A few years ago my DH was not unlike yours
All he talked about was saving for our future, retirement, pay off the mortgage, blah blah blah is all I hear. In our marriage he is the responsible numbers guy
I am more the cross the bridge when I get there and figure it as I go along half of this couple
Opposites attract or so they say
DH did not want to take vacations and saw them as a waste of money that should be saved instead
Ok this isn't going to fly... I need to come up with a plan
I finally sat him down and asked him if he had an absolute 100% guarantee that he was going to make it to retirement and never, ever get hit by a bus, struck by lightning or slip in the shower and crack his head wide open and spend the rest of his days as a vegetable
so with the trap wide open, he of course steps right in and he looks at me dumbfounded and says, "Well of course not, no one knows what the future holds." At this point I can literally hear the SNAP and I've got him right where I want him
I told him he was right, this is somehting my DH doesn't hear too often from me
So, I said, "What if one of those things happens tommorrow, next week or next year? The unthinkable happened and now you're dead and your seeing you life before your eyes...what do you see besides work? Did you enjoy your life, get to do fun things, spend quality time with those you love? Was all work and no play worth it in the end? Or better yet... why don't you explain to me in detail exactly how stupid you would feel at that very moment?"
DH looked at me with a rather shocked expression and simply said, "You're right." Come to think of it I don't hear that as often as I'd like
Thus began the yearly trips to Disney World which was easy enough to convince him to do since we live in Florida and can drive there.
Now, we began by staying only at values and sometimes moderates with FL resident rates. We would go yearly with friends and one year our friends decided to rent
DVC points for a 2 bdrm at SSR. I'd never heard of DVC at that time. I saw the offer in our room to take a tour. I wanted to learn more about DVC and take the tour DH wasn't having it and wanted no parts of it. I went without him. Well of course I thought DVC was the coolest thing ever!
When I got back to tell him about it he completely tuned me out
and said, "I don't want to hear it were not buying it." You'd think after all these years he would have figured out you don't tune out Latin girls we just get louder and louder until you pay attention
He's Asian, very quiet in his culture
here we go with the opposites thing again. But I digress, this time rather than set a trap I figured it would make more sense to speak to him in his own language... NUMBERS. It took me two months of researching on the DIS
and scouring the internet for DVC ownership horror stories (didn't find any) and finally...sitting down with him and doing the numbers. We looked at our method of travel and accommodations ( a couple times a year 4-5 nights each) staying at values and moderates with FL discount over 20 years taking in account the rate of inflation and rise of hotel costs over that time. Then compared it to the cost of ownership, plus dues increasing their max each year over 20 years. It made sense to buy DVC and he had to agree becasue the numbers don't lie
So now we are DVC owners and DH talks about adding on...one day...my how far we've come. He loves and looks forward to each and every trip and gets just as excited as I do! We still have the same furniture we've had since we bought our house 10 years ago...but we are going to WDW this year and even to the
D23 Expo next week. I'll choose my battles accordingly and the furniture can wait...for now
