Getting back to me

[mustardseed]

Thank you, Vanilla. I have sought legal advice and I retained a lawyer in December. It felt really good to do that because 1-I had the money too. A couple of years ago when he was in charge of the money there never would have been so much as $100 for unexpected expenses, but since I separated my finances and started budgeting I had that money sitting in a buffer fund. It was a blow to go from being a month ahead of everything to being back to month to month. But a couple of years ago I never would have dreamed I could just write a check for that amount and not have it cause complete turmoil. These are the things I can accomplish without him!

When I retained the lawyer she gave me all of the paper work for me to file and I have been slowly filling it out. When I am ready to file, I will really be ready. She touches base with me every once in a while and she knows I am on the fence. She told me that now that NY is a no fault state it doesn't matter who files first and if I need to take my time that is fine.

My other thing is now that I have my finances under control I have a positive balance with money sitting there for various future expenses and a cushion for some minor unknowns. If we get D I don't want to have to split that. It was a lot of hard work for me to get there and that money is for family needs, not my own fun. I know that he probably still ends a pay period with nothing left even though at this point the only bill he is paying is the rent which is automatically deducted from his paycheck before he gets it. I would hate to have to give him half of my sinking fund money and E fund money just because I managed it better than him. But I will clarify that with my lawyer. We make the same amount of money now. Which is amazing because a few months ago I made 1/3 of what he made. And in that short amount of time I was able to make major strides in getting ahead. Even before I got this job I was able to get so much further ahead then he ever could, with my little paychecks that he loved to dismiss as a useless waste of time--simply because I started budgeting and paying attention. What a novel idea--but it still too much for him to handle.