Handling finances — a perspective

Post on 4 September, 2019 by Dallin Malmgren

What is the num­ber one source of stress in a mar­riage? Raise your hand if you said mon­ey. Not only do I think you’re right, I think you’re most­ly right no mat­ter how much mon­ey the cou­ple makes. (Okay, maybe LeBron and Tiger don’t stress about it.) For being such an impor­tant fac­tor in a mar­riage, I won­der why we don’t give it more thought. Wor­ry­ing is not think­ing. Some of my biggest regrets in my mar­riage have to do with how I han­dled mon­ey. So much anx­i­ety, so lit­tle faith.

A word about the nature of $ — it is the most insid­i­ous of all our temp­ta­tions, because most of the time we don’t even real­ize it is work­ing on us. The unveil­ing of lust is pret­ty obvious—someone stirs you, and if you allow, you begin walk­ing down that path—you know where you are going (no mat­ter how hard you deny it to your­self). But when I say I don’t want to go out to eat and I real­ly don’t want to spend the money…that’s a pret­ty easy lie to sell myself and oth­ers. Mon­ey is the devil’s num­ber one go-to; even sex comes sec­ond. The desire is universal–have you seen those lines when the lot­tery goes high? 

But I was a hip­pie. When the run­ning down the road was over, and I had a wife and a child and no career, I knew I had a choice to make. I could go for mak­ing mon­ey or learn to be hap­py with less. I chose the lat­ter because pur­su­ing mon­ey was dis­taste­ful to me (peo­ple used to tell me I would make a good salesman)—but I would not say uni­lat­er­al­ly it was the best choice. The Bea­t­les did it to me—they had mon­ey and they said, “All you need is love.”

So Karen and I were mar­ried, and we were dirt poor, and oh my good­ness, what a stres­sor that was! It got so bad that Karen took over the check­book and the bills for a peri­od of time. I think it might have last­ed over a year. I took over again when she start­ed work­ing out­side the home. I have offered the job back many times—she is not interested.

Sev­er­al cou­ples who are very close to us keep sep­a­rate finances. I would not judge. This is why our atti­tudes about mon­ey must be transparent—marriage has to begin as an aware­ness of equal foot­ing. Where those feet are placed is each couple’s own choice. The same goes for pre-nup­tial agreements—let the two who are sup­posed to become one deter­mine their own finan­cial arrange­ment. The only flag I’m rais­ing says: this is an impor­tant factor—make sure you are in harmony.

All of us have prob­a­bly wit­nessed (if not expe­ri­enced) the effects that bad finances have on a fam­i­ly. Every­thing becomes pre­car­i­ous. Uncer­tain­ty per­vades the house. The stress fac­tor goes bal­lis­tic. Opti­mism is con­front­ed by real­i­ty. Lies are told. The fam­i­ly tip­toes for­ward. (There is a won­der­ful sto­ry by D.H. Lawrence called The Rock­ing Horse Win­ner that exam­ines the famil­ial effects of finan­cial stress.) The out­come is sel­dom uplifting.

There are count­less cas­es of finan­cial cat­a­stro­phe, which I am con­ve­nient­ly ignor­ing. Not because I am unsym­pa­thet­ic. I saw a sto­ry on the news yes­ter­day about a Wis­con­sin man whose gen­er­a­tional fam­i­ly farm was going under—and cer­tain­ly not because of a lack of hard work. The man admit­ted to being sui­ci­dal. Then there are ill­ness­es, acci­dents, dis­as­ters, betray­als, rever­sals, and on and on. I’m not address­ing them because I lack the wis­dom. I don’t know how to process the many sources of tragedy and sadness—the best solu­tion I can come up with so far is prayer.

Speak­ing of, our obses­sion with mon­ey has a par­a­lyt­ic effect on spir­i­tu­al growth. Every­thing becomes a nego­ti­a­tion: how much do we want it ver­sus can we afford it? The “want” side seems to be the more fre­quent win­ner. That is called Debt. Debt is a searcher who seeks to suck the vital­i­ty out of your liveli­hood and then goes for the soul. He is an agent of the dev­il. Over time Debt grinds you like branch­es in a wood chipper.

But if you stay on top of it…there is this won­der­ful, nir­van­ic place called RETIREMENT. You don’t have to be wealthy—you just have to be secure. You want to help your chil­dren. You don’t need a lot for yourself…I could play Peb­ble or I could play Plan­ta­tion (my home course)…is there real­ly that much dif­fer­ence if I am enjoy­ing myself? The rest is gloss.

So how do you get a han­dle on mon­ey? Don’t think that it doesn’t matter—just be wise in how it mat­ters to you. Do not ever equate it with hap­pi­ness or peace or serenity…put it in the right perspective…another tool to advance your growth. Thank You, Lord, for money.

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