Marriage is a great teacher. This post gives 16 hard-earned money lessons from my sixteen-year marriage to the best bride in the world …
We just celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary a bit ago.
I hardly can believe how quickly the time's gone (and it seems to just be going faster)!
I've certainly grown up a lot about how I interact with my wife regarding money (as has she). Here are sixteen money lessons I've learned over the past sixteen years married to the best woman in the world:
1. Money can cause really bad fights.
If you're married, or even if you're just starting in a relationship, this isn't surprising at all.
At the beginning of our marriage, I was really bad about letting things build up to the point when something money-related — anything, really — would set off a giant argument. It really looked like it came out of nowhere from her perspective.
What I've learned to do is talk about things sooner so that my thoughts don't come down on her like an avalanche. Or, at least, I've gotten better about not digging up the past when we do disagree.
2. Money matters get more complicated.
Some things get easier with marriage.
Money isn't one of them.
Getting married is a new step in complexity. Having a child introduces more complexity and more expenses.
Things break and need maintenance. We break and need maintenance.
And that's if things go well!
Get into a car wreck, a serious illness, a lawsuit, or job loss, and then things get really complicated.
3. Talking about money does wonders.
The sooner and more often, the better.
We run over the budget at least once a month, usually more often.
If one of us is planning a purchase of about $50 or more, we nearly always discuss it beforehand.
Getting things out in the open reduces the uncertainty in each others' motives, and though it might create more stress initially, it's far better to talk about it than to keep it a secret. Secrets in a marriage in general are a killer. (Not that I ever have a chance of hiding anything for very long anyway!)
4. Money decisions aren't always about money.
Sometimes money decisions come out of boredom, anger, or fear.
Communication isn't just about talking. It's also about listening.
Listening to figure out the real reason for an off-the-wall suggestion. Listening to understand the reasons behind the whys and why-nots about money decisions.
5. Budgeting is an essential money lesson.
No, really. It is.
We've tried going without one, and without fail we've been amazed at how quickly our money left our checking account when we weren't looking.
We took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University course, and one of the first lessons was about budgeting:
- Give a name to every dollar. Decide what each dollar is going to do before the month begins.
- Follow the budget. Work through it. Every time it will get a bit easier.
- We continue doing this for the rest of our lives. Eventually, I tell myself, it will be fun.
Right now, we're not high-tech with our budget. It's mostly pen and paper. But we're sticking with it, and it works.
6. We think about money differently, and that's OK.
Seeing money matters from different angles helps to reduce blind spots.
Listening to one another and striving to understand where they're coming from naturally results in better money decisions, mainly because one partner may see something the other is missing.
7. We've learned more that money is a means, not an end.
At least from my standpoint, marriage has made me more generous.
Being in a relationship has taken the focus off of myself and my needs to something better.
Being less tight-fisted with money has a counterintuitive effect: More seems to come in to replace it, and then some.
8. Money mistakes are water under the bridge.
As I mentioned before, money can cause really bad fights.
I still occasionally dig up a bonehead money maneuver that one of us made, but far less than I used to.
When there's a disagreement about money — or anything else, really! — it's best to stick to the matter at hand and not rehash history.
Money can be replaced. It's not the end of the world if we spend $100 more than we needed to on something. And even better: It's best to learn the lesson and forget about it so it doesn't come up again in the heat of an argument.
9. Gifts don't have to be expensive.
My wife and I bought into the marriage a while ago. We've both won.
We don't need to lavish gifts on one another because we both know what's important to the other.
I get so much mileage out of giving her Walmart flowers at random times. They're four bucks!
My wife even arranges them when I get them for her! Here's how she does it.
I'm fine with some Goetze's caramels or something similar. (Not five pounds at a time, though; I don't need that O_o)
10. Automation has saved our hides many times.
As we've been married longer and have more things going on (both individually, together, and with our daughter), we need to manage the chaos.
Having as much as humanly possible on automatic pilot has kept us sane, and helped us to maintain good financial standing.
This includes automatic bill payment, automatic savings, automatic retirement contributions, and so forth.
Although the financial picture gets more complicated, the mechanics don't have to get that much more complicated.
11. But at the same time, pencil and paper work well for budgeting.
I said earlier that budgeting is essential.
Your mileage may vary on this one, but we've had the best success with a mostly low-tech budgeting system.
There really is something to printing out a budget and going over it together at a table, rather than staring at a computer screen. (Here's how we do it.)
And just writing things down is easy enough. No waiting for the computer to boot up again.
12. Stability of income becomes more important.
It's a much harder sell to make a wholesale career change, or go all-in on a business venture, after being married for a while.
The costs are much higher if something goes wrong. (It's about even odds that a small business will be around after five years.)
We took a couple of relatively risky moves earlier in our marriage and lost a few thousand each time. We're far more conservative now.
And it goes without saying that I'm very, very interested in keeping my day job right now.
13. Getting older is real. This requires money.
Clay Shirky quipped in his book Cognitive Surplus that “[his] average age has grown at the alarming rate of one year per year …”
It happens. Alarmingly, my wife and I are each sixteen years older than we were when we got married.
When a windstorm ripped a few pieces of siding loose from our house, we decided to have someone climb the ladder to fix them. I'm barely steady on a ladder these days, and my wife is starting to get that way, too.
I'm glad there are still a lot of things that we can still do ourselves, but getting help with some riskier or more physically-demanding tasks is costs us more than it used to.
14. Acquiring stuff is a passing fad.
In the earlier years of our marriage, we hit estate auctions with gusto. We got an incredible amount of Really Cool Stuff for almost nothing.
I had in mind to resell the items that came with the things that we actually wanted, but only a part of that stuff actually got sold, and it just started to pile up in boxes.
More recently, we're getting better about (a) not buying all of that stuff and (b) taking stock of what we have and downsizing.
15. Having a help mate saves money (and time).
There are pros and cons to everything but it sure is nice to have an extra set of hands, an extra person to drive, and an extra person to split the work.
For most things, it's not essential to have a spouse, but it is far easier.
Prior to getting married, I had some very good friends — far better friends than I deserved at the time. As good as those friendships were, though, they can't hold a candle to the relationship I have with my wife, and the dedication in that relationship.
16. There are things far more important than money.
As important as money is in a relationship, love, forgiveness, respect, grace, laughter, and commitment are far more important.
The money can come and go, but it's the relationship with God and with each other, that will endure.
