I’m writing a book and would be grateful for your help.
The book is about money and marriage. More specifically, it’s for engaged and newly married couples, with guidance on establishing a biblically informed approach to money in their marriage.
Throughout the book, I plan to drop in nuggets of wisdom from couples who have anywhere from five to 50 (or more) years of marriage under their belt — ways of using money that they have found beneficial. If you could sit down with a young couple and give them one bit of financial advice that will serve their marriage well, what would you say? I’ll go first.
When my wife and I were engaged, the pastor leading our pre-marital counseling sessions encouraged us to build our lifestyle on what we could afford on just one of our incomes. We had agreed that if we were blessed with children, we would want my wife to be able to be home full-time, at least while the kids were young.
The pastor explained that living on one income will be a lot easier if we never get used to living on two. So that’s what we did. We gave off of our combined income and then used what remained of hers to save, invest, and do some traveling.
After renting an apartment for the first 10 months of our marriage, we bought a condo that we could afford on just my income. It wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but we could cover the mortgage, insurance, and taxes — while also being able to give, save, and invest — on my income alone.
And just as that pastor said, when we had our first child four years later, it was relatively easy to make the change from a two-income household to a one-income household. We’re very thankful for his advice.
What about you? What financial habit or practice has served your marriage especially well? It could be something related to earning, planning, giving, saving, borrowing, investing, insuring, or spending.
Or it could be about agreeing early in your marriage on the values that would guide your use of money, or about the financial goals you would pursue.
It could be something you established right at the start of your marriage, or it could be something you came to through trial and error.
Okay, it’s your turn. What would you say?
