262 : Share A Calendar

Some advice given to me by a fellow divorcé friend was to set up a shared google calendar.  I wasn't sure at first that this would be necessary for my Ex and I.  We knew what our settlement agreement stated.  We both were "flexible" when we needed to be.  But then one day, I began to think about all the positive aspects of sharing the calendar and decided to move forward with it.  As a planner,  I liked to know what was ahead of me.  So I mapped out all our weekends for the next year.  This alone was awesome.  It was only January, but I could see what weekends I was without kids all the way in August in case I wanted to take a trip or make plans.  (I hadn't done this yet, but the fact that I COULD was incredible).  I also added the boys upcoming doctor appointments.  So now instead of having to call or text my Ex to share this information, I just added it to the calendar.  It's not like he ever attended these, but that was on him.  I would continue providing the dates no matter what.  I was already a believer in the calendar for those reasons alone.  And then there was the money situation.  There was a lot of exchanging of money for my Ex and I.  Or rather, there was a lot of money that he owed me.  Constantly.  Yes, the child support was directly taken out of his check, so this was never something I needed to track.  It came out every other friday, and the following Thursday it was deposited into my account.  The rest of the money was more challenging though.  He owed me money for our nanny.  He owed me money for school.  He owed me half of any activities (which I had graciously let go of for now, because he simply did not have it).  He owed me money for half of any medical bills.  And finally he owed me money for spousal support.  It's a lot to track even as I'm just listing it in this post.  He was not good at communicating with me the status of the money.  So if something was due on the 15th (the school payment for instance, which was automatically taken from me account), I'd go all day without hearing from him- no proactive message about why the money might be late or status or anything.  Just no word.  So I would end up having to ask for the money.  I hated this part.  I will say that again.  I hated having to ask for the money.  It almost made me more mad to ask for it than to just not get the money.  So that was when I decided to document all the financial exchanges for both of us.  I noted when payments were due and how much they were on our shared calendar.  Yes, my Ex should have had this information, but I wanted something for us both to reference.  He acted appreciative when I put it all on there, although it didn't change things.  I still always had to ask for the money but at least I had something to track with.  We had an agreement, I would continue to follow it.  And the calendar was just one more tool to help me get there.