Want a Better Marriage? Learn About Money!
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Anthony Kirlew of Life is a Bank. I am passionate about the need for quality financial education among married couples, and I think this post provides a great overview of the areas that you need to understand. I’ll be back from my brief “paternity leave” on Monday. Enjoy!
Money is at the top of the list of issues that married couples argue about. There are a host of money-related items to disagree about from not having enough money to differences in how to use the money that they have.
One way to reduce – and ultimately eliminate – these unwelcome interactions is to be open with each other about your “financial IQ” and set out on a course of learning about money and personal finances together. That said, here are a few things to keep in mind.
First, both spouses may not have a genuine interest in personal finances (such as the case with my wife). I would recommend that each spouse really makes an effort to learn the basics and more if possible. We have all heard the story of the widow whose husband handled all of the finances and when he died, she was left not knowing anything about their finances (which included not knowing about his life insurance or his will).
Finding Financial Freedom with You Need A Budget
Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! I hope you are enjoying some fun family time over this long weekend and remembering all those who fought and continue to fight to preserve the awesome freedoms that we enjoy each day.
We are opting for more time indoors than usual this holiday weekend while we anxiously await the arrival of our third child sometime in the next week or two. Thank God for air conditioning! 
When I think of our family’s own freedom, the thought of finances always comes to mind. As you may be aware, we paid off a LOT of debt and now enjoy much more financial freedom, and that carries through to all aspects of our marriage and family life.
I recently shot another video where I discuss the number one cause of divorce in America and why I think You Need A Budget is such a great tool for addressing this important problem. And here’s another reason to celebrate: I just purchased a new video camera so this is the last really low-quality video post you’ll see from me! 
Get Rich Slowly Giveaways!
I am excited and quite honored to have a post featured today at Get Rich Slowly. Please head over and share your thoughts in the comments of “6 Steps to Strengthen Your Family on the Journey to Financial Freedom.”
In honor of the occasion, I have some great giveaways to share…so please read on and enter to win!
Welcome to Our Friends from Get Rich Slowly
If you are a new visitor from Get Rich Slowly, I’d first like to welcome you to Engaged Marriage! I encourage you to take a few minutes to look around, and I think you’ll find an awesome community of proactive people who love their marriage and family life.
If you like what you see, I’d also encourage you to sign up to receive free updates via RSS or Email whenever new posts are published here at Engaged Marriage. If you’re really serious about getting killer content and exclusive advice aimed at helping you have an awesome marriage, please sign up for our free Marriage Time newsletter.
If you love finances as much as I do, I hope you’ll enjoy these posts:
You Need A Budget: Money Management for a Happy Marriage
You Need A Budget (YNAB) is the best budgeting software I have ever used. In fact, YNAB is so awesome that my wife even likes it! But more on that later…
If you are a regular reader here at Engaged Marriage, you may recall several recent posts about our search for budgeting software that met our needs as a busy family. After many years of faithful budgeting that allowed us to pay off $54,500 in debt, we recently started to slip up in our spending and planning.
In a quest to find the right software to get us back on track, I reviewed 5 of the top budgeting tools on the market and wrote my opinions of them. Each had their strengths, and many offered a way to track spending and plan for the future with far less time and energy than I had been spending with my homemade spreadsheets and manual receipt tracking.
The Best of the Best
After I did that initial review, I basically narrowed things down to just two choices that seemed like the best fit: Mint and You Need a Budget. Well, after trying them both out and putting them to the test, I’m confident that we’ve found the right budgeting tool for our marriage.
The Grass is Always Greener…and I Don’t Give a Damn!
We’ve all heard the expression “The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side” throughout our lives, and I actually find it to be a useful mantra whenever I start feeling sorry for myself. It is so easy to lose sight of our blessings and develop a jaded perspective, particularly when we’re faced with examples of the situations we do not find ourselves in.
I was (again) reading Your Life. Live it. Love it. recently, and a particular chapter really resonated with me. A passage called “The Grass is Always Greener Right Under Your Feet” serves as an awesome reminder of just how powerful our own perspective can be when it comes to our happiness.
My life is full of examples of “what ifs” and “if onlys” and I’d like to share a few with you to see if you can relate. I’ll take a peer over into my world from the perspective of someone with beautiful, free, single, wealthy, independent and uninhibited grass.
And then I’ll tell you why I don’t give a damn about their green grass!
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I'm Dustin, the guy behind Engaged Marriage. I'm living and loving the crazy life of a young husband and Dad.
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