Relationships and Money

Before I write more about budgeting, or the Allocated Spending Plan, I feel it's important to write about how money affects marriage and family life, and our marriage in particular.

The other day when I was telling a group of my friends about the class George and I are taking, Financial Peace University, one of the first reactions was this disbelief that we would do this together. Disbelief, or maybe, envy. It would be so nice if my husband and I were on the same page with money, someone said. It would be so nice if we could communicate about money in a healthy way, in other words.

And that is one great thing about Financial Peace University, and probably the biggest reason we finally took the class rather than trying to work the program on our own (or, in our case, on my own since I'm the one who had the strong interest and deals with our finances the most).

I love my husband. Another question that came up with this same group of friends, on the same night, was "Are you in love with your husband or do you love him?" (We talk a lot, and deeply, you might guess.) Right away I knew my answer was--both! I didn't really say that out loud because I almost felt bad that the answer came so easily to me and it didn't for others.

I am in love with George. I admire him. I think he's brilliant and talented and beautiful. When he plays his flute in front of an audience or church congregation, I am sitting there the whole time brimming with as much pride as I would feel if it were one of our kids up there. He's really good at what he does, and he has such passion for it. I'm sure I married him for that reason--his passion--and it's what keeps me in love with him today.
George is so good to me. But, he is a free spirit. His approach to many things in life seems to be to say: "Bills? What are bills?' or "Time? What is time?"

In our marriage, I am the nerd. I want to plan things out (not everything, I hate planning our social life or vacations too far ahead). But for life in general, I want to know what's coming, what needs to be done, and I will have a near heart attack if I'm late whether it's for dinner or paying a bill.

Lucky for us, Dave Ramsey talks about the nerd and the free spirit in the second class of FPU, entitled "Relating With Money". It made us realize, this kind of set-up is extremely common in marriages. Opposites attract, right? This can, obviously, cause a lot of friction and does in so many families. Money is said to be the number one cause of marital arguments, family stress, and even divorce.

But opposites, if they're intentional about it (and when they're still in love and/or love each other), can also be complementary and helpful to each other. Opposites can work together.

For years I have wanted George to be more involved with paying bills and knowing where our money goes. He always felt bad that he wasn't. We tried various things, like splitting up the bills so we would each pay different ones, separate checking accounts, etc. Nothing worked. At all. Even for a month. (Get what I'm saying?) George didn't have debt before our marriage, but he'll admit he was just never good with money or planning or keeping track of stuff.

But he is certainly not the only reason we are in debt and need to get our finances in better shape. It takes two, right?

The nerd can often be the spender. Where George the free spirit hardly thinks about a new pair of shoes or some shirts for work, I the nerd feel I have to have something decent for any occasion. I don't want to stick out in a bad way (or even in good ways, truth be told). If something comes up, I will go get what's needed whether we have the cash or not. I often feel entitled to live a certain lifestyle because of our age, our hard work, and our level of education. That is a stupid thing to admit, isn't it?!

We have taken trips across country that we didn't have the money for, and it's usually me pushing it because we HAVE to visit family. We have bought cars that were more expensive than what we could pay cash for, because I am terribly worried about reliability and safety on the road.

And George has often gone along with it, or been oblivious. Oh, he's stopped many a purchase with his uncanny ability to see things I don't. Like, that a bigger loan just because we can "afford" the payments still means we are in deeper debt. But the truth is, both of us have made mistakes and both of us have needed to work together to do things differently.

I have long been crying out for a program like this, and one that we can work together. Because of our class, we are now sitting down at the end of each month to plan for the next month's income and expenses. Some unexpected expenses will still pop up so we'll need to be flexible, but just having this budget meeting every month is feeling so good. Last month when we planned for March we sat down at a coffee shop and made it a "fun" morning out. This weekend we'll plan for April's spending plan and I'm actually looking forward to it.

As the "nerd", I'll still do the organizing and paperwork because that's my strength and that's okay. But I need George's input and intelligence on these matters, and finally we have a plan and a way to make that happen on a regular basis. Can budget meetings actually be "fun"? We're going to try!