Episode 105 - Big Picture: Rules for Married Couples.....about Money

Discover five spiritual principles and five practical habits that every couple needs for financial peace. From prayer and communication to budget check-ins and “sleep-on-it” limits, learn how to build unity, trust, and purpose in your marriage through money done God’s way. 

Money and Marriage Rules Cheat Sheet

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Welcome back to Catholic money talk today, I want to talk about another one of my big picture topics I mentioned a few episodes ago. I want to highlight a few things that I'll call the big picture and so this one is the big picture rules for married couples about money, all right, and so we're going to talk about that today. But before we do, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways you love and bless us, Lord. We just ask your Holy Spirit to fill us with hope, to fill us with joy, to fill us with great gratitude for all that you've given to us. Lord, in a particular way today, we ask for gratitude for our spouse and help us to work in deeper unity and better unity. Lord, towards building your kingdom here. Bless us this day. Help us in any situation we might find ourselves in. Give us great peace, Lord, we know that you have an awesome plan for us. Help us to pursue you in all that we do. We ask this all in Jesus name, amen, and name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So the big picture rules for married couples about money, right? But we'll just call it rules for married couples. And so just as a reminder, you know money, finances is one of the top areas of tension in marriage, but it can also be one of the best opportunities for unity and trust. And I've shared in past episodes and stories, handling a lot of financial things with Taryn and how we work together and learn to work together helps to flow into other areas of our life, whether it be parenting or problem solving other situations, the skills and the ability to communicate clearly and pause and listen and understand our spouse's perspective, particularly as we discuss money, helps to practice those skills that we can use in other areas of our life. So that's what we're going to talk about today, some rules for married couples, particularly about money. And you know, I I'm going to go through these rules in a order, just the order I've written them down, but as I was trying to think of an order for them, there isn't one particular order, I think, as a married couple, when you and I'll create a PDF that you can download to work through these rules yourself with your spouse, but as you look at these rules, there's no one thing you need to focus on or do first, per se, because you might be doing one or two or three of these, and the one that you're not, I would challenge you to focus on that and bring that to the forefront, to work on that, not losing sight of the other ones that you may already have in place, right? So really, kind of use this as a way to identify your gaps and then close those gaps. So this order is not in priority order, but rather it's use these rules to help you identify which ones you seem to be missing. So I broke the rules up into two groups. There's two groups of five. So there's 10 Rules total. The first ones we're looking at are going to be the overarching philosophical rules are how we're going to do it, and then the practical rules are what we're going to do so So rule number one, here we go, clear, regular communication. So why does that matter? Well, when we're not communicating clearly, we begin to just make assumptions about what we're seeing or experiencing with our spouse, and assumptions can very quickly lead to resentment and or judgment, and we don't want that. So talking about money regularly and clearly, not just when something's wrong. And the key is to schedule consistent money meetings so that the two of you can stay on the same page. So what does that look like? That might look like meeting monthly, which is what I recommend, to create your budget for the month, and then meet with your spouse regularly once a week to kind of check in and say, How's this month going? Is it going on track the way we thought it would when we're dealing with a particular situation, whether it be maybe it's a car repair, a home repair, something that kind of jumped up in mid month and we haven't had time to plan for it. Being able to communicate with our spouse to talk about the situation, kind of like dump it out on the table and say, Hey, here's here's the situation, here's the piece we're dealing with. How do you view this? How do I view this? What do we think is the solution here? What's our goal for this, this problem or this challenge, the solution, and then how can we help each other solve this? Right? So communicating clearly and regularly. So that's the that's that's one of the rules, right? Another rule, rule number two, is, strive for unity in marriage. You are one team. You're not competitors. A lot of times when I'm working with couples, I have to remind them, you same team. I'd say that in my head, sometimes, when talent, Taryn and I are having a disagreement about something, I go, we're on the same team, right? I'll think of my head, we're on the same team. Why are why do we do? We feel like we're pulling in different directions right? Now, if money divides you, then your marriage will lose. So you want to strive for unity over perfection. What do I mean by that? I am not a fan of debt. I tell people, avoid debt, don't use credit cards. That's I've found great blessings in my life. Taran would agree with me. We've been so blessed to not use credit and then we don't have to pay any loans, right? And we found great success, financial success and not using credit, right? We celebrated a few months ago, and we paid off our mortgage. And when I talk to couples, sometimes when I work with couples and one couple say, you know, one one spouse will say, My husband wants to use a credit card. He loves the miles he gets the points. I really don't want to use one who's right, and I know where my tendency would go, but what I tell them is, it's it's not about who's right, as long as you choose it together, right? If you're praying about it, working together like, like, neither one has moral value, right? Using a credit card or not using a credit card, we're not talking about we're not talking about moral goods or evils here. We're just talking about particular behaviors, and some might generate more success than the other, but the key here is to be in unity with your spouse, right? So what does that look like? You might have a an idea to hey, we, we only want to spend $100 in this particular you know, going out to eat as husband and wife, our date night, we're only going to spend$100 right? That's the key to have unity on how you pay for it, whether it be cash or plastic, like shouldn't matter that much, right? But so, so figure out what's, what should be the most important thing, and have unity on that, and let go of some of those areas where maybe there's just a preference difference, but striving for unity in marriage is key. My spiritual director tells me and reminds me often, I've shared this before, but marriage isn't 5050, it's 100 100 so you got to be all in at loving your spouse. And when you do that, some of those fringe preferences you just you lose sight of them, because you realize they don't matter. So the next rule, have shared goals. You must have shared goals if you're married. Dream together, write them down, align your plans, so that your financial decisions move you both towards the same destination. And when you're communicating clearly, like in our first rule, you'll know what the goals are, and you'll know how quickly you're approaching them. It's so important to have shared goals. So you decide, what are we saving for? What are we giving towards and you when you have a dream meeting. I've talked about this in in other episodes, list your goals, just brainstorm all your goals so that you can compare and align them and choose which ones fit your your your shared goals have unity over your goals. So the fourth rule is about shared responsibility, and shared responsibility will lead to accountability. So both spouses should stay involved. You split roles by strength and skills, but you make decisions together, right? So someone might log in and look at the bank account, someone might update a spreadsheet, someone might go check on reviews or do some product research online before you make a purchase of something, right? Someone might go test drive the vehicle. So you can split roles by different strengths and skills and knowledge, but together, you should make the decisions together. Okay? So that was four of them so far, clear, regular communication. Have unity in marriage. Have shared goals, have shared responsibility, and the last one again, not necessarily last in priority order, but pray together. Pray together. Nothing is too big or too small to bring before God, right, inviting the Lord into every moment, into every decision. Decision is huge, right? It just it gives us the right perspective in the moment, pray over major financial decisions and invite the Holy Spirit into the process. Right? Praying keeps money in the right place under God's authority. We want Jesus to be Lord of our finances, and we do that by praying first. That's why, when I started Catholic money talk one of the first episodes that I ever did as I was as I was praying about what I was supposed to speak about. It's episode number five, the importance of prayer. And I talk about the reason and the importance of praying before everything. So pray first. All right, so those are our overarching philosophical rules, clear, regular communication. Have unity in marriage, have shared goals, shared responsibility, which will lead to accountability and pray together. So here we go into some of the practical rules. The first one, you both need to participate in your money meetings. So you can't have a budget meeting by yourself. You need your spouse to come to the meeting. Each spouse needs to attend. They need to listen. They need to contribute. It's your shared plan. It's not one person's responsibility. I took a budgeting class years ago, and I remember one of the recommendations they made was, if one of you is going to put the budget together and then bring it to the meeting, the other one needs to change something. Right for two things once that they participate, and then two so the person who created everything has to be able to let go of something, right? It's not just their plan. They're arriving at it together. So you both need to participate in the money meetings. It's not one person's way or the highway, right? It's a joint plan, shared goals, shared responsibility, and you're building unity. So you both need to show up for the meetings. Both participate in money meetings. The next one, you will not change the plan. So no budget changes without speaking with your spouse, right? I'll say no budget changes without a check in. I love check ins. It's good to have a check in. Sometimes it's in person, sometimes it might be a text or on the phone with your spouse, but that's the regular communication, like not changing the plan without communicating with our spouse. How do we be transparent, right? Avoid surprises. Any change in spending or state savings should first be agreed upon with your spouse. And so when there's like a home problem, or, you know, like a repair, home repair, car repair, something like that medical bill that pops up. You need to communicate to figure out, how are we going to solve this together? So don't change the budget without a check in, right? It'd be like if I take, you know, $100 from our date night fund to repair the car and the the tire on the vehicle. Taryn might be very upset that I took it from there, and she might think, why didn't I take it from Paul's? You know, Mad Money, my personal spending money, right? So you, you, you have a situation pops up, you need to make a change. You invite your spouse into the conversation. You make the change together. So no budget changes without a check in. Third rule in this category, set a check in dollar amount. Whoa. What does that mean? Basically agree on a threshold where both spouses need to check in before making a purchase, even if it fits in the budget. So what do I mean by that? Let's do it this way. If I was gonna, I'll use personal spending money, because this is what I love. When I bring this rule up to couples, they say, Oh, I don't care. He can do whatever he wants or, you know, we don't need to talk about things. I say, Well, hold on, let's pretend we're talking about personal spending money right now, and I'll just use $100 right? Let's just say I'll use my, mine, me and Taryn as the example. And I've seen this with many couples that I worked with, but I'll usually give the example, all right, Taryn, so do you think $100 or, let's say$200 is a good checking amount? And she'll say, yeah, that's, that's, that's fine. Okay, so anything Paul makes and he purchases, Paul makes under 200 makes under $200 even if it's in the budget, you don't have a problem with she's like, No, I don't have a problem with it. Sorry. So let's say Paul's personal spending budget is $200 and he walks in the front door with $150 cigar. Do you have a problem with that? And Terrence says, Yeah, we don't spend $150 on one cigar, right? It's like, Oh, so you do have a number that you want to have some clear communication on before it's before they can just do it, right? And this is a bit of a silly example, but the idea is just to protect ourselves from jobs. Management and resentment and just to create a place where we kind of force that communication, right? So for Tara and I, it's actually $100 that's our rule. But for you, maybe, maybe it's $25 maybe it's$50 maybe you're in a really tight situation, and it's like you can't spend money without talking to each other because things are really tight. Maybe you're retired and very wealthy and or, you know, not necessarily retired, but just maybe you don't need to talk to your spouse about decisions under $500 but the point is, there's no one right answer here, except the one that you both agree on. Right? This goes back to some of those previous rules. Right? Pray about these things and be in unity with them, right? We're not asking for one person to set these limits, right? So set a check in dollar limit. The next one is set a sleep on it limit. What do I mean by that? It's to protect you against impulse buying, right? So here's an example, if I'm walking through, if Taryn and I go to Costco, we like Costco. We go to Costco, and we're walking through, and we see this beautiful outdoor patio, gazebo set, an outdoor dining set. And we look at in the whole thing, it's $6,000 right? We go, oh, this is beautiful. We've been talking about doing something outside. Let's buy it, right? And we look at each other, okay, yeah, we got money in the emergency fund. We can just buy it. Okay, yeah, let's do it. And we get all hot sighted about making this purchase. It's like, Whoa, cool it, right? It's like, when people go look at a house, they get house fever. They get excited to make a purchase. It's like, whoa, go home, take a cold shower and sleep on it and see if you feel the same way the next day. I've given the example before, when Taryn and I, we were at Disney, and they talked to us about a Disney timeshare, and we were like, Yeah, this is great. We signed up, we go home, and then we're like, this is a terrible idea. And we called and we called and canceled the whole thing, and they were giving us this guilt trip. We were able to cancel it. Thank the Lord. But the point is, if we had had this rule before, then we never would have signed up, right? And we would have stayed off that emotional roller coaster. So have $1 amount where you sleep on it. Maybe it's 500 bucks. Maybe it's 1000 bucks. Maybe it's 2500 bucks. Maybe it's 100 500 bucks. Maybe it's $100 I don't know, but a rule that you're going to wait 24 hours and pray before landing on the decision time brings clarity and space to these situations. Okay, so you want to avoid the emotional or the impulse spending. And then the last rule is just no secrets. No secrets. You can have surprises, but no secrets. What do I mean by that? Be transparent about money. Don't throw out the receipt before you get home. Don't start peeling the the price tag off of something. Don't have a secret bank account that your spouse doesn't know about. Don't keep financial secrets from your spouse. Don't keep any secrets from your spouse, right? Unless they're good surprises. Why? Because we're trying, we're building, trying to build trust and unity with each other, and that can't live if there's secrets. This is so important, right? So be transparent about money. The only exception you can make, right? Is a thoughtful gift, right? Keep it cute, not covert. Okay, so how does that work? Well, we're getting towards Christmas, right? As I'm recording this, it is November of 2025, and Taryn and I have a Christmas budget set. There is$1 amount that I will spend on taryn's gifts. She knows that dollar amount, but she doesn't need to know what I'm spending it on until she gets to Christmas and gets to open the gift that I bought her. Right? So that's so important, that's so important. So those are my five practical rules, right? Both need to participate in the in the money meetings, no budget changes without a check in. Have a check in, dollar amount, right? That's a threshold you agree upon that neither of you will spend before you check in. Have a sleep on it, dollar limit, right? What? What? Even if we're both there, right, we can check in, we're both there, but what dollar amount do we actually not make the purchase? We go home and sleep on it first, if we wake up, we prayed, and we feel the same way about then, by all means, go do it. You meet together, you talk, you change your budget, and you spring for whatever it was, right? It might not be a purchase, maybe it was just giving a gift. I have the honor of being an honoree at a gala later this week my kids school, and that's a fundraising dinner, and there's probably going to be some people that are there, and maybe they feel moved. To make a donation. It's great if they can make a donation. They probably walk in there with $1 amount thinking that they can donate. But if something moves them there, and they want to go from$200 to $2,000 they want to add a zero. I mean, the the fundraising side of me says, Oh, I hope they do it. But the good stewardship side of me says, well, except if it's over, their sleep on it limit, they can go home and then write a check the next day, right? That's allowed. So we need to remember these rules, and they'll help us. They'll help us in life, they help it's much easier to build around our plan and build around our priorities when we have these rules. So I'll give them to you again, the overarching philosophical goals. Here's these five rules for for for that area, clear, regular communication. Have unity in marriage, have shared goals. Have shared responsibility and accountability, and pray together. And then the practical rules for good partnership and marriage, for financial unity, is both participate in the money meetings. There's no budget changes without a check in. Set a check in dollar limit before you make a purchase. Set a sleep on it limit before you make a purchase, and then no secrets, just good surprises. So my hope is that if you can apply these 10 Rules to your life with your spouse as you make financial decisions, it will build you up in Unity. It will strengthen your marriage, and you'll have more success. So I've created a PDF. I'll put it in as a link in the episode description, you can download it even has a little space for you to make some reflection notes and write down your agreed upon, checking them out and you're agreed upon sleep on an amount. I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for joining me today. God bless Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You.