Day 3: Why Understanding Your Money Philosophy Could Save Your Marriage

Ask someone about their financial problems, and you’ll likely hear a list of issues:

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be debt-free”

“I’m sick of living paycheck to paycheck”

“We are worried we’ll outlive our retirement savings”

“If my husband (or wife) would stop spending money, we wouldn’t be so stressed all the time”

The most common financial issues that Americans face include not being able to pay medical bills, making it to the end of the month, or being unable to retire due to a lack of savings. And these concerns stretch across religious, ethnic, and gender demographics. Research has indicated that there’s not much of a difference between the way Christians spend their money, and the way the rest of the world spends their money.

Then you look at marriage. For many, mixing money and marriage is like oil and water…they just don’t go together. Try to find a couple that hasn’t ever disagreed about money.

My marriage was no different. My wife and I spent 21 years of our marriage in disagreement about money. We had arguments, ongoing stress, and made mistakes because I didn’t agree with her and she didn’t agree with me. I was the spender, she was the saver. We loved each other but were far from being unified when it came to our finances.

So why is it that when it comes to money in marriage, we have such a hard time getting on the same page?

Well, in a word: Philosophy.

If you had told me during those first 21 years of my marriage that my wife and I need to talk about “philosophy” to get on the same page about our money, I would have rolled my eyes and shrugged it off. “Philosophy” was just something stuffy old professors cared about and it didn’t apply to me, my marriage, or my money.

The turning point in our marriage came when my wife lovingly convinced me to join a Crown Bible study. Talking about my marriage and finances in a group of other people sounded like just about the worst thing I could think of, but I went. And things started to change. One day, my wife gently asked me, “Do you agree with God’s teaching on money?” I said, “Yes. I agree with God.” She then said, “Good! If you agree with God, then I can agree with you!”

We quit competing about our preferences and started unifying under God’s plan.

See, whether or not we know it, each of us has a philosophy about money. It’s not necessarily some lofty, theological mindset that sounds like it came out of a graduate seminar. It’s a compilation of our thoughts, ideas, plans, dreams, concepts, beliefs, and principles that together dictate our actions.

God designed us to act upon what we believe. So if we believe the wrong things about money, we are bound to behave wrongly as well. But, if we believe the right things about God, His plan, and His purpose for our marriage and finances, it will change everything.

Stated another way, the problem is not how much money you make, what’s in your savings account, or the amount of debt you have. Those are your behaviors that are a result of your beliefs. The problem is the financial lies you believe. Disunity with your spouse occurs because you’re treating the wrong thing. You’re trying to put a bandaid on a broken leg, and it’s never going to fix the real problem.

Healing happens when you align your philosophy with one another and Scripture. When you and your spouse start speaking the same language. When you start prioritizing the same things. It’s no longer an attitude of “I’m right, and she’s wrong”. It’s “This is what the Bible says, and we are going to agree to live our lives according to this truth.”

To experience lasting change, we must embrace the truth of a new belief, then act upon it to change our behaviors.

As it says in Proverbs, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it”.