Family and Finances: Episode 10, Part 2

have in the past 10? Did we ever get a... You always say that. I don't think we had that many. Maybe we did. Six. It was a lot. And part of it was I kind of had my credit cards and you had yours and then we'd look at the bills and go, "Oh my goodness, what have we done to ourselves?" I mean, you never hardly spin anything on yours. I would run mine up and then want to use yours. But they were always joint accounts. They weren't in my name or your name. And so our credit score was tied together. In other words, if we weren't talking about this, our credit score was going to suffer mutually. We always borrowed money and jointly when we would make a loan and we always knew that our credit scores would be mutually impacted, so we'd had to do this better. I think having one credit card simplified our life. Having everything unified, simplified it, I thought, from the very beginning. Yeah. We started out that way. But then we got rid of all those credit cards and went down to one. And then ultimately we now talk mostly about investing and we have to agree on that. And giving. Well, yes, and are a giving. So to me, the first step in getting unified is to put everything together. So there's no hiding and there's no temptation. And you just have to be vulnerable and you have to agree that you're a pliable, moldable person.

You know, a lot of guys are just stubborn, like they just want their way. I mean, that's what the Bible says, causes, fights and quarrels is you want your own way. And when you say, we're going to do this together, you have to give up on some of your stubbornness. Well, I was just blessed to hear what one couple's doing on staff. He puts his money in the checking account and hers goes directly into their savings account. I just think that's beautiful to start off a marriage like that. Well, and it doesn't mean that your accounts have to be joint, it just means you need mutual access. Well, there was her joint. But even if she had one or he had one, it's okay as long as you can both see each others. I can see where somebody has an account that it's tied to their work and the money's going directly there. That's not the issue. It necessarily is a technical part of it. It's the spirit of it that we're both going to be transparent. I think secondly, it's really important that we don't get into the idea that it's her money or his money. I get asked that all the time. I get asked, well, it's, you know, we disagree on what we're going to do with her money. Well, how did we resolve that, you remember? I didn't have any money. I don't know. We agree it was God's money. Oh, that's true. And if it's God's money, then we'd stop talking about, you had a job and you put money in the bank. And so when it became God's money, we quit looking at it as I have to talk to you about what I want to do with yours. And if it's God's money, then we managed it jointly.

Well, I think our whole mindset was we became one in everything. Right. Two shall become one. And I think by trusting each other with our finances, that helps you. So you're one completely. There's nothing held back. Another thing that helped us to stop being divided is when we disagreed, which was often we learned to ask each other why, like what was behind that, so that we got into the issues of not just the mechanics of the money, we're going to move $20 here or $50 there, but we would start to explain our philosophy. Why do we want to do that? So for instance, I'm going to give an example on you and maybe you can think of one of me, but you like to say no when I want to buy stuff. And sometimes I would not understand why. And I'm not saying all the time, but when you would say no, let me be softer about that. When you would say no, I could tell you didn't like that. When you would say no, I thought sometimes it was just because you just didn't want to spend the money and weren't thinking how bad I wanted it. What I found out is that your philosophy was you prefer to save for the future instead spend everything right now. And that taught me If I hadn't have asked you, it would have just been an irritation. But when I realized it was a bigger reason, it was a bigger purpose, that allowed us to start thinking the same way. Well, and then working within the parameters of a budget, you know, I didn't mind if you wanted something, but could you wait just one week? You know, put us over to the next paycheck. Well, and then you would say, you may not want it in a week. And maybe you'll forget about it by then. And sometimes I would, and that worked.

And then when it came to giving, we agreed philosophically that the Bible said it's better to give than to receive, so we would make giving our top priority. What that did for us is we quit asking each other, do you want to give? We quit asking each other, should we give? We quit asking each other, you know, the question that creating that tension in our marriage, and it became how much and when? So we'd each come up with a number, we'd, you know, ask the Lord how much we should give, and 90% of the time we had the same number. Yeah, we would be in agreement on that. I would tell you, I get a lot of questions from couples where this is the big divider, especially when they're not both Christians. And more often than not, the wife writes and says, I'm the Christian of family. I want to tie, I've got my own income, my husband says no. What do I do? And I always give them the advice that they should not tie until their husband agrees. And ask the husband what he would agree to in some amount if she wants to start giving. And I've seen it a couple of times and where the husband comes back and says, "Well, if you're asking me, here's what I would do." And he starts to appreciate the idea that he's included in that decision. Now sometimes they say no, I'm not going to do it. But I think it's more important to preserve the relationship than for her to treat that money like her own and just start giving. I think God understands that tension. It's that crazy cycle. She's got to honor him first, honor her husband. Right. We've seen when a woman honors her husband's opinion. And by the way, that idea of being respected, a man loves to be asked his opinion. And you've seen that.

And we're asked our opinion. We are much more flexible than when we're told what to do. Or when we're corrected or criticized. That's when we tend to resist. And that breaks unity in the relationship. And we've seen that multiple times in friends, couples we've known who have divorced. Yes. Where a woman will not, absolutely will not give her husband the respect he deserves. Yeah, I've had a friend that they were successful financially. But he will tell you that he got corrected so often that it wore him out emotionally. And their marriage didn't survive that. From constant correction, whatever decision he made, he would be corrected. And I think that's one of the reasons that this issue is so important because you can criticize each other over your financial decisions almost every day, over something. You know, I'm terrible about shopping for groceries. From the standpoint of you ask me four things, and when I come home, it's either wasn't on sale. It's not the brand that we normally buy. It's salted or unsalted butter. I'm still not sure which one of those I'm supposed to get. And there's stuff to criticize me for. And I'm trying not to do that. No, you're not. You're not. You're not. But what I'm saying is it's easy to do every day, and we have to recognize that. And I think for us, we began to appreciate our differences. And now we're becoming more like each other, where we used to be so dramatically opposite. It's funny to me now to think about how blended we are like today. Tell us what happened today at lunch.

Well, I'm trying to think. You just read an article about people that were working in the food business. Oh, yeah. We had an older waitress, and I said, "We need to give her a good tip." we were almost exactly in agreement on how - Getting her much more than she would have expected. - Yeah, almost more than her lunch cost. And I thought, oh, and have fun. And we were both thinking kind of the same thing. And the two are becoming more like one. And it's been such a blessing to stay unified and to be in that path where God's word has brought two complete opposites together in unity. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)