When my husband and I were first married we fought over money
regularly. We had opposing ideas about how to best manage our finances.
We both grew up in families who lived in the lower middle class and at
times below the poverty level. My husband and I both knew we wanted to
have a better lifestyle than our families but since we had not seen a
stable financial lifestyle modeled to us by our parents, we were
clueless about how to go about achieving our goal. Each of us brought a
different perspective on how to manage our finances. Bernard Poduska
says in his book, Till Death Do Us Part, "In a way, each person's family
of origin is like a 'village' that supplies the rules brought to the
marriage-rules that tend to bias perceptions and govern behavior." We
definitely brought different rules taught to us by our parents and
somehow we had to work these differences out.
At one point,
several years into our marriage, our arguments had become so heated and
regular that I considered divorce. I was tired of having the same
battles over money and feeling like our finances were spiraling out of
control. My husband and I were lying to ourselves about the financial
state we were in and it felt like there was no end to our financial
woes. I could not continue to live like this and told my husband it was
time to us to sit down and be honest about our money situation. It was
time to us to face our financial truths together and do something to fix
them.
I am a saver and my husband is a spender and since he
controlled the money I felt powerless to change anything. I shared this
consideration of divorce with my husband and thankfully we were able to
recognize the magnitude of our financial distress. We decided to turn it
around. It took us literally five years of barely scraping by, living
paycheck to paycheck, consolidating our debt and using all our resources
to pay off all our credit. Along the way we learned some very valuable
lessons and salvaged our marriage.
As I look back on those
stressful and frustrating times I am thankful for the lessons we learned
about sacrifice, selflessness, working toward a common goal, and
compromise. I am thankful for the strength and unity my husband and I
have gained from communicating about our money matters and working
together to mend our ways. We have been blessed by the decision to get
out of debt and stay out as we have been instructed to do by the
Prophets and Apostles.
President Hinckley said, "I urge you to look to
the condition of your finances. I urge you to be modest in your
expenditures, discipline yourselves in your purchases to avoid debt to
the extent possible. Pay off debt as quickly as you can, and free
yourselves from bondage." I am thankful for the lessons I have learned
about how to work together with my husband to solve our major issues and
I am thankful to say that we rarely, if ever, fight about money matters
at this stage in our marriage.
