I did a bit of research on the Philippine culture before i married my wife, so that i had a bit of an understanding of what i was getting myself into right from the start. So i understood up front right at the beginning what i would have to put up with in order to keep our house happy.
So shortly after my wife arrived here in Canada i made a deal with my wife. In order for her to send money home she would have to go to work. We could not afford to send anything living on my paycheck alone. She would have to get a job. After that she had two options. She could send home one paycheck per month (we are both on bi-weekly so we only get two checks each per month) and we keep the other for ourselves, or she could send home her pay for one month and we keep the next month, and just keep rotating. I asked her to pick one. And this was not dictated to her, we arrived at these choices after we sat down and talked about what she planned to do about money after she arrived here. I brought up the subjest to her about sending the money home. She was thinking about it but at the time was too shy to broach the subject with me in case i would get mad. She was soooo relieved when i brought up the subject. That's what doing a little research will do for you guy's.
On my part, i promised myself that as long as she didn't try changing the bargain without my knowledge then i would NEVER complain about her sending the money.
We ended up going with the one month sending home and one month keeping for our own expenses.
After you get that settled you have to decide on for how long this will go on for. We settled on three years. With her working we were going to hold off on her getting pregnant for three years and she could send her money home for that period, without any complaint from me. At the end of three years she would be done and we would start worrying about starting and taking care of our own family.
It has been approx 2 1/2 years for us and money was never an issue. But what happened is my wife got pregnant. So that threw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. We had to push the date up a bit for when we stopped sending money home. We decided to make up the difference of the lost 6 months to come by sending that balance home at christmas time. It worked for us as december was a 3 pay month for the both of us. With all of that we send one big check and we were done. Now it was up to her parents to do the best with it. The are starting a business with the final lump sum we sent. My wife is fully in agreement with me that we kept our agreement in sneding money and now we keep our agreement in not sending money. The family was made aware that unless it is an absolute emergency (medical only) we ware finished. They now have to make it on their own. She helped her family tremendously (she cleared $1100.00 per paycheck) over the past three years. Now we look after ourselves. We now have our own baby on the way that we have to start planning for. So far my wife has been in complete agreement. I think it helped greatly laying out some ground rules right from the beginning. And that was all because of a little bit of cultural research on my part before she came here. You HAVE to know what is important to your new spouse. Especially if she is from a different culture than you. Learn it up front guy's, and eliminate a LOT of issues before they can start. Because you can take it from me, money issues will ruin your marriage more than anything else. So learn what you can live with first, and THEN sit down and YOU bring up the subject with her as soon as she gets there. It will show her that you care enough about her and her worries beforehand and stop the troubles later.
Good luck with your life with your new Bride's, whichever culture they are from. But learn that culture guy's. Beforehand.
