The Problem:
I've recently been engaged my fiancee and I have been planning our wedding for early next year. The thought of paying upfront for a $5000 deposit has become too much, despite how much money I've saved. I love my future wife and would want to give her the best wedding I can reasonably afford, but I've been in a kind of crisis recently as I've almost never in my life have spent more than $2000 at a time and the thought of spending so much money at once has become paralyzing. I still drive the used car I got as a hand-me-down from my parents from 7 years ago which has close to 200,000 miles on it, so I've never had to pay for any big-ticket items yet.
Some Background:
I keep about $45,000 in a taxable investment account which I invest according to the Permanent Portfolio asset allocation (25% Equities, 25% LT Bonds, 25% Gold, 25% Cash).. the cash portion of this (about $10,000) is my emergency fund. I also have about $10,000 in my retirement accounts. I currently have no debt.
I work in Finance but only make a little over $40,000 a year (yeah, it's probably an outlier.) I started working in 2010 and my salary hasn't increased much since then. I live on about $1200-1800 a month and save the rest of my paychecks (basically about 30% to 50% of my take home pay.) Also I've not been able to find a new job despite continual efforts since 2012 (although I still have this job, it's not paying very well and there's little room for advancement.)
Back in 2009, I graduated with a Masters in Finance. Don't mean to whine or anything but the timing could not have been any worse. I had about $10,000 in savings at the time and I pulled off 50-60 hour weeks submitting my resume and looking for a job for the next 8 months.. when I finally found a job (my current one), I only had about $2000 in my account. Maybe for a person who finds new jobs easily, this isn't a big deal but it was really traumatizing near the end when I was about to run out of money and knew I had to work about twice as hard as the average person at finding a job to get the same results.
My horrifying experience desperately trying to find a job before my savings ran out in 2009-2010 plus my recent lack of success at finding a higher paying job has created a very bleak outlook for my future, at least in my mind. I feel that I need a 2+ year safety net in case one day I lose my current job and will continue to have this much difficulty in finding a new job. This has prompted me to save money like there's no tomorrow. Although saving is prudent, I the rational side of my thinks that I'm going overboard with my savings.
The rational side of my feels there's almost no doubt my "hoarding" of money has gotten out of hand but I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done to change my mindset?
I've recently been engaged my fiancee and I have been planning our wedding for early next year. The thought of paying upfront for a $5000 deposit has become too much, despite how much money I've saved. I love my future wife and would want to give her the best wedding I can reasonably afford, but I've been in a kind of crisis recently as I've almost never in my life have spent more than $2000 at a time and the thought of spending so much money at once has become paralyzing. I still drive the used car I got as a hand-me-down from my parents from 7 years ago which has close to 200,000 miles on it, so I've never had to pay for any big-ticket items yet.
Some Background:
I keep about $45,000 in a taxable investment account which I invest according to the Permanent Portfolio asset allocation (25% Equities, 25% LT Bonds, 25% Gold, 25% Cash).. the cash portion of this (about $10,000) is my emergency fund. I also have about $10,000 in my retirement accounts. I currently have no debt.
I work in Finance but only make a little over $40,000 a year (yeah, it's probably an outlier.) I started working in 2010 and my salary hasn't increased much since then. I live on about $1200-1800 a month and save the rest of my paychecks (basically about 30% to 50% of my take home pay.) Also I've not been able to find a new job despite continual efforts since 2012 (although I still have this job, it's not paying very well and there's little room for advancement.)
Back in 2009, I graduated with a Masters in Finance. Don't mean to whine or anything but the timing could not have been any worse. I had about $10,000 in savings at the time and I pulled off 50-60 hour weeks submitting my resume and looking for a job for the next 8 months.. when I finally found a job (my current one), I only had about $2000 in my account. Maybe for a person who finds new jobs easily, this isn't a big deal but it was really traumatizing near the end when I was about to run out of money and knew I had to work about twice as hard as the average person at finding a job to get the same results.
My horrifying experience desperately trying to find a job before my savings ran out in 2009-2010 plus my recent lack of success at finding a higher paying job has created a very bleak outlook for my future, at least in my mind. I feel that I need a 2+ year safety net in case one day I lose my current job and will continue to have this much difficulty in finding a new job. This has prompted me to save money like there's no tomorrow. Although saving is prudent, I the rational side of my thinks that I'm going overboard with my savings.
The rational side of my feels there's almost no doubt my "hoarding" of money has gotten out of hand but I'm wondering if there's anything that can be done to change my mindset?
