Finances in Marriage

Readings in the Student Manual:

Recommended Readings:

Readings in this Page:

Elder Marvin J. Ashton
The Importance of Money Management
Ensign, July 1975, pp.72-74

... [Marriage] tragedies are not caused simply by lack of money, but rather by the mismanagement of personal finances. A prospective wife could well concern herself not with the amount her husband-to-be can earn in a month, but rather how will he manage the money that comes into his hands. Money management should take precedence over money productivity. A prospective husband who is engaged to a sweetheart who has everything would do well to take yet another look and see if she has money management sense.

In the home, money management between husband and wife should be on a partnership basis, with both parties having a voice in decision and policy making. When children come along and reach the age of accountability, they, too, should be involved in money concerns on a limited partnership basis. Peace, contentment, love, and security in the home are not possible when financial anxieties and bickerings prevail. Whether we are anticipating marriage or are well into it, today is the time for all of us to review and repent as necessary to improve our money management skills and live within our means. ...

A disgusted husband once said, "I know that in life money talks, but when my wife gets hold of it, all it ever says is good-bye." To the husband who says his wife is the poorest money manager in the world, I would say, "Look in the mirror and meet the world's poorest teacher-trainer"

Elder Marvin J. Ashton
Suggestions for Financial Planning and Budgeting
Ensign, July 1975, pp.72-74

 1. Teach family members early the importance of working and earning.

 2. Teach children to make money decisions in keeping with their capacities to comprehend.

 3. Teach each family member to contribute to the total family welfare.

 4. Teach family members that paying financial obligations promptly is part of integrity and honesty development--Paying tithing promptly to Him who does not come to check up each month will teach us to be more honest with those physically closer at hand

 5. Learn to manage money before it manages you

 6. Learn self-discipline and restraint in money matters

 7. Use a budget

 8. Make education a continuing process--Complete as much formal, full-time education as possible

 9. Work toward home ownership

10. Appropriately involve yourself in an insurance program

11. Understand the influence of external forces, such as inflation, on family finances and investments

12. Appropriately involve yourself in a food storage and emergency preparedness program

Pres. Henry B. Eyring
Wise Financial Plans for the Future
Ensign, February 1998, p.10; Student Manual, p.108

Brigham Young said it this way, speaking to us as much as he did to the people in his day:

"If you wish to get rich, save what you get.  A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage. Then go to work, and save everything, and make your own bonnets and clothing." (Journal of Discourses, 11:201)

In today’s world, instead of telling you to make bonnets, he might suggest you think carefully about what you really need in cars, and clothes, and recreation, and houses, and vacations, and whatever else you will someday try to provide for your children.  And he might point out that the difference in cost between what the world tells you is necessary and what your children really need could allow you the margin in time that a father and a mother might need with their children to bring them home to their Heavenly Father.

Even the most frugal spending habits and the most careful planning for employment may not be enough to ensure success, but it could be enough to allow you the peace that comes from knowing you did the best you could to provide and to nurture.

Elder Joe J. Christensen
Financial Counsels for Couples
One Step at a Time, pp. 48-49

For years, the leaders of the Church have counseled that with the exception of buying a home, paying for education, or making other vital investments, we should avoid debt as we would avoid a plague. Interest charges on debt can destroy us. Someone once said that we either control interest or it will control us--we are either the victims or the victors of interest. Interest owed is a brutal taskmaster that never sleeps. Commercial advertisements make buying on credit or borrowing against the equity in your home seem easy ways to overcome financial problems or to acquire things. We should never forget that the resulting finance charges can not only destroy our financial position but also may seriously threaten our marriage.

The time may come--and better sooner than later--to get out our scissors and our credit cards, and perform what Elder Jeffrey R. Holland called some "plastic surgery" (Ensign, June 1986, p. 30).

Brigham Young said: "It is an old saying that a woman can throw out of the window with a spoon as fast as a man can throw into the door with a shovel; but a good housekeeper will be saving and economical, and teach her children to be good housekeepers, and how to take care of everything that is put in their charge" (Journal of Discourses, 12:195).

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Religion Brings Protection to One's Marriage
However Long and Hard the Road, p. 106

Your religion should protect you against immorality and violence and any number of other family tragedies that strike at marriages throughout the land. And if you will let it, your religion will protect you against financial despair as well.  Pay your tithes and offerings first.  No greater financial protection can be offered you.  Then simply budget what is left the rest of that month.  Make do with what you have.  Do without.  Say no.  Your head can be held high even if your clothing is not the most stylish or your home the most regal.  It can be held high for the simple reason that it is not bent or bowed with the relentless burden of debt.

President J. Reuben Clark
The Bondage of High-Interest Debt
Conference Report, April 1938, p. 103

[Debt] never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; ... it is never laid off work; ... it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused; ... it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff.

Once in debt, [it] is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; ... and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

President Spencer W. Kimball
The Challenge of Two-Income Couples
Marriage and Divorce, pp. 12-13

Economy is reluctant to replace lavish living, and the young people seem often too eager "to keep up with the Joneses." There is often an unwillingness to make the necessary financial adjustments. Young wives often demand that all the luxuries formerly enjoyed in the prosperous homes of their successful fathers be continued in their own home. Some of them are quite willing to help earn that lavish living by continuing employment after marriage. They consequently leave the home, where their duty lies, to pursue professional or business pursuits, thus establishing an economy that becomes stabilized so that it becomes very difficult to yield toward the normal family life. With both spouses working, competition rather than cooperation enters the family. Two weary workers return home with taut nerves, individual pride, and increased independence, and then misunderstandings arise. Little frictions pyramid into monumental ones.

President Gordon B. Hinckley
About Education and Finances
Conference Report, October 1998

Work for an education. Get all the training that you can. The world will largely pay you what it thinks you are worth.  ... Education is the key to economic opportunity.  ...

Be modest in your wants. You do not need a big home with a big mortgage as you begin your lives together. You can and should avoid overwhelming debt. There is nothing that will cause greater tensions in marriage than grinding debt, which will make of you a slave to your creditors. You may have to borrow money to begin ownership of a home. But do not let it be so costly that it will preoccupy your thoughts day and night.

I want to make it very clear that I am not prophesying, that I am not predicting years of famine in the future. But I am suggesting that the time has come to get our houses in order.

So many of our people are living on the very edge of their incomes. In fact, some are living on borrowings.  We have witnessed in recent weeks wide and fearsome swings in the markets of the world. The economy is a fragile thing. A stumble in the economy in Jakarta or Moscow can immediately affect the entire world. It can eventually reach down to each of us as individuals. There is a portent of stormy weather ahead to which we had better give heed.

... I recognize that it may be necessary to borrow to get a home, of course. But let us buy a home that we can afford and thus ease the payments which will constantly hang over our heads without mercy or respite for as long as 30 years.

... We are carrying a message of self-reliance throughout the Church. Self-reliance cannot obtain when there is serious debt hanging over a household. One has neither independence nor freedom from bondage when he is obligated to others. ... What a wonderful feeling it is to be free of debt, to have a little money against a day of emergency put away where it can be retrieved when necessary. ...

I urge you to be modest in your expenditures; discipline yourselves in your purchases to avoid debt to the extent possible. Pay off debt as quickly as you can, and free yourselves from bondage.  This is a part of the temporal gospel in which we believe.

Elder L. Tom Perry
Be Careful With Credit
Conference Report, October 1995

The current cries we hear coming from the great and spacious building tempt us to compete for ownership in the things of this world. We think we need a larger home, with a three-car garage, a recreational vehicle parked next to it. We long for designer clothes, extra TV sets, all with VCRs, the latest model computers, and the newest car.

Often these items are purchased with borrowed money, without giving any thought to providing for our future needs. The result of all this instant gratification is overloaded bankruptcy courts and families that are far too preoccupied with their financial burdens. ...

It is so easy to allow consumer debt to get out of hand. If you do not have the discipline to control the use of credit cards, it is better not to have them. A well-managed family does not pay interest—it earns it. The definition I received from a wise boss at one time in my early business career was “Thems that understands interest receives it, thems that don’t pays it.”

Elder Dallin H. Oaks
Gambling Tends to Corrupt
Ensign, June 1987, p.69

Gambling tends to corrupt its participants. Its philosophy of something for nothing undermines the virtues of work, industry, thrift, and service to others. The seductive lure of a huge possible windfall for a small “investment” encourages participants to gamble with funds needed for other purposes, even the basics of food and housing. Gamblers commonly deprive themselves, they often impoverish their families, and they sometimes steal from others to finance their indulgence. We are all familiar with cases in which trusted employees have stolen from their employers, bringing tragedy upon themselves and their families. All too often this ruinous sequence is traceable to a desperate attempt to pay gambling debts or to finance further indulgence. ...

A quiet bet between friends, or even the surreptitious purchase of a lottery ticket, is never as useful to the adversary’s cause as gambling at casinos and racetracks. Highly visible public gambling enhances the impression of recreation and assists in recruiting new participants. Participation in this kind of gambling also increases the likelihood that the tempters will be able to expose their “patients” to other degrading influences like alcohol and prostitution, which they always seem to have in close proximity to places of public gambling. ...

Whether occupation or pastime, gambling adds no goods or services to the productive base of the society and it contributes nothing to the physical, emotional, or social well-being of its participants.

Samples on High-Interest Debt and Savings

If your credit card balance is $2,000   Paying the minimum monthly payment at 21% interest (roughly $41 a month)   It could take you 11 years & 6 months to pay off the debt   You will also pay $2,209 in interest charges, bringing your total to $4,193	If you you invested $218 a month   In a 12% savings plan   You could retire in 25 years With $1,354,930 saved
Source: American Consumer Credit Counseling, Inc.  -  http://www.consumercredit.com

Questions for Review:

1. What kind of relationship do people have with their creditors when they have a great deal of debt? (President Gordon B. Hinckley)

2. What has been the prophetic counsel regarding debt? (President Gordon B. Hinckley)

3. What is the most common cause of financial problems in marriage? (Elder Marvin J. Ashton)

4. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen stated: "... money will bring ... acquaintances but not  .................; days of joy, but not  ................." (President Nathan E. Tanner; Constancy Amid Change)

5. How can we control our material circumstances? (President Nathan E. Tanner; Constancy Amid Change)

6. What is the key to spend less than we earn? (President Nathan E. Tanner; Constancy Amid Change)