Choosing Your Spouse Over Money

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Hey guys. Welcome to the Naked Marriage podcast. We are so excited to have you here. We are Dave and Ashley Willis, and on this podcast we undress the truth about Sex, Intimacy and Lifelong Love. We got a great topic today talking about financial issues, which can be a huge issue in marriage for good or for bad. And then stick around to the end. We do a Q and A time at the end of every episode and today's question is a great one. But first, Ashley wants to share a recent review.

That's right. This review is from Quickshadow 94. It says Dave and Ashley are great podcasters and give great Christian advice. It is so awesome to listen to them. Their topics and points of view have really started making me think of how to improve my marriage. My wife had me listen to one of their later podcasts first, but I had to go back and start at the beginning. I eagerly wait for new for each new episode and the realness they bring. My wife and I talk about the lessons y' all talk about and the advice and try to apply it to our lives. I definitely recommend this for couples, whether they are having problems or not, as well as singles for their great, wholesome advice. Thank you so much. Quickshadow94. You know, I just love hearing what you guys get from this podcast because it really keeps us going. We want to make it about what you're really dealing with. And so, you know, one thing we've added to the end of our podcast is addressing some of your real questions and so you can submit those@nakedmarriagepodcast.com and we can't wait to dive into today's episode.

Hey, we're talking about money, guys. And it is. It's a big issue. This is a big issue. We get a lot of messages about finances and financial stress in marriage, and the way that a couple approaches money is a huge determining factor on the amount of peace they're going to have in their home. In fact, money and financial stress has been listed in some recent data, we've seen as the number two or number three reason given for divorce. So people will divorce each other over financial stress, which is always ironic to me, because there's nothing that'll ruin your finances faster than a divorce. It will take your finances from bad to worse. But getting on the same page as it relates to money is huge. And so we're going to talk some about that today. We are not financial coaches, we are not investment gurus, but we want to talk about some basic sound principles that are going to help you communicate better on these issues, realign your finances, and really bring more peace to the situation, as well as pointing you to some resources that have helped us in this area. Because we were in a financial message.

Early in our marriage that's so right. Like, we had to learn a lot because we got married really young. I mean, I was 20, Dave was 22. Dave graduated college, Georgetown college.

Woo.

Go Tigers. And, like, he graduated one weekend, we got married the next weekend. And then it was like, okay, you're married.

Yay.

And we. We didn't have a lot of money, first of all.

No, we were. We had less than.

Not a lot.

We were broke.

We were barely making it. I was still in school, so I'm still going to school, so I wasn't really bringing in much of an income. I think I had a little internship then, but, you know, we didn't have a lot. And at that time, we really misunderstood. Credit cards.

I thought it was the same as cash.

It, like, got us into trouble.

You're gonna give me this card and I can go buy stuff with it, like, whatever I want. Yes. And then we realized the things like interest and payments, and before we knew it, like, we were just way over our head. And this insurmountable, you know, seemingly at the time, just this horrific amount of debt, and it caused so much stress.

Right.

And I know what that stress feels like, even still. Like, if we ever have like a, you know, some lean months and, oh.

It messes with you. It messes with me.

Like, it really messes with me. And I think in each marriage, you know, both spouses are going to be wired up a little different about kind of how they approach money, about, you know, the need for security versus the desire to spend and who wants to save more, who wants to. Who wants to travel more and who, you know, it's. You've got to talk through all these things. I feel like not. Not talking through these things in a real way is one of the major reasons why they're stressed. It's not even the money itself. It's how the couple chooses to communicate about it.

And I just want to address this right out of the gate. I know there's this big debate on whether or not you should combine your money. This is always a question that we get at a lot of our conferences. And the truth is that alone can cause a lot of the problems. Some of you listening might be like, well, the solution for us is that we keep separate accounts. But what happens with that is it very much keeps. It kind of can be a breeding ground of secrets, you know, secret spending. It can also put you against each other because one of you is probably gonna be bringing in more money. And so, like, if you're trying to assign, like, you take the mortgage, you take, you know, this bill that bill your roommates. It's like your roommates. Exactly. And so it really. It does kind of bring the roommate dynamic kind of into your home. And so I just wanna encourage you. I know there are certain circumstances where, for whatever reason, you absolutely have to keep certain things separate. Legally, I don't know what those circumstances would be, but I know that sometimes there are cases where that needs to happen.

Right. A business account.

But most of the time, it is not necessary. And I would just encourage you to put it all in the same pot. It's much better that way because you're just all. It's all God's money anyway. And it's so much easier to see it that way when you're just putting all of your funds into the same account. But then it does take a lot of communication. That's something where you've got to sit down and you need to have a budget. You need to know what's coming in and what needs to go out.

Oh, the B word. Oh.

And that's something Dave and I both really like. I'm more one where in the beginning I was like, we need a budget. And whenever I would say that to Dave, he would glaze over. I mean, he literally was like, no, we know how to do this. And at one time, too, I wasn't really. I didn't know what was going on with our funds. It was just Dave. So all the pressure was on him.

And.

And then we realize that it doesn't need to just fall all on one person. I think there needs to be someone who's primary. Who's the one who's kind of primary over the finances, management wise. But I think when one spouse is completely, you know, has no knowledge of what's coming in or going out, that's really dangerous territory. And it's not good for the spouse who has all the burden of seeing what's going in and coming out of the bank account.

Yeah, yeah, you need to share. You need to carry each other's burden. I mean, that's biblical. It says in Galatians, carry each other's burdens. And so I. It's practical maybe for one person to kind of be the point person, the bill payer, but you're all, you all.

Know what's going on.

Yeah, but everybody has to know what's going on. And everybody has to have access to all the funds. They have to have access to all the information. And if you're trying to kind of like dissect your marriage to the point or isolate one person from the financial decisions, that's never healthy. If one spouse is getting an allowance from the other spouse, you know, you're not partners, you're acting like a parent, child, dynamic parent. And yes, again, to reiterate, there might be sometimes very specific kind of business account arrangements where you have to have some different accounts specifically for business. But as far as what you're spending together as a couple, as far as the family fund, there is no reason not to combine that. And I'll just be as blunt as I can possibly be. I've never known any couple who keeps their finances separate, who has the kind of marriage that I would want to emulate. And I've known plenty of couples who keep it separate. And one thing they all have in common is I would not want their marriage. And so that's maybe a little too blunt. Maybe I'm sounding a little judgmental there, and maybe I'm even off base and brushing with such a broad strokes on this discussion because I know it's a more nuanced decision, but I feel like in marriage you've got to have the mentality that everything belongs to both of us, that we are. There's everything is both of ours. There's no longer mine and yours. It's only ours. And the more in your marriage you look at things with words like my and yours. That's my debt. That's your debt. This is my money. That's your money. No, it's our debt now. It's our money now it's our hopes, our dreams, our time. It's our everything. And if you're dividing everything out, division is really the language of divorce. You know, you're just practicing for divorce. You get this, I get this. You get This, I get this. In marriage, it's, it's got to be together.

Right.

That everything is both of ours. And so now as a team, as partners, let's work through who does what, where the money needs to go. Let's agree on some, some kind of financial principles that will guide our decisions for long term goals, for what we want to do with, with college planning or retirement, with how much we want to give. Talk through all those things and really, really get on the same page. And until you do, you're both going to be stressed because you're going to be coming at it from two different angles.

Absolutely. And I want to say this too. You know, we talked to a lot of couples where there's maybe a time where only one spouse is working and we can relate to that. Like early in our marriage when we were having kids, I stayed at home for a good portion of when our kids were young. And so I wasn't working during that time.

Oh, you were working?

Well, I mean, as far as like getting paid, yes, I was working really hard at home because I feel like being at home with children is the hardest job. It definitely is. And I commend all the stay at home moms or dads who are listening because it is a very hard job and anybody who's done it knows that. But Dave never once, because I wasn't bringing in an income, he never once made me feel bad about that.

Oh, no.

But I have seen dynamics, sadly, where the stay at home parent who is not bringing in money per se, is made to feel bad for that. And I just wanna say, if that is the dynamic that you guys are in right now, I just wanna tell the person who's kind of holding that money over that person who's at home with their children, I wanna tell you to stop it because they are working very hard to take care of the most important people in your life.

Yes.

And you should never be made to feel bad just because you're not bringing in as much money or no money at all. It's really about all hands on deck, all doing, you know, what they need to do to make the marriage and the family the best it can be. And so never hold money over your spouse's head. Never say, well, I've been working hard all day and you're here at home with our kids. I seriously, if you could see how big my eye roll would be for someone saying that and how that makes my blood boil, I could literally jump at you through this microphone because that is a terrible thing to say. To someone who's staying at home with their K. So if that is a dynamic, and that's why money is an issue in your marriage, please let this be a reckoning that your husband or wife who is at home with your children, you know, they should be paid millions of dollars for what they're doing.

Because it's a hard job, it's priceless. And you are so sexy. When you get fired up, by the way.

Well, it fires me up. And it's a problem for a lot of people.

Well, it is. And if you have that, you know, and that's when men in particular kind of have that mentality. It's such this chauvinistic mindset. I bring home the bacon and I make all the decisions about the money. It's like, guys, you are being a jerk. You're being really a jerk. Marriage is. It is. It is a partnership. Partnership in every way. And so, yeah, value what each person does and not in just in terms of like, financial value, but value the. The limitless value that goes on building the family and investing in the kids and all of those intangibles that you cannot put a dollar sign on your family is what matters most.

And the peace.

Peace in your family, peace in your home. So we're going to get real practical. We've got a blog post you guys can look up called 7 Ways to Remove financial stress from your marriage. But we want to just kind of run through that list. You can kind of read more about this if you go to marriagetoday.com you can find all of our articles and a lot of videos and other things as well. But here are a few. Kind of run through the list. And then we'll camp out on a couple of these. But these are the things that helped bring peace to our marriage. Number one, remember that your spouse is always more important than your money. Number two, fight for unity instead of fighting against each other. Number three, aggressively eliminate debt. Number four, develop a plan and stick to it. Number five, communicate with your spouse about all financial matters. Number six, never commit financial infidelity, which means being lying. Yeah. And number seven, this is huge. Remember that God owns it all and you just manage it for us. That, number seven, really was. Number one, realizing this isn't our money, this isn't even our lives. Like, God owns everything. We're temporary managers of everything he's entrusted to us. And we'll give an account one day for how we stewarded it. And once you realize it's all his, then it's much easier to kind of align it his way.

It's so true. And, you know, I want to say this. If you do have a lot of debt, which we completely can relate to, I know how demoralizing that can be. And, you know, so maybe you both are working right now, and you're just barely making ends meet, and there's all this debt. Maybe you had to go into debt because you had some kind of crisis in your marriage. Like maybe one of your kids, you know, is dealing with ongoing care that they need. And, you know, maybe. Maybe you had some kind of catastrophe happen at your house. And you just had these. These. These costs that you didn't see coming your way. And so you just feel like you're constantly trying to just dig yourself out of this. This big pit that you're in, and it feels like you're never gonna get out. And I totally know how that feels. And it just can take the wind out of your sails, and it can really bring tension. Because what that does is when you feel like you're just drowning in debt is it puts you against one another, and you start comparing what you're doing to get out of that debt to what your spouse is doing. And just by human nature, we usually feel like we're doing a lot more, and we give ourselves way more credit than we deserve. But what we need to do instead is decide right then and there that our spouse is not the enemy, that God is going to help us get out of this. Cause it's his money anyway. And then we both, together have to talk about practical ways that we can save money. And also things we can take off out of our budget that we don't have to spend money on. And just be really practical about it. You know, Our pastor in Georgia, Marty Baker, would always say, there's always something to sell in your house, and there's always a way to make money.

Your house is full of money. In your closet.

He's full of money.

It's in your attic.

I know. Cause they had a lot of financial issues early in their marriage. And he talked about that and how if you ever find yourself in a pinch, there's always something to sell. And I distinctly remember in the early years of our marriage, we were living on Dudley Avenue in Georgetown, Kentucky, in this drafty house, which we tell lots of stories about. And I remember one of my favorite things to do is to decorate. And we'd been saving all this money. And I thought, this is. At the time, we weren't communicating as well with money. But I thought we had the money to go buy this, and I'm not joking. It was like a $50 rug from Walmart that I'd had my eye on. I just wanted it so bad for this little animal print room that I was doing. Yes, animal print. And it was so cute. It was so cute. And I had just been saving, like, I just knew we had the money for this. And I go and I buy it. And then I think, of course, with Walmart and Target and stores like that, there's always more things you end up getting. And I think I bought some candles to go with it or something like that. I brought it home and I go in the house, and Dave, it just looks like somebody had, like, hurt him. And he was just really. I could just tell by his body language that something bad had happened. And so I go up to him and like, sweetie, what's going on? He goes, I got this bill that I just thought I had taken care of. And it's just completely like, we don't even have the money in our account to pay for it. And I was like, all of a sudden, I mean, I feel guilty and my heart sinks, and I'm like, sweetie, I just bought like $75 worth of stuff at Walmart. And he's like, it's okay, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. And we had. At that time, we were trying so hard not to go into debt for anything. And I remember, who's more important and what's more important? My husband and our piece in our home. And I remember Dave did not want me to do it because to him at that time, I wasn't working. And so as a man who was providing for our family, it made him feel like, I can't provide for my family. And I kept on telling him, like, listen, this is fluff stuff. Like, we don't even need this stuff. It's gonna still be there. It's Walmart. Let's take this back. And so we drove to Walmart. We took it back to replenish that money that was out of our account so we could pay for this bill. So I know those situations where, you know, you kind of kick yourself. Like, I can't believe that I can't afford a $50, you know, rug from Walmart right now. But the bottom line is we all go through lean times and we just can't. We can't blame our spouse for it, and we can't make them feel bad and even just beating ourselves up either. We need to kind of Just pick ourselves back up, look around our home, see what we can sell. You know, look for opportunities to maybe make more money and just get the job done and do it as a team.

Doing it as a team.

And I think in that moment, I felt like that was a low moment because it was just like, man, we are just really in a bad financial situation. But for me, I look at that moment fondly because we just came together and we were like, we're gonna do this. We're gonna take it back. We don't need this right now. We need peace in our home. And one way we're gonna achieve more peace in our home is by getting our finances in order.

And we were just being unified in that is so empowering, and it's so encouraging. When you feel like you're against each other, at odds with each other, that makes it just feel impossible. But there have been different times in our marriage where we did just what Ashley was saying. We said, we'll figure this out together. And Ashley, even when she wasn't working full time outside the home, she would always be so resourceful to find ways to save money or find ways to generate money. She would sell things. Sometimes she would, like, buy things, and then, like, ebay.

Ebay was my.

I called her my friend, my ebay for a while because she would, like, sell stuff on ebay all the time. She would do freelance work and interior design or, you know, both of us just kind of had this mindset of like, let's figure it out. Let's just figure it out. Let's be lean, let's be resourceful, let's be hardworking, let's be diligent. You know, the book of proverbs says all hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. And that's such a sobering thing. You know, it's like people just sit around, talk about what they're going to do with their finances. It doesn't lead anywhere, just talking about things. But if you roll up your sleeves and you dive in and you start looking for ways to work, looking for ways to generate revenue, looking for ways to. To sell, to cash in on some of the junk you've got laying around to help pay those bills, you'll be amazed at how many options that you do have. I want to briefly discuss a topic that, for us, even in the leanest times, I believe was the greatest financial decision we made. And it's tithing. It's this biblical concept of tithing which you can find, you know, both old And New Testament, Old Testament specifically, has a lot laid out of people bringing the tithe. Tithe means 10th, the first 10% of the income into the storehouse, into God's, into the church, essentially. And then it's not talked about a lot in the New Testament. But, you know, Jesus does affirm it in one passage. And really, you know, I see it in the biblical model of being the starting point for giving, not the end goal. And 10% of our income is a lot. You know, I mean, I know for anybody, you're saying, like, 10% of. We've got all these bills going out. No matter how much you make, 10% is a substantial amount. But for us, early on, we said everything belongs to God. And so we're going to honor him by returning the tithe. This isn't our money, you know, this is all God's money. He asked us to show obedience, and he asked this to show the faith of bringing the first tenth back to him. And we made a commitment to that early in our marriage. And I'm telling you, it's such a great decision. Now, it was easy early because 10% of nothing is nothing. And when we started out, we had about nothing. And so 10% of that didn't seem that big. But it required more and more faith as we went, especially in those lean times. But I'm telling you, it realigned our thinking and our values. And I've seen God bless it. I mean, I've just seen God bless that faithfulness. And so if that's something that seems foreign to you, I mean, if you're not a Christian, then you know, that's gonna seem, like, really foreign to you. And if you're not a Christian, by the way, we're really glad you're listening to this. But for those of us who are following Christ and who have said, like, yes, God, I'm in your family. I've put my faith in you. I want to do things your way. I want to live for you, which we believe is the best way to live, both now and forever. Trust God with your finances. If we trust God with our soul but not with our finances, I feel like we're kind of fooling ourselves. We're only halfway in. What we do with our money shows where our heart is. And Jesus said this. He said, wherever your treasure is, that's where your heart is gonna be. So if you're not giving God access to your finances, it means you're not giving God access to your heart. And it's not because God needs Your money, by the way, it's because God wants your heart and he doesn't want you to hold anything back from Him.

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It's just to test me in this.

It's the one time he says, test me.

The one time he says, test me. And it's the book of Malachi. You can look that up for yourself. And he says, test me and see if I won't open up the store rooms of heaven and pour out blessings on you. And we've certainly see that in our lives. And it's not just financial blessings, but it's the blessings of peace that come when you're just following God and trusting him.

Exactly.

So a few other resources to let you guys know about if you go to marriagetoday.com again. Marriage today is the ministry where we work that helps produce this podcast. Jimmy Evans, the founder of Marriage Today and just a Wonderful teacher and preacher, not only on issues of marriage, but on a lot of things. He has a lot of articles about financial intimacy and what he calls money languages. They're really insightful. Yeah. So marriagetoday.com and then our streaming service, kind of the Netflix of marriage is called XO. Now, if you go to this site, XOMarriage.com XOMarriage.com is where you can find out about our live events. We'd love to see you there. But if you put a slash now at the end of exomarriage exomarriage.com now, it will take you to where you can get immediate access to this full library, this unending library of incredible marriage resources, videos, conferences. It is something so worth checking out, I think that you'll really enjoy it.

That's right. And the main thing we hope that you gain from these podcasts and from the videos you can watch on marriage today and the articles that you can read is that it starts a conversation in your home. Because that's the bottom line, is you can listen to these things all day. You can read about it, you can watch a video about it, but if you and your spouse never talk about it, nothing's going to change. So I just want to encourage you, even if you just take one or two nuggets from this podcast today, please start a conversation and maybe even have your spouse listen to this. You know, we hear from people all the time that say, I, you know, have listened to every podcast, and now my spouse, you know, listened to this one, and now they wanna listen to it. And so what we do is we each listen to it individually, and then we come together and we talk about it. And that just warms my heart, because when you talk about these real issues, your marriage is going to grow stronger through it. So I encourage you to talk about your finances today. All right, we are into one of our favorite parts of the podcast. We get to get to your real questions that you've sent us@nakedmarriagepodcast.com and so our question today is, should you still stay friends with those who don't like your spouse? Ooh, it's a good one.

That is a good one. You're looking at me. I thought you were going to have the answer. You looked right.

Well, I do have something to say about it, but you go ahead.

Okay, well, this is what I'll say. I think that we say a lot. We say a lot that your marriage is going to be impacted, maybe more so by this than nearly any other Factor by the people you choose to hang around.

Oh, yeah.

And if you want to know what your marriage is going to look like in five years, look at the marriages of the people you're hanging around all the time. And you've got to be vigilant about this, about choosing an inner circle of people who are going to pour into you, make you a better person. The Bible has a lot to say about this. We give you a whole list of verses about choosing wisely, friends who have character and so forth. Now to give a very specific example, I'll say there's someone in my life who's very close to me. I'm not going to say who he is because I don't want to reveal that. But his marriage isn't very good. And I think he loves the Lord. I believe his wife loves the Lord, but their marriage just isn't very good. And I believe one of the big reasons why is because both of them tend to get with a same sex group of friends. And in those same sex group of friends settings, they just kind of all bash their spouses. It's this group, it's like a group session where they can, you know, sit around and, you know, have a glass of wine or whatever and just talk about, oh, you know, my husband does this. Well, my husband does that, or my wife, man, she does this and she spends too much and she nags me. And it's like it just becomes a gripe session about, you know, about their marriages. And I think that's, it's so unhealthy. The words you say about your spouse, the words you allow others to say about your spouse, and it will have a profound impact within your marriage. And we've got to protect our spouse at all times and protect our marriage by speaking kind words to them and also by the words we allow others to speak to them. So I would say if you're going to be friends with someone who doesn't like your spouse, the only way that could work is really if there's just kind of an understanding that like, listen, man, we can be friends, we can play basketball, we can hang out, we can do fantasy football, whatever. But you know, if I don't, I don't allow people to speak negatively about my spouse and so about my wife. And so that's, that's gonna, if we're gonna be friends, that's just gotta be a ground rule. And you, you can have whatever opinions you want to yourself, but, you know, I'm not gonna engage in those kind of conversations. It's just not appropriate.

I think that's spot on, sweetie. And I would add, too, you know, in regards to this, just the flip side of it is if you are friends with someone and you don't like their spouse, please refrain from bashing their spouse. Yeah, it's just not good. No good can come from it. And I think, you know, a lot of us, we're like. But I need to be honest and speak my mind. But this is one of those areas where if you truly love your friend, you're not gonna bash their spouse.

No.

You're not gonna constantly try to undermine them or point out what bad thing they did or ask, you know, oh, so what did he do wrong this week? Or what. What did she do wrong this week? You know, instead, try to be positive. And if you can't say something positive again, just don't. Don't have that subject on the table. And it's kind of sad because I do believe that it's hard to have a really close friend without talking about, you know, a huge, huge, important part of your life, which is your spouse and your marriage. But if that's something where, you know, it just. Only negative things are said, then you can't talk about those things. For sure.

Man, that is. That's good advice, sweetie. That is good advice. Hey, guys, thank you for sending in your questions. Thank you for listening to this and for spreading the word. Because of you guys spreading the word and leaving reviews, this podcast is. It's literally reaching all over the world. So subscribe, leave reviews, let your friends know about it, let your spouse know about it, obviously, as a starting point, and just thank you so much for being a part of this community. As always, we want to thank you, want to thank the whole team at Marriage Today, the ministry we're part of, which makes this possible. We want to thank our brilliant producer, Brittany Wilcox, our audio engineer, Chris Stetson, who makes the magic happen, and we want to just thank. It takes a lot of people to put this together, but we. We appreciate you guys.

That's right. Thank you guys so much for tuning in, and we hope to see you next time.