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Old 02-22-2014, 11:03 AM   #61
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Please be careful. How much is the mortgage payment going to be for a 200K mortgage? Be sure to include 1/12th of your property tax bill and 1/12th of your homeowners insurance bill as these will probably be included in your monthly payment. If wedding costs are making you uncomfortable monthly mortgage payments will make you nauseous.
If you read "Millionaire Teacher" you'll hear about how parents that assist children with house buying (to the tune of $100k!!) are actually putting the kid on a revved-up treadmill....bigger house than they would have been in, bigger house payment, bigger spending neighbors to keep up with. Not a good formula for LBYM.
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Old 02-22-2014, 11:21 AM   #62
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I personally would not be comfortable at all spending 20K for a wedding (5K deposit for now), considering the amount of money saved up and considering the mortgage/expense that go with the purchase of the house.

I would move the wedding until I have more money saved up, if spending a lot on the wedding was a requirement. I could consider doing the honeymoon (using the free miles) and pay out of pocket for hotel/food after a city hall wedding.

This is just me though. I am very convervative in my spendings. Also, I never understood the significance of weddings either.

Good luck to you. Also, being able to talk about finance (including hopes and fears) with your mate openly is a must for a good relationship IMO.
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Old 02-22-2014, 11:27 AM   #63
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My wife and I spent less than 5K on our entire wedding. It was 1987 so there is some inflationary adjustment to be made. Small wedding at church with reception also at the church. We were poor just graduating college students. Didn't really miss the big wedding at that time. And today, we certainly don't miss it.

Some of my friends at work waited until they were financially established before getting married. This means they had much more to blow on a wedding. Several had 100K plus weddings. One in particular had a massive affair with a reception at a beautiful historic luxury hotel. The reception had a victorian aristocrat feel to it.

25 years later, at my retirement party, I am talking to the bride from the massive wedding. She is musing out loud about how I was too young to be retiring. With no prodding from me, she arrived at the, "I guess you didn't blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on overpriced things." She even mentioned her wedding and some lavish and yet highly forgettable vacations they had taken. I was kind and simply told her we tended to live below our means. I guess when you are approaching 50 with no savings the fact that you had a Cinderella wedding isn't as important as it once was.
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Old 02-22-2014, 11:41 AM   #64
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I guess when you are approaching 50 with no savings the fact that you had a Cinderella wedding isn't as important as it once was.
I helped friends who were getting divorced, having money troubles and selling the house to pack for the move, and one of the things I packed was the wedding pictures. I remember thinking how much the money they must have spent on the wedding if invested instead would have added to their retirement funds.
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Old 02-23-2014, 12:04 AM   #65
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Years ago, I attended a friend's wedding in CA at a country club, and she mentioned they spent ~$50k on that (and her gown was $5k). At the time, I was blown away with how much they spent, and it was nice, but not worth it to me. And I barely remember a few details.

Neither of us had much $$ when married in the PNW, so we had an el-cheapo backyard wedding with locally catered picnic-style buffet and guitarist--I think at most we paid $1200 total. And people mentioned how much they enjoyed it for years after the event.

$$ spent do not necessarily equal the best memories.
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Old 02-23-2014, 05:52 AM   #66
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Whatever happened to the days when the BRIDE'S parents paid for most of the cost??
I always felt that tradition sort of went out the window about the time when women no longer went directly from living at home with parents up until the time of the wedding day. Traditionally sort of a replacement for a dowry in times gone by.

Nowadays women delay marriage into their 30's after already establishing their careers, often after co-habitating with their chosen partner on sort of a trial basis, and sometimes already with children in tow. Often the parents have already foot the bill for an expensive education so the daughters are able to support themselves and contribute equally (financially) to the marriage.

Under these circumstances I could fully understand why parents of the bride would be happy to help with the costs but feel it a bit unfair to be expected to foot nearly the entire bill for an extravagant wedding. Heck, the parents may be RE and on a fixed/limited income.
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Old 02-23-2014, 09:41 AM   #67
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This is the next problem to tackle and I've devised an extensive but potentially risky plan.


Step 3: Note that the CFA ethics requires me to seek permission from my boss before working part time for another company (even if for free.) Now, at a normal company with multiple employees and being paid a fair wage, this would immediately put my job at jeopardy. However, since I'm the only employee in the office and am being paid far below my market value, it affords some leeway. It's likely gonna be an awkward conversation with my supervisor and he will likely refuse.
Uh, maybe be asking the obvious....but why not simply have a talk with your boss and lay it out on the open: "What can I do to bring more value to the company and receive a higher, market-value compensation package?"

If you're truly underpaid, and if your boss wouldn't fire you for working for free for someone else (which I, along with the others, would strongly advise against), then they surely wouldn't fire you for asking how you can be paid more of what you're truly worth.

Do you have annual reviews? What is noted for your areas of improvement? Have you done specific tasks that have saved the company significant $ or substantially increased revenue?
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Old 02-23-2014, 11:03 AM   #68
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Uh, maybe be asking the obvious....but why not simply have a talk with your boss and lay it out on the open: "What can I do to bring more value to the company and receive a higher, market-value compensation package?"

If you're truly underpaid, and if your boss wouldn't fire you for working for free for someone else (which I, along with the others, would strongly advise against), then they surely wouldn't fire you for asking how you can be paid more of what you're truly worth.

Do you have annual reviews? What is noted for your areas of improvement? Have you done specific tasks that have saved the company significant $ or substantially increased revenue?
I've tried going after the low-hanging fruit like this from time to time but the answer usually involves doing something unrealistic. For example, back in 2011, I was given a 5% raise but when I asked what was needed to achieve a larger raise, the boss said something like we had to make at least a 60% return on our investment that year. We ended up taking a ton of risk that year and ended up losing about 30% instead hitting our goal of 60%.

I had the same meeting again early this year (after we made back the 2011 losses over the last 2 years) and the boss offered a 10% raise. However, any additional raises were dependent on the success of a new project: a new fund the firm launched in 2014.

The firm would need 1 year of a track record of managing the fund well using its own money before it can attract investors (in 2015) and 1 year of managing client money well before it gets paid. So it looks like 2016 is the earliest that I could get paid my market value. (Needless to say, an unacceptably long time frame.)
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Old 02-23-2014, 11:37 AM   #69
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If getting a raise at your current job isn't looking good, are there some certifications, licenses, Coursera or lynda.com classes, toastmaster groups, volunteer projects, portfolio work, etc. you can do on your own to increase your marketability?

This would be the "So good they can't ignore you approach":

"Rule #2: This philosophy....says that you first build up rare and valuable skills and then use these skills as leverage to shape you career into something you love. "
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Old 02-23-2014, 04:26 PM   #70
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If getting a raise at your current job isn't looking good, are there some certifications, licenses, Coursera or lynda.com classes, toastmaster groups, volunteer projects, portfolio work, etc. you can do on your own to increase your marketability?

This would be the "So good they can't ignore you approach":

"Rule #2: This philosophy....says that you first build up rare and valuable skills and then use these skills as leverage to shape you career into something you love. "
I think much of the advice ignores the important contexts. Have a talk with your future wife about your concerns and find out how important all this is. She'll be taking on the debt as well.
If the in-laws are ponying up the house, you need to try to put in budget.

We had a small wedding at my parent's church; the wife in retrospect would have been happier doing it with our friends in California (I was in grad school) or eloping, but we're still together after 29 years.
Update--we're hiking in the Lake District of England for the 30th and our youngest will join us in London for the final leg. We went with the boys on hiking/biking in Italy for our 28th to celebrate our youngest's graduating (it was supposed to be the 25th but we decided to wait until college bills were over.)
Update--looks like you already had the talk with your sweetie. Good move. Didn't need any of our posts.
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Old 02-23-2014, 09:55 PM   #71
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If getting a raise at your current job isn't looking good, are there some certifications, licenses, Coursera or lynda.com classes, toastmaster groups, volunteer projects, portfolio work, etc. you can do on your own to increase your marketability?

This would be the "So good they can't ignore you approach":

"Rule #2: This philosophy....says that you first build up rare and valuable skills and then use these skills as leverage to shape you career into something you love. "
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I think much of the advice ignores the important contexts. Have a talk with your future wife about your concerns and find out how important all this is. She'll be taking on the debt as well.
If the in-laws are ponying up the house, you need to try to put in budget.
I brought up focusing in on affordability, talking to the fiance and developing a budget in previous posts in this same thread.
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Old 02-24-2014, 06:30 AM   #72
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Old 02-24-2014, 08:45 PM   #73
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Go shopping for a nice new car, take her along and get her excited about it. Talk for a few days about how you can't get that new car AND have a big wedding - such an approach could get her thinking in practical terms. But if you have a big wedding one more guest won't hurt so much so let me know when and where!
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