10 Ways Budgeting Saved My Marriage -
Part 1
By Tim Maurer, Forbes Contributor
Eleven years ago, my wife and I sat across the table from an experienced married couple squirming in their seats uncomfortably as though they feared we were about to deliver some terrible news. But the source of their discomfort was the bomb they were about to drop on us.
You see, we were not yet married, but engaged, and the couple across the table was our mentor couple in our pre-marital class. Upon review of our personality profiles and piles of personal baggage, they felt it their duty to discourage us from further pursuing the sacred vows of matrimony. They'd never seen a hopeful couple more innately disparate, more inevitably destined for failure.
We are indeed vastly different, but one thing my wife, Andrea, and I share in common is a penchant for resisting authority. So with the blessing and support of family and friends, I'm thrilled to report we'll be celebrating our eleventh anniversary this April with our two wonderful boys, Kieran and Connor, ages six and eight.
We have never forgotten, however, the well-intended admonishment of our mentor couple; indeed, we see much of life from vastly different perspectives, foremost among them our view of things financial. And apparently, we're not alone. Over 50% of marriages end in divorce. Over 50% of those splits cite financial disputes as the primary reason for the break-up.
100% of marriages deal with money as a daily necessity.
This thought occurred several times when preparing my recent posts on budgeting on Forbes.com (How To Spend $1 Million At Starbucks) and TimMaurer.com (A Burdensome Yoke...Or A Path To Peace?). It struck me that budgeting ranked right up there with prayer and counseling as a precious few factors that have helped keep us together.
Here are the top 10 ways budgeting has saved, and continues to save, our marriage:
10. Budgeting forces us to collaborate.
It seems that as parents of young children, the level of commitments between work, school, church, sports and the arts leaves us functioning more as independent business partners than spouses. We're almost always in short supply of adult conversation and genuine collaboration, and (strange as it may seem) budgeting gives us the context for both.
9. It offers healthy accountability.
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify," and while 100% verification of trust in our marriage would be stifling, we've found periodic accountability to be a healthy way to build faith and trust in each other. Our joint budgeting effort means all of our expenditures are accessible to the other. Scrutinizing every penny spent would be unfair (a-hem, note to self), but knowing everything is visible is likely to encourage us each to spend more responsibly.
8. It humbles us.
I've not found a more helpful tool in the pursuit of a successful marriage than humility, and since the use of money is so pervasive in our lives, small mistakes are the norm, not the exception. Rarely a weekly cycle goes by in which we don't each humbly acknowledge that we erred in some capacity, humbly submitting our mistake to the other. And of course, a good budget is designed to withstand these small mistakes.
