I'm shocked, and amazed, and pleased all at the same time. My frugalness isn't necessarily rubbing off on DH, but it appears he is noticing and listening to an extent. A spouse that notices and listens, how novel. I'm kidding, of course, but it's still nice.

I bring this whole topic up b/c DH & I have talked about money not once but TWICE over the past 3 days. And not just who's going to pay if we go out to dinner, either. Actual, serious discussion. WooHoo!!

Turns out DH wants to have a beefier EF that what I require. Hey, good to know. Granted, he said "That way, the money will be there if we find something we need, or want"... To which I replied "As long as we pay the money back to the account." Puzzled look came from this, but we'll see.

The rest of this conversation was something like this

DH "We make good money, and should be able to buy what we want."

ME "I completely agree we should be able to buy what we really want and need. But, DH, I want to eliminate our debt b/c it is (hold on a sec, math time $350 old debt $300 car $500 house): $1150 of our monthly take home, over %25!!! Imagine what we could do with that money once it's freed up!"

I saw the lights in his eyes. Pictures of sugar plums and a motorcycle dancing in his head.

Last night's conversation was about what to do w/ my old 401k: roll it or take a disbursement. See, my old 401k plan let you take out loans & pay yourself back with interest (cool!) & payments were drafted from your paycheck. Had 1 loan to buy DH's first motorcycle last year, and then when we found the house we sold the motorcycle and paid off the loan (it cost us $100 to have that bike 1 yr, not bad). Then, took a loan on the 401k balance to put the downpayment on the house. Then, got downsized and there's no paycheck for them to take payments out...

Either way, I can either take a full disbursement paying a fee & having the company take out taxes, or I can have them take the loan balance off the top leaving me w/ enough cash to roll into say a Roth IRA. In this scenario, I'm responsible for the taxes myself. DH has been rooting for a disbursement, until i started to describe what benefits a Roth would give us. No eyes rolled or glazed over, he was interested and listened intently. He even said "We could affprd to put half down and finance the rest by the end of this year, but I know you're wanting to avoid the whole debt thing."

Woohoo! Like water rolling gently over a stone, I too can slowly effect even the toughest of obstacles.