We talked about the timeline periodically throughout, to make sure we both were feeling the same way.

2. I think it certainly increased my anticipation having that timeline, but it also decreased my fears about the relationship. I wasn't having "omg, does he REALLY feel the same way? What if he never proposes!" type of feelings.

3. Student loans (federal... I know nothing about private student loans) are VERY normal, and as far as I have been told, do not hurt your credit (I've been told by multiple sources that in fact, it is the opposite.)

$25,000 is a very small amount of debt to have coming out of college compared to what it could be. That's what my fiance has. And now I've just added another $50,000 to that with my graduate school loans. And he's going to be adding another oh, $20-40k, with HIS graduate school loans. Waiting to pay back loans before moving forward with your life is, in my opinion, silly.

Student loan payments are like any other payment... mortgage, car payment. More like a mortgage. You pay that sucker off for 30 years. Would you really put your life on hold just to pay of a big chunk of a house first? I know MANY people, particularly highly educated people, who pay off their loans well into their 40s-50s. It isn't debilitating, and does not stop you from being able to own a house or buy a car, because it is not the type of debt that hurts you (I mean, of course it hurts your wallet, but it helped your brain and probably helped you land a job, so....)

eilis1228 · August 2014

Re: Living Together

I understand not living together for religious reasons prior to marriage. I live in the Bible Belt, and FI and I have been told a few times that we live in sin. Hey, whatever floats your boat I guess? That being said, my mom is really religious. She grew up Church of Christ. She's on her third marriage, and I'm a product of her second marriage. My parents divorced when I was 2, and they'd been together for 5 years at that time. My mom told me when I was a teenager that she knew within the first 2 weeks of marriage she'd made a huge mistake, but since it was her second marriage, she wanted to try and make it work. She instilled in me that you MUST live with someone prior to marriage. If she had lived with my dad, she never would have married him.

Of course, I'm grateful she made that mistake since I wouldn't be alive otherwise, but you get my point.

lilacck28 · August 2014

HA! It was redundant. Sorry! I'm glad to hear that you won't arbitrarily slow things down just to pay off the good debt.

To flesh things out a bit in light of the turn of the convo:

That timeline discussion helped A LOT! I was (and am!) young as well! I never anticipated getting married this young. I think the national average for woman to get married is 26, something like 28 if they have a college degree, and like 30-35 with graduate school. I am the first of my friends to get married, and they've made me feel a little strange about it, by accident, because they held the same belief I did before meeting FI-- that late 20's and early 30s is probably when they'd get married since it would take them a while to get their career going, and they just wouldn't meet the right person until they were in the right circumstances and frame of mind.

Well, I met fiance at 22, he was just turning 23 (the day after our first date actually!) By then, though, I knew I was applying to graduate school. I knew what I wanted out of my career. Fiance knew what he wanted out of his career. Mostly though, we just really clicked. Everything was easy with him, and we made each other happy.

After he said "I love you" really early, things kind of accelerated I guess. I realized I loved him too, and then three months in we had the aforementioned first, specific to us, marriage/timeline talk. Another three months, and I know what graduate school I'm going to. It was in Washington DC, which was where FI went to undergrad. And he works in government / nonprofit/ politics type stuff, so we thought about him moving with me. This decision was primarily because we were 85-95% sure at that point that we would marry each other. That last 15-5% was an insecurity that I think we would have had no matter how long we dated if we never moved in together.

Ultimately, he decided to come with me. We moved in together after 9 months of dating. We shared a bedroom in a 2 bed apartment with a friend of mine from college (I didn't want to live alone in case FI decided not to move with me.) The next year, we moved into a one bedroom together, obviously sans roommate.

It was a good decision for us. I doubt I'm going to change your mind, and that is not my intention. Just thought I'd share my experience. I'm in that mood

Anyway, living together was just as easy as the rest of our relationship was, and that solidified our timeline. I don't think we would have stuck to the initial "well, in 3 years" if we didn't live together, because living together really assured us that our relationship was a good one that had real longevity.

Fiance proposed in April of this year, which was about 2 and a half years into dating, a little under 2 years of living together, right before I graduated from grad school. We've since moved back to our home state and FI is going to grad school in the fall. We missed New England!

I'm now 25, fiance is going on 26. By the time we get married next May, I will be just a few weeks away from 26, and fiance will be a few months from 27. We will have been dating for about 3 years and 9 months, and living together for about 3 years. He will still have a year left of graduate school. I will hopefully have found a more stable job. We'll have a ton of debt, but I'm confident/ hopeful that it will all work out.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I just typed that novel, all about me. I hope it was helpful to someone? I don't know. It was at least fun for me to go down memory lane, sorry if it was annoying!

But, good luck! Do what feels right to you, and you'll be fine.

kaitlynmichelle · August 2014

Hmm. Our timeline changed a lot over the years.

We went to HS together and started dating at 16/17. I figured hey, when we are done university, he might propose. He agreed that when we graduated that might happen. That was our 5th anniversary, and right after that we moved across the country. We had no money and trouble finding any stable work. So we pushed it back a year or two.

By our 7th anniversary I was getting impatient, but we still didn't have much saved up anyway. On our 8th anniversary dinner he said he wanted to propose but he didn't have the ring yet, and wanted to start looking. I'm like FINALLY YES.

Two months later he dislocated his shoulder and was out of work for 4 months. 1 month after his injury I badly injured my patella and was out of work for another month, all the while taking care of him. It was a very rough summer. By the fall I was totally BSC. Not a good thing.

By November he was planning my ring but at such a slow pace! He wanted it for our anniversary and got it with I think 5 days to spare. He proposed on our 9th anniversary and we are getting married in 7 weeks.

So yes, we had a timeline. Shit happened. But I finally paid off my debt, we have stable (but not great) jobs. Timelines need to have flexibility as we clearly learned.

bookishgiraffes · August 2014

First off, can I just say that I am jealous that you don't have any debt? BF and I just graduated and we both have about 25-30k each. BF will have his payed off a bit faster than me since he already has a job and has started paying off his private loans first.

BF and I are still young. He's just turned 23 and I'm 24. Our timeline talk happened a lot sooner than I anticipated, since we were both graduating in May and we were trying to figure out how things were going since we are doing a bit of distance, so we came up with a rough timeline. We have recently been making our rough timeline more concrete and clear, and BF has told me he plans to propose within the year, and then ideally married a year or year and a half after that. We both want to get settled into our jobs/etc before that happens. The timeline talk has made everything a bit easier though.

I've told him I wont live with him until we are married. I used to be religious and my particular former religion frowns on an unmarried couple living together. My mom, however, has been pushing us moving in together if I get a job up in his area so we can both save some money, regardless of being married or not. So that may change as things progress with us and I can reason it out in my head.

kaitlynmichelle · August 2014

I used some money that was put away for me for dental work that I will have to have done every 10 years. So that covered two years but I'll now need to pay my own money for the dental work. It isn't cheap sadly. I put the other two on a student loan. I worked all throughout school and full time every summer.
When I graduated I had about 12k left to pay off, which I did over the past 4 years. I paid off the end maybe last fall. FI didn't have to pay for his school so he has a lot more savings than I do at this point. He also helped contribute extra $ a couple times from tax refunds and such.
Paying off that debt has made me super careful on what we buy. We don't go out much and we don't spend a lot on luxury kind of items. I paid off all my debt, but I really don't have a ton of money saved up. Especially after all these vendor payments!

[Deleted User] · August 2014

I will never regret choosing to live separately from H before we were married. I moved in with him 2 months before we got married and I honestly don't think it made a huge difference in how much I felt I knew him. Yea he didn't pick up his clothes off the floor or fold them as soon as they came out of the laundry but I could care less about those things since that's just what he does when he is alone. I thought it was fun learning those quirks about him right as we were getting married. It's still keeping things really interesting and I love the little surprises I learn about it each day. I think that will continue throughout our lives together.

Dignity100 · August 2014

I think student loans/car loans/home loans are very different than credit card type loans. I look at them as 'part of life' and not so much as 'you're living beyond your means'. I would not hold a student loan against him, it will come with a payment plan when he graduates (as does a car or home loan). I don't think any of those 3 loan types should be dictated on a time line.

My FI and I do not live together. We've been dating for over 6 years. Our situation is a little different though - I was 28 he was 30 when we started dating, both of us own (well were paying off) our own homes. Our houses happen to be 2 miles a part, so we're not that far from each other (it takes less than 15 minutes to get to his house). I purchased my house before the housing market crash and I currently owe more than my house is worth, but because I'm making payments there is no help for me. I feel like a 'drag' in the relationship because of that - FI's house is paid off, he still will have lost $$ because the housing market crash, but at least he doesn't owe. FI never holds this fact against me and honestly, I think I would be a little upset if he did (because I already feel that I have dead-weight in the financial area of our relationship with it).

Now - my ex moved in with me right after he graduated college; he was a year behind me in school. I was very against it but my voice for whatever reason was not heard (one of the reason's he's an ex). My ex expected me to work my 40+ hours and come home and clean the entire house because his mom kept their house growing up neat and tidy without the help of his father (oh, his mom did not work... at all, the house was her job). Today my house is a MESS because after we split, I didn't have to come home and clean it from the time I got home to the time I went to bed... so I gave up on it. I really think that had he lived alone for at least a year, he would have had better/more realistic expectations of me and our relationship.

I point both of these cases out because - I do feel you should live alone for awhile before living together. I think it is important to see how independent life is and so you know what it takes to live on your own.

I also don't think it's fair for you to hold his college loans against him. I'm sure he probably feels bad enough that he has his loans without having somebody harp on him about it.

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