A New Outlook on Marriage

Posted by: Michael S. | Dec 18,2007


Henry at Married with Children has an interesting post about raising money-minded kids.  Kids look at their parents and mimic mom and dad’s financial habits.  I don’t yet have any kids of my own but I have, you know, been a kid, so I wanted to address how some of these issues might affect a new married couple.  

As much as you’d like to think of yourself as a unique individual, you are totally a product of your parents.  There may be no more startling realization than “Oh no, I’ve become my mother!” or “Oh no, I’ve become my father!”  This shouldn’t be surprising because it is inevitable.  

Now let’s bring marriage into the picture: two different people perhaps with two very different upbringings.  I’ve written before how marriage can be difficult when two people have very different attitudes towards money – one is a big saver, while one is a big spender, for example.  Well, these issues start in childhood.  I know this myself because my parents were not the greatest money-managers.  They’d fret about the high-cost of little things and then buy expensive major items with no problem, as if they were bought with different money.  The result was that they always had money problems: they saved money on little things, but lost money on big, sometimes unnecessary, purchases.  

So this was the kind of outlook I brought into my marriage – a sort of cavalier attitude towards money when it came to larger purchases.  Yes, as much as I wanted to be different than my parents, starting with adolescent rebellion at 15, I parroted a lot of their bad habits.  My wife, who had grown up less well-off and hated the idea of being in debt, brought an opposite standpoint.  Basically, I was a spender, she wasn’t.  

Marriage is all about compromise.  It also requires understanding where each of you is coming from – why each of you thinks about money the way you do.  Yep, sometimes a marriage is like being one another’s shrink.  Once you figure out why you have certain attitudes towards money and debt management, you have an opportunity to change it.  You should be looking to create a new dynamic in regards to money, not just repeating the bad habits of your parents.  Together, you can avoid those bad tendencies and start a brand new relationship.

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