Episode 9: Money Kills More Marriages Than Anything – Fix It This Week

Most couples fight about money. It creates stress, secrets, and resentment that slowly destroys marriages. But it doesn’t have to.

In this solo episode, I share simple, practical steps for married men (and single men planning ahead) to take the lead on money and protect your relationship.

You’ll learn:

• Why regular money dates beat money fights
• How to build a team budget that actually works
• The power of budget discipline and delayed gratification
• How to kill lifestyle creep and secret spending
• Why term life insurance is non-negotiable for your family
• Facing your real debt numbers and asking for help

Income doesn’t matter as much as habits. Whether you make $50k or $400k, talking openly and planning together changes everything.

Married men: Schedule one money talk with your wife this week.
Single men: Start tracking every dollar now.

Listen in, take action, and build the marriage and money future you both want.

Resources and free tools linked in the show notes.

Drop a review if this hit home, and share it with a brother who needs it.

FREE RESOURCE:
The Couples Money Date Guide — the exact step-by-step conversation format Sherman and Cristina used before paying off $203K. Download free at the link below.
matrimonymoney.com/links 

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As seen on The Dave Ramsey Show · Fox News · Fox Business

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I know plenty of people that make great money, they always spend more than they make. People that make three, four hundred thousand dollars spend four or five hundred thousand dollars. I know people that make fifty thousand dollars and spend sixty thousand dollars. But on the flip side, I know people that make great money save and invest a decent amount, and I know people that make not great money save and invest a decent amount based on their income. It's all about the habit. You can really get on the same page with your spouse by talking about what you guys really want long term. Alright, guys, here we go. Another episode of Matrimony and Money. I'm flying solo again. Don't worry. Christina will be back. I really wanted to follow up on last week's episode because I had some men reaching out, so I know some men are reaching out, but there's other men that want to hear more podcasts like this and just have more information. So I want to make sure today, when we first start off, I want to let you guys know that you know money really kills more marriages than anything, right? Uh just because it's so I believe it's just so taboo, right? Uh people just don't want to talk about money, whether it's with their spouse or strangers. Um I just believe that we should be talking about money freely, especially if someone's trying to learn to get better. Because at the end of the day, I always look at it like, what can you gain by knowing how much money I make per year? Right? Like, not much, right? Hopefully it motivates you. Um when you find out someone's making more money, or maybe just like, ah, but there's that's one of the things we don't talk about enough. And I just know that in marriages, you know, money fights, money problems are one of the hugest problems that kills marriages time and time again. So today we're gonna talk about some practical things that we can do to make sure as men, because this episode again is for married men or single men that just want to do better, right? Um, because we know that again, let's start it off. Point number one money is the number one killer in marriages, right? I don't have the pretenties off the top of my head, but we know that most couples fight about money, right? I won't say 100% of couples fight about marriage, but most fight about money. And I believe that the fighting really comes from that uncertainty, uh, the stress, you know, if bills aren't being matched. Uh so with that, I'm a huge believer in these money dates, these money meetings, right? If you don't have money for a date, it's fine. Have a money meeting in your room, right? Because you need to get everyone on the same page uh from the beginning, right? Hopefully you don't have a you know a bare relationship with money, but even if you do, we need to start talking about this money openly, honestly, because if you do that, it is going to be a game changer four-year marriage, right? So we know that usually in marriages you have one person that's a spender, you have one person that's a saver, and usually the person that's the saver, sort of the budget person, they build up all the stress because they take care of all the bills, and then the person that's a spender just over here in La La Land, everything is great, or even if they know everything is not great, they're just swiping and spending because hey, YOLO, right? But again, as we talked about last week, you do not want to age and depend on the government, if at all possible, right? Um, just because they're not gonna give you the lifestyle that you really want. I can pretty much guarantee that, right? So when you get into the marriage, hopefully you had this conversation around finances before you get married. But if you have, it's totally fun, right? But you need to start talking about it consistently, at least once a week, right? I'll meet you guys there. Should be once a week meetings to talk about the finances, so everyone's crystal clear. Um, because if everyone isn't crystal clear, that's that is when secrets are gonna happen, resentment's gonna build up. Because here's the thing: I know plenty of people that make great money, but they spend, they always spend more than they make, right? Again, I know people that make three, four hundred thousand dollars and spend four or five hundred thousand dollars. I know people that make fifty thousand dollars and they spend sixty thousand dollars. But on the flip side, I know people that make great money save and invest a decent amount, and I know people that make not great money save and invest a decent amount based on their income. So it's all about the habits, and I believe that you can really get on the same page with your spouse by talking about what you guys really want long term, right? You sort of back into it. I like to sort of look out and start with the end, right? Like, what would we like for our lives to look back? If we look back at our lives, what would we like it to look back, you know, in five years, one year, three years, you know, whatever you want it to be, and then start sort of playing that back, and the decisions you make today will affect that, right? Um, I'm a huge believer in delayed gratification. So for me, it's easy to sort of kick the can down the road, right? Because I know there's something better coming. But for many people, that is very difficult, and that's okay. But you need to know where you want to go because if you don't know where you want to go, you're just gonna end up somewhere you don't want to be, right? Like you're not gonna end up in the right place, right? I always tell people so men, listen to this. Let's just say we wanted to go on a trip, right? We're gonna go on a road trip, and you want to end up in Washington, DC, and you just get in the car and start driving, right? You just drive, regardless of what you just drive, you turn wherever you feel like turning, sort of following traffic signs, you jump on this highway because it looks good, traffic's moving. What are the odds that you are going to end up in DC? Slim to none. Because you don't have a plan. That's the same thing with our finances, same thing with our marriage. If we don't have a plan where we want to go, we're not gonna end up in a great spot. So I challenge you men that are listening to this, with your finances, with your marriage, come up with the plan, right? Come up with a plan where you want to go, and you can do this by yourself before you even take it to your wife. I assure you that your wife will be pretty impressed if you go to her and show her um where you want your marriage and your finances to be years down the road, right? Um, so let's do that. Man, I challenge you, take the lead, right? Take the lead. You're the man, take the lead on your finances and your marriage. Even if it's outside of your comfort zone, right? I get it. We're all wired in a certain way, certain things we like, certain things we don't like, but you being the head of the household, you have to lead, right? Um, one of the simple things, you lead the money tolls. Even if you're not the money savant in a relationship, you try to lead the talls, right? You try to bring them up at least, um, so that you guys can be on the same page. I believe that would show a lot of initiative. It'll show your spouse that you're serious about it, um, that you want to, you know, you want a long-term plan with this woman. Married men, single men, I mean, if you're not married yet, it's okay. Start working on your budget now while you're single, right? You sort of have leeway to your budget. So you need to have some, I like to say have some budget discipline. Because here's the thing having a budget is not hard, right? Anyone can create a budget. I can help you with that. If you don't know how to create a budget, re and reach out to us, we'll show how to do a budget. But the hard part is having budget discipline. And what I mean by that, what you put on the budget actually has to happen, right? So if you budget X amount for eating out, you cannot eat out more than that, right? Because that's giving you that budget discipline. Because I know I know a lot of people that start off with a budget, you know, and I want to be clear now, it takes you two or three months to sort of get your budget logged in. But I'm not, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about after you have the budget logged in, um, I wasn't a huge fan of having the budget and then pulling money from here to put over there because I want to spend more here. At least not for a while, right? Because you need to have some discipline after those initial, you know, two to four months once you get the budget locked in. Because a lot of times when you've never done budget, when you first sit down and do the budget, you don't know, even when you go back and sort of track stuff, you still don't know. Could you just spend willy-nilly and yeah, I want this, I want to go here, I want to buy this stuff. So once you really settle down and have a strict budget, one thing I would say most people have more money than they really thought they had, right? When you sit down and look at the budget and realize how much money you're sort of wasting, you say, oh, I guess I could be paying off this debt, saving for retirement, investing um, you know, in other assets if you choose to do that once you become debt-free. Uh, because I believe that, as you guys know, I believe debt-free is sort of the starting point. The debt freedom is the starting point because now you're sort of at ground zero, so now you can go, you can decide which way you want to go, right? Uh, you know, as you guys know, we followed the debt snowball, Dave Ramsey, all those guys up at um Ramsey Solutions. It was a game change for us. It was great, it was hard, it was fun. Um, but when you guys are building this budget, you need to build it together, right? You sit down and build a simple team budget together. Even if one of you guys is the money sub bond, the other one doesn't want to totally be tied into it, that's okay. But you need to sit down and do this together because being on the same team matters more than you think. Even if the other person try out, oh, it's not a big deal. No, no, no. Because I can tell you, no one wants all of the sort of money stress on them, even when you have more than enough. There's still money stress that comes with it, knowing that one person pays all the bills, uh, handles everything, and the other person is just sort of free, willy out there, just doing whatever they want. So sit down, build a simple team budget together. There's tons of things you can do to um have a budget. You can have a budgeting app. Uh, I like every dollar app. Um, that's my day ramps and those guys are there, but there's tons of them. Mint, I mean, there's tons. Um, YNIB, you need a budget. There's plenty of apps that you can use. Some of them are free, some of them charge you a little fee per month, but it's not much. Um, or you can go old school, paper and pencil, you know. Uh, but you need to have your income up top, right? Okay, we're gonna bring in $7,000 this month, all your expenses, every single thing, and you need to zero that budget out, right? So if you bring in $7,000, you need to make sure that $7,000 is allocated in your budget. Debt payments, utilities, uh, you know, all of that stuff, right? You have to do that so that you can know that every dollar has a job before you get it. Because if it doesn't have a job before you get it, the world consumerism is going to take over for most folks, right? It's gonna be like, oh yeah, I can afford that. When you look in that check and count and see, oh, we have $2,400. Oh, we should do this, oh, we should do that. And then that's how you go month after month and never really get like you can never really get ahead because you're just getting everything that you want all the time. Again, there's nothing wrong with getting the stuff you want if you can really afford to get everything that you really want and plan for the future because time isn't stopping for anyone. So eventually, eventually, you're going to be older, eventually you're going to need to access funds and you won't be able to work anymore, right? Um so that's that's it. I know I heard about I talked with a couple, they weren't budgeting, they started budgeting, and I want to say they had probably an extra extra two, three thousand dollars per month that they weren't really budgeting for. They didn't know they were spending that much on just stuff, right? Like it could happen. It's just stuff eating out here, clothes here, uh you know, Target here, Amazon here. It's just so much stuff. And you look back, I mean, you think about it, extra two grand a month, extra 25 grand a year, if you could have put into a Roth or paid off some debt. You could have done a lot of they could have taken a vacation. You guys know about vacations. So sit down together, build a simple team budget, right? Because here's the thing there cannot be any secret spending, everything has to be ours, right? And if one of you guys is, or both of you guys are secret spending, that's okay. Bring it to the table, apologize to your spouse, and get on the same page, right? The little uncomfort that you'll deal with in that moment will be a small point when you look down the road and you gotta get on the same page, you're able to save and invest and live the life that you really want, and you don't need to hide purchases and stuff like that. Um next thing, fellas, we have to do a better job of protecting our assets. And for me, we I say protecting our assets, primarily I'm talking about our family, right? We gotta be able to protect our family if something happens to us, right? Whether you're the sole income earner or you or your wife works outside of the home, doesn't matter. If you were to pass away, that would be a big detriment to your family, one way or another, right? So for me, I say get you some term life insurance, right? You can find the age you don't need, again, whole life, all that stuff. I'm saying no to it. I'm saying for what you need while you're trying to pay off this debt, give you some term life insurance, a 30-year term. Um I say look at your income, multiply it by 10, 15, and that's how much you need, so that if you were to pass away, well, not if you are going to pass away, but if you pass away early or unexpectedly, your wife can grieve, but she also has some money, right? She's also gonna be at a grieving peace. She's not gonna worry about, oh, how are we gonna pay the mortgage next month? Or how are we gonna send the kids to college if you have kids, or how are we gonna do this? Can't get uh don't do that, right? So again, if you make 50 grand a year, you 10 times your um 10 times your annual salary, you come up with that amount, right? Easy, right? 10 to 15, right? You do a little bit more again. Turn liking for shorts isn't very expensive, especially while you're younger, you know. Uh, and just log in that plan, pay it each month. That way, if something happens to you, your wife doesn't have to, so no one has to create a GoFundMe page and that type of thing. Because I want to say average term life insurance price is gonna be about 40-ish bucks per month. So if you and your wife get that um, you know, 80 bucks per month, so maybe that's one time you can't eat out because you gotta get this term life insurance. Uh, me personally, I uh yes, I have term, but I had a, you know, my wife doesn't work outside of the home. Christina doesn't work outside of the home. However, I have a fairly large policy on her because if she passes away unexpectedly or young, that is going to be very hard on the family financially, even though she doesn't work outside the home. Because now we got to look at who's gonna be schooling these kids, um, which is a big who's gonna do all the things so that I can do the thing that I do to provide income for the kids, right? Because now it won't be my wife have to provide for these kids. And so I have a big so fellas, get a big policy on your wife because even if she doesn't work outside the home, she's worth her weight in gold. Like, we always joke around. We know when a wife goes out of town for the weekend or whatever, or she goes out of town for a few days and you're home with the kids. Just imagine that indefinitely. How much money do you need? Do you need a house cook keep? Do you need a house cleaner? Do you need a nanny? Uh, do you need a chauffeur? There's a lot that you need. So for me, I have a fairly big policy on my wife because if she passes away, things are gonna get hectic around here. I'm going to need some help. So that's really important. I want to talk about sort of some common money traps that I see happening when I sit down and talk to couples, when we sit down and talk to, you know, when I sit down and talk to men. Uh well, listen to this. So the other day I had someone reach out. Uh, they were like, hey, I would like to talk to you. Hey, you know, like, what's going on? I would like to use my that they say something to the effect, to the effect that if I would like to use, you know, my money so that I could start being better with it, this and that. I want to pay off my debt. I'm like, okay, perfect. My first um question was not how much money do you make? I said, how much debt do you have? They say a lot. I said, no, no, no, a lot is not an answer. I said, tell me exactly how much you have, because we need to start from that part. That was about five days ago. I haven't heard back from that person yet. Here's the thing that I know a lot of people they do really want to get out of debt, they do really want to be better, but they're sort of afraid to confront the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So rather than just dive into it, figure it out, it may take you a couple hours to figure out exactly how much debt you have so you can look at that number. You'd rather just, I had a lot of debt. How much? I don't know if it's a lot. No, no, no, that doesn't work. Guys, I'm here to say I want to be clear. I've been there for years and years. I didn't know exactly how much student debt I had, right? From graduate school and stuff like that. I didn't know. I just knew I had some decent amount because I let the interest pile up. And I know Sally May would call me every now and then if my car didn't go through until that one day I was like, man, I'm gonna figure this out. Log bin took me a few hours that call. But once I got in and saw that number, yes, it was sort of disheartening because it was largely that I liked it to be, but it it was also sort of empowering because now I knew exactly how much debt I had and what I need to do to uh come up with that plan. So I challenge you guys if you listen to this fellas, you and your family have some debt and you want to get out of debt. If I gather that data and get those numbers, right? Because you need to know that, right? You need to know that. All right. Let me get back on track. So, guys, I want to talk about some of these common money traps. In no particular order, number one, lifestyle creep. You make more money, but you spend more money. Right? Have a certain one, it can happen to anyone, but lifestyle creep is a huge thing, right? Like, that's the reason that some people, you know, they'll start off. I mean, I've been there. You'll say, Man, if I ever make this much money, you know, my life will be set. Me and one of my buddies were joking about this the other day because I was telling them about, I don't know what I was telling them about. He's like, Can you imagine? He's like, Could you even imagine your life like this five years ago? Like, I really could. He was like, and that's the thing. The principles that you were doing back then, you're still doing it now. That's why this feels this way. It doesn't feel like a big challenge and stuff like that. Yes, it may be uncomfortable, but it's not a big challenge because you've been doing this. So lifestyle creatures number one, guys. You need to, you need to really sit down and look at your income and decide how much you want to save, how much you want to invest, uh, how much you want to use to pay off your debt, which I believe you should, after you pay all of your after you pay all of your uh expenses, the rest should be going to debt, right? Start your little baby emergency fund, and from there, you just roll in that debt through. Because as soon as you can get free of that debt, it's gonna be better for you, right? Um so lifestyle creep, that's important. That happens to a lot of people, many people. So lifestyle creep, you have to get control of it, right? I understand that. Oh, you know, making more, I deserve more. Like I get that, but lifestyle creep is a killer, guys. It's a killer again, going back to that. I know people that make a lot of money, but they spend a lot, a lot of money, right? So lifestyle creep is number one. Um two keeping money separate from your wife and hiding it, right? That's like to me, that's like that's sort of the full stop, right? That's that financial infidelity. And again, I know at times, you know, as men, um, some of you guys can be bullish and well, I make more, I take care of all this stuff. So if it like that's not really how this thing works. You have to make sure that your wife and you are on the same page when it comes to this money. So it should be our money, it should be together, it shouldn't be separate, right? You shouldn't be you shouldn't have this money separated like this. Everyone should have access to everything at any point in time. This one for the sailor, guys. If you're not married and you plan to get married, talk about your debt and your finances before you get married. Now, here's the thing: this doesn't need to happen too quick. You don't need to meet a girl or me talking to her for too much about, hey, how much debt do you have? No, we don't need to do that. But if this thing starts getting serious and you're thinking about getting engaged and all of this stuff, well, now we need to have that real conversation because most times people have two completely different views around Mike. So it just makes it easier to talk about that um before you get married. So again, do it, talk about it before you get married, get engaged, sort of get on the same page. Um I believe this is a big one. Um, this one is gonna be one of the biggest ones for you guys. I know there are some men, one and two, that are listening to this, and your pride just won't let you reach out for help. Guys, there's nothing wrong with needing help. We all need help. I'm in the helping business, right? Had a gym for 13 years. I love helping people. I've had a lot of help in my life. I ask tons of questions. Um I have a business now that helps gym owners. So I know that there's someone listening to this and you're probably you want to reach out, but you just don't know what to say. Just reach out and say, I need help. And just do it, guys, because the first step is saying, I need help. And like, here's the thing: people want to see you succeed. I don't care what they try to tell you, no one wants to see you do bad, no one just likes you, no one is happy if you aren't living your best life, right? The people that are really doing things at a high level, they want to see everyone doing it at a high level for the most part. They will see everyone's success because your success doesn't hurt my success, and vice versa, right? So reach out and ask for help, guys. Don't let the pride stop you from being great. Because that's all it is. Reach out and ask for help. Even my friends that say, I'll ask for help with anything. Like, I'll always want help. Um, because why would I try to create something from scratch when there's guys and girls that have gone before me that could just give me some advice and I could skip two or three steps and get there even faster? So it just doesn't make sense, guys. So ask for help. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. Um, and then for you fellas, I want to connect this whole purity thing in marriage, like I talked to, like I talked about last episode. Um, because if your heart is pure and you're trying to be straight up and honest with your spouse, it permeates everything, right? From the stuff you look at to what you think about to the thing you watch on TV and especially your money. So we need to be pure in our thoughts and our motives and our actions, especially when it comes to our money, right? Because again, it is it is more difficult to live a pure and just great life when you had more, right? Again, I'm a big believer in money just really finances, you know, excess just really pull out who you really are, right? So if you're a crappy person with no money, you're gonna be an even crappier person with money. It's not like, oh, once I get money, I'm gonna be this great person, and this is so if you're a sneaky person before you have money, once you get more money, you're gonna you're gonna be doing things even sneakier because you're not gonna have the resources to be even sneakier. We see it all the time, right? So I want to chat with you guys. Really go after this what you're like, right? Really go after this. Single man, really go after this, get a hold of this while you're a single man, right? There'll be nothing better than you getting married and being able to show your wife three to six months of an emergency fund, no debt. Um, you have a budget laid out. Again, even if she's wired totally opposite, that's gonna be eye-opening, right? And again, you'll talk about this a little bit before you get married, but it goes a long way. And I believe it makes a big difference as opposed to just getting married and being like, hey, by the way, uh, I have $75,000 in debt. That's not the type of baggage that you want to um take into marriage. So let's let's talk about that. Um Married Men, here's what I'm gonna challenge you with this week. I am going to challenge you with to schedule one money talk with your spouse this week, right? Figure it out, whatever you guys need to do. Everyone has time for what's important to them. So, Married Men, schedule a money talk with your wife this week, right? If you don't know where to start, yes, you do. You can go to our website, we have tons of resources. I'll link something in the show notes um because that's important. Singleman, I want to challenge you as well. I want you to track every dollar that you spend for the next 14 days. Every dollar. You can do it in the app, you can do it on paper and pencil, all I care. Track every dollar that you spend for 14 days. I mean, go back and review it. Because again, you can tell a lot about a person by looking at what they spend their money on, right? People can say a lot of things, but if I go look at your bank account, your bank transaction, your credit card transactions, you give me a couple months of those, I can tell the things that are really important to you by what you're spending your money on. So, single man, I challenge you, track every dollar that you spend for the next two weeks. Then go back and look at it. See if you're spending money on things that you shouldn't be, right? Because it'll change the way you spend your money. All right. Um guys, I want to like I want to see men just excel, right? I want to see marriages get better. And again, like I said, having always done it great. I don't always do everything great. Um but I know that most people, most men, most married couples, they want to live a better, quote unquote, better life when it comes to their finances, to their marriage. And that's what we're really trying to do with this platform. And specifically these last couple episodes, I may do another one with myself next week. I want to really just talk to the men because I believe that starts with us. And sometimes we need, we need, you know, other men to call us out. So, fellas, if you're listening to this, if you made it this far and you're a little upset because your wife sent it to you, she loves you. She's not trying to, you know, do anything. She just loves you and she wants you to be great, she wants the family to be great, and she found something that she believes can help you. So, guys, um, make sure that you hit that subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, wherever, hit the subscribe button because I want to make sure that you're walking along this journey with us, and we can be a part of your story. So, guys, as always, tell a friend to tell a friend to tune in, and I'll chat with you guys next week. Alright.