I do not post here much, if ever, but felt compelled to show this thing off. It was sleek black when I received it, and now it’s unrecognizable. Crazy how fast 10 years went by!
It’s the classic 3 piece with no kief catch on there. It’s seen a lot.
My wife and I have been together since I was 22. We got married last year, and had a really difficult year obtaining her conditional green card. This has all put a lot of stress on our relationship recently.
For context, she moved to the US on her own at 17 to go to University here and begin a life in America after moving from Asia. She had support from her family but unfortunately her father passed away only a year into her moving here. She graduated debt free with a 3 year visa and a job in data analytics.
She made decent money, and since we were not married at the time, her money was her choice as I knew having a secure safety net for herself is important. I am personally very savvy financially and have done well for myself even with layoffs through the years, and always stressed her saving as much as she can and we were both very open with our finances. We know what stocks each other held, what our next financial plays were with investments, and how much was going to cash savings and retirement.
During our relationship, she made it clear coming to America was a lifelong goal and I completely understood. We both like it here and have long term plans here.
However, our biggest 5-year plan for our entire relationship has been moving onto a sailing catamaran as a full time liveaboard. I have been stressing I want to do this and ideally be done before age 30-31 and sell the boat and move back on land and go back to a boring job.
I have been sailing my whole life, my parents currently liveaboard a boat and have been for years, and it has always been my dream to take a 2-4 years and be a sailing vagabond.
She has made it so clear in our relationship that she wants to do this with me, she has taken overnight sailing classes on her own, studied books, taken tests. We have sailed for weeks on my parents boat: she knows ball.
However, for the past 3 years I feel we have been saying we will get the boat in the next 1.5 years. Then it gets pushed back again, then again, and now finally all the obstacles seem to be out of the way, except for the fact that I am the only one with any money.
She saved okay, better than many Americans, but I always stressed how important it will be to save in order to make this work but that in the end I feel it dangerous as a boyfriend to take any control of her finances as that feels like it could lead to financial abuse or other problems.
Once we were married, I still did not ever try to “take control”, but at this point we were in the same tax bracket for years and somehow I have 10x the savings and am ready to go.
So now I have been putting years into making sure she has her American Dream. I pay the rent, car, insurance for health, car, and home. She covers gas and the cellphone bill, thats it. I havent saved a penny in a long time.
This past year we obviously were on hold because of government issues with getting her green card. Not her fault, but now that it is here she is now applying to jobs so she can contribute to the boat. That’s great, but obviously will take some time, but she is already coming up with plans to take international trips with her new income…
I keep reminding her that I want to at least get on the boat before 30 if I cant get off before 31… but now she is thinking she will need a year and a half + a honeymoon (not an expensive one) before the boat.
So… maybe in 2028 I can have my dream at 29-30? I don’t know how to approach the topic anymore.