Financial Health can Save Your Marriage
Posted on February 10, 2010
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Many people think that money problems are the leading cause of divorce. If you Google the term “money problems cause of divorce” you will see many sites claiming just that. In fact, that’s what I did when starting to write this post. Most of the arguments in my marriage are over money issues. While looking for information to back up my thoughts on the issue, I found an interesting article that claims money issues aren’t a leading cause of divorce. It makes for an interesting read, and I agree with it – partially.
According to the article, money issues account for 5% or less of divorces. Other issues – incompatibility, lack of emotional support, abuse, and sexual issues all rank higher than money problems as causes of marital problems and divorce. Except for sexual issues though, it’s been my experience that disagreement on money issues can be a big contributing factor in the other 3 issues mentioned.
People view money differently. Some think of it as security, some think of it as freedom, some people just like money for it’s own sake. I tend to think of money as freedom. Having money gives me the freedom to buy things, go places, and generally do what I want to do. If someone (for example my wife) prevens me from using money like this, I feel like they’re trying to control me. My wife, on the other hand, looks at money as security. It’s something to be saved in case you need it in the future. From her point of view, not saving money is akin to not having emotional support.
In our case, we had to reach a compromise. I can’t spend as much as I want and she doesn’t get to save as much as she wants. The magic number seems to be $10,000. As long as we have this much in reserve savings, my wife is happy and feels “safe.” She lets me spend pretty much what I want (within reason). When our reserve drops to less than $10,000 we start having problems. Every little purchase I make is second guessed, she finds other things to pick at or fight about, etc. As long as we keep $10,000 in reserve though our marriage is very smooth.
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