In the final week of my Marriage class, I studied relationships with in-laws, and how family rules and behavior affect money management in marriage. Some of what I’ve learned would have been valuable to me years ago, but other nuggets of wisdom can still be applied.
I made some major mistakes in my husband’s family when we first got together. Our relationship started off with us living with his parents, which is not advisable. As the book Helping and Healing Our Families states, “The first task of a newly married couple is to separate from the families in which they grew up” (Harper and Olsen). There were multiple times throughout the first years of our marriage when we went back and forth between having our own place and staying with them. After staying with them for six months when our daughter was around four years old, I decided that we needed to break that cycle and become truly self-reliant as a couple. I told my husband that I would live in our car before I would move in with his parents again. (Not that I didn’t love them and appreciate their generosity in letting us live with them…it just wasn’t healthy!) Somehow, after my ultimatum, and even with multiple bouts of unemployment and other stresses, we always managed to keep a roof over our heads. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!
The other major mistake I made (without even realizing it at the time) was that we got married by a Justice of the Peace with only my mother present as a witness. We did this because my mom was the one who pushed us to get married (because we were living together and I had gotten pregnant), she paid for the license, and came from California to Texas to visit us. My husband and I saw it as a chore to get done, not something to celebrate, so we didn’t invite anyone else, have a reception, or publicly acknowledge it in any other way. I had also given birth 11 days earlier, so I probably wasn’t thinking all that clearly. Needless to say, I found out years later that my mother-in-law had been hurt that she wasn’t invited to our “wedding.” I felt bad when I realized that our thoughtlessness had hurt her feelings. Six years later, though, my mother-in-law was my escort through the temple and was there when we were sealed as a family.
I’m sure I made plenty of other mistakes, many of which I was probably clueless about because I didn’t know about explicit, implicit, and intuitive family rules, and how we each bring those often unspoken expectations with us into a marriage. Explicit rules are ones that are “expressed verbally…such as ‘don’t talk with your mouth full’…[or] ‘Sit up straight’...” Implicit rules “are those taught through nonverbal communication and repeated throughout childhood. Implicit rules tend to be just below conscious awareness, so we seldom realize we are following them until someone points it out to us.” And intuitive rules are also unspoken, but concern issues that are more far reaching. They are based on the emotional legacy we inherit from our family of origin, and “may also include expectations associated with our ethnic, religious, or vocational backgrounds.” (Poduska 26-28) Other unspoken rules may include “how family members handle conflict, who is involved in making decisions, how emotionally expressive family members can comfortably be, how humor is demonstrated in the family, or what topics should not be discussed.” (Harper and Olsen 332)
Learning about your spouse’s family rules can help to avoid hurt feelings and unintended offenses, and can “enable you to express love and consideration in ways that can be more fully understood and appreciated by both of you.” (Poduska 32)
Family rules also involve financial rules. One of the rules my husband and I had was that we wouldn’t financially support our daughter once she was married and on her own because she would need to learn to be independent. At one point, she approached us about helping to pay for travel to a family reunion. As much as we enjoy doing things for her, we stood firm and told her that if it was important to her, she would find a way to pay for it. She and our son-in-law ended up making it to the reunion, and she later told me that she was grateful that I had taught her that lesson. It helped her understand the role we play in her life, and the need for her and her husband to be self-reliant. They have avoided many of the mistakes we made, which makes me happy.
In Chapter 11 of Til Debt Do Us Part, there is a list of “The Ten Financial Principles”:
1. Financial problems are usually behavior problems rather than money problems.
2. If you continue doing what you have been doing, you will continue getting what you have been getting.
3. Nothing (no thing) is worth risking the relationship.
4. Money spent on things you value usually leads to a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Money spent on things you do not value usually leads to a feeling of frustration and futility.
5. We know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
6. You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need can never satisfy you.
7. Financial freedom is more often the result of decreased spending than of increased income.
8. Be grateful for what you have.
9. The best things in life are free.
10. The value of individuals should never be equated with their net worth. (Poduska 211 Appendix)
I can’t think of a better way to summarize the best approach to financial challenges. Although these principles don’t get into specifics of how to deal with debt, or even how to communicate effectively with our spouse about finances, they give us a wise foundation to build upon. I can testify that these principles are true. I’ve lived long enough and made enough mistakes to know what not to do, and to have experienced the peace and happiness that come from doing these principles instead.
Works Cited
Harper, James M. and Susanne Frost Olsen. "Creating Healthy Ties with In-Laws and Extended Families." Helping and Healing Our Families. Deseret Book Company, 2005. PDF.
Poduska, Dr. Bernard E. "Til Debt Do Us Part." Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2000. PDF Accessible.
