Newlyweds want a house and baby (in 5 years)...

Meet Samantha and Michael. He was a twenty-something bartender fresh off the plane from Ireland. She had recently left the Ivy League and was working in the art world. Who would have thought they'd last? Get married? Have more than a dozen credit cards between them...

Wedding Date: October 23, 1999 

Wedding Cost: Don't ask (her dad paid for it).

The Ring: $13,000 (Michael took out a loan).

Michael: The wedding was somewhat strange for me. It's a big cultural difference. In Ireland, people pay for it themselves. I would never rely on my parents for money. 

Samantha: When I was growing up, my mom looked at money like, you splurge, you enjoy it. I never learned to put anything in a saving account.

Michael: My parents don't enjoy money. 

Samantha: That's why you left Ireland. Because you don't want to save for heaven.

Samantha: We met with this financial planner lady after we got married. She scared us. I felt she was trying to pitch her products.

Michael: She had her own agenda, I think. 

Samantha: Anyway, we ended up taking a relative's advice and putting almost all our wedding money in tech stocks. 

Michael: About a week later the market went down. 

Samantha: He still watches our stocks every day. I stopped watching because I was getting sick to my stomach. 

Michael: Sometimes I flake out and leave the bills on the coffee table. 

Samantha: I swear that when I saw my credit report, I absolutely thought that someone stole my Social Security number and opened all these accounts in my name. I did not remember half of them.