Marriage and Money: The Secrets Revealed

To all of the married couples out there, I want to write this article to you today and give some solutions on how to be on the same page financially.

This is such in important topic because the Family is one of the most important things in America today.

A good family strengthens each other, creates greater productivity with those in their lives, furthers good morals, and so many other things. The American economy has always been highly tied to the success of the American family.

The problem is the average American family is struggling financially and that struggle is leading to the actual dividing and breaking up of the family unit.

Statistically, 20–40% of divorces are due to finances…and that’s a really easy issue to fix!

Imagine 20–40% of divorces not having to happen where marriages stay together, kids keep their parents and families go from struggling and fighting to flourishing and prospering.

My back story on this is that I was a divorce kid. I vividly remember as early as the age of 3–4 years old hearing my parents fight in the house and often if it was about money.

When I was 9 years old my parents got divorced. My mom and dad had a house across the street from a lake in a small town in Alaska that was also taken away from us. My mom had a van that we had owned for several years that got repossessed by the bank. To add to it all, me and my brothers ended up homeless on my dad’s side tent camping all summer and not knowing that we didn’t really have another place to live. And on my mom’s side we were living in a dry camper (no water, no electricity, no heat) behind someone’s house. And at 9 years old I knew that I had lost my family because of the fights my mom and dad had about money.

From that point on my life as a 9-year-old I began to learn firsthand about things like restraining orders, being investigated by child services, constant moving, having my school get involved in fights between my parents, and all the while we continued to struggle financially on both sides of the family.

I know firsthand what a family goes through when they experience a finance related divorce.

As I write this article, I am happily married and have a stepson who is going on 13 years old.

We don’t have money fights.

Part of that is probably due to the fact that I grew up with it and it’s a family pattern that I have decided stops with me and that my wife and son won’t experience it and it won’t continue to the next generations. I chose to change the story.

The other part of it is that I’ve been studying finances heavily since the age of 18, and not just “finances” but the historical Top 1% of wealth.

Based on modern day psychology, because I grew up watching my parents fight about money, it am supposed to have been “conditioned” to follow what I see…so how am I defying the odds and winning with finances with my family?

Well first, let me define winning here:

- Not living paycheck to paycheck

- Paying ourselves first every month

- Zero consumer debt

- Affording nice dates and trips with my wife

- Sending my son to private school

- Investing in income producing assets regularly

- Donating money to causes that our family cares about

- Not fighting about money

Winning comes from a vision.

What is the vision you and your spouse have for your family?

Why did you start a family?

In 20 years, what would you like your family to look like?

When you’re no longer around, what impact do you want your family to have on the world around them?

These are all important questions to ask yourself to establish your family vision. And you should follow all of these up with a second question: “Why is that important?”

Once you have that vision, you need to determine who has the best track record of good financial control between you and your spouse. This is an easy step. Who most easily and most often says “no” to purchases? That person should be the family CFO (Chief Financial Officer).

You see, a family is a group or a team. Imagine a team where nobody has a specific position or role? One day the quarterback is the quarterback and the next day he is a lineman and no longer wearing the quarterback hat. It wouldn’t work.

Post one person in the family to be the CFO and respect that this person is in charge of financial decisions and what they say goes and respect their decisions on it.

Now, you need financial policies or “standard operating agreements.” Write down the agreed upon rules and morals your family operates on when it comes to finances and make sure these rules and morals align with your family vision. The CFO is responsible for the finances and makes the final decisions, but they need to operate within the family’s agreed upon financial policies. A policy must be something that is true and something that when applied or followed, actually works and moves you in the right direction. A family with the goal of being Financially Independent would have a policy that says we pay ourselves first by saving % of our income as soon as we get paid. The CFO of the family is to make sure that this happens. If a situation came up where someone in the family wanted to buy a new car and the payment was going to make it impossible to save % of the family’s income, the CFO would disapprove the car purchase because it violates the family’s financial policy. See how simple this is?

Next, you should install a weekly review of your finances where you review what was earned, allocate your income to set aside for planned and approved expenses (with the first and most important allocation being paying yourself first), and reviewing your upcoming income sources and expenses for the new week.

There is a LOT more you can do, but if you do just these few things and keep them going, your family will experience a financial turnaround. I’ll list them below again here:

1. Establish the vision for your family

2. Decide who will be the family CFO

3. Discuss and put in place a few basic financial policies (one of them being that you pay yourself first with __% of your income each time you get paid)

4. Establish a weekly family financial meeting

I want to encourage you to really do these things. We suffer in America from what I call intellectual obesitywhere we learn information that we never apply. And just like eating calories that we never burn, it makes you mentally fat, slow, and lethargic. If you learned something here as you read this, you need to now go and apply it successfully. And if you need help, just reach out to my team and I.

In closing, my mission in life is to help good people build more wealth who make the world a better place.

So, if you’re a good person who wants to help make the world a better place and this article helped you, I want to encourage you to start planning your next quarterly trip and putting this into practice. And feel free to write to me and let me know how it went.

If you’re a client of mine and you’d like help leveling up, send an email to my team with “Level Up” in the subject line to [email protected] .

If you’re a follower and have not read my book The Blueprint to Financial Freedom yet, that is the place to start. This book covers the specifics for each level in the various chapters and you can grab the book for free as my gift.

Click here to get a copy!

The Blueprint to Financial Freedom by Jerry Fetta

To Purpose, Wealth & Freedom,

Jerry Fetta

Jerry Fetta is the CEO and Founder of Wealth DynamX. He is a nationally recognized financial expert featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, Fox, Chicago Weekly News, New York Finance, interviewed on 100+ podcasts with world renowned experts, earning endorsements and affiliations throughout his career with names like Kevin O’Leary, Grant Cardone, Dave Ramsey, and Pamela Yellen.

Jerry’s mission in life is to help create millions of financially educated and solvent families achieving greater financial freedom and sharing the truth about money with those around them.

Learn more at www.WealthDynamX.com

(DISCLAIMER: The information in this content should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Wealth DynamX can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.)