Military Wellness Collective
Military Wellness Collective is made up of four friends — two retired Marines (Joshua and Brian) turned church planters and their wives (Brittany and Kelli)— who have lived life both in uniform and on the home front. Together, we share real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and practical, biblical encouragement to help military members, and their families thrive in every season. Whether you’re navigating deployments, adjusting to life in a new town, or simply seeking hope in the middle of your military journey, our mission is to equip you with truth from God’s Word and tools for a healthy, resilient life.
Military Wellness Collective
EP 58: Money Stress to Money Peace, Budgeting, Economic and Societal Pressures on the Military Family
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Money can be the loudest stressor in a military home, even when the paycheck is steady. We sit down as two Marine couples and get brutally practical about what “barely getting by” really looks like: waiting for payday, juggling bills, and watching one car repair or home issue turn into a credit card snowball. If you’ve felt that pressure, you’re not alone, and you’re not stuck.
We talk about the turning point that changes everything: building margin. That includes a real emergency fund (so the dishwasher or alternator becomes a non-event), understanding insurance deductibles, and making choices that reduce chaos instead of feeding it. We also dig into the heart side of military personal finance: how money stress spills into marriage, why “we” language matters, and how honest conversations can be the start of real stability.
Then we lay out simple, repeatable steps for financial literacy: print your last few bank and credit card statements, find the leaks (restaurants, delivery, subscriptions), calculate your net worth, and build a budget or spending plan where every dollar has a job. We also discuss stewardship, generosity, and what to do when spouses disagree about tithing, including when to seek counsel and bring in trusted help. If this helped you, share it with your spouse or a friend, and please subscribe, leave a review, and pass the episode along.
Connect with us hello@militarywellnesscollective.com
SHOW NOTES:
4. Free Budget Template: Free and Easy Budget Template - Ramsey
5. Free version of Every Dollar; Dave Ramsey Budgeting app- EveryDollar Budget App: Plan, Track, Find More Margin - Ramsey
http://instagram.com/militarywellnesscollective
Welcome And Why Money Is Hard
SPEAKER_00All right, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Military Wellness Collective podcast. I am not Brittany Brown, who has hosted the last several episodes. I am Brian O'Day here in lovely Eastern North Carolina, veteran Marine, Pastor. What else would you say about me, babe? Father, father, husband. Anything else? How far would we go in this?
SPEAKER_03Wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Now we're getting settled. All right. I'm joined by that was my lovely, beautiful, talented bride, mathematician. Hey y'all, Kelly O'Day. And our good friends, Joshua Brown. Hello, hello. Brittany Brown.
SPEAKER_03Hey.
SPEAKER_00Veteran Marine couple.
SPEAKER_02Well, awesome. Wonderful. Joshua is the better marine.
SPEAKER_00Brittany has been by his side for a long time. All right. Today we're talking about go for it.
SPEAKER_01Be sorry. No, sorry to say this, Brian, but gotta say, Britney's voice is a little bit better for hosting. More soon. I really enjoy her hosting. All right.
SPEAKER_04Poor Brian.
SPEAKER_03I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01You're doing a great job. You can't change your voice.
SPEAKER_00We just started. I can't, we could change our voice, but we're not going to it. Today we're talking about money.
SPEAKER_02Woohoo.
SPEAKER_00We're talking about money. That thing don't shut us off. I don't know what what it is like. I think at like mer at formal events in the military, you're not allowed to talk about religion, money, politics, sex. I don't know what all's on the list, right? There's a list. And I feel like those are the topics we talk about on this podcast. Except not so much the politics, but we're going to talk about money. And maybe you grew up in a family, like I grew up in a family where we just didn't talk about money much. Like to ask my parents how much they made was like, you never ask that question. So I don't know your understanding about money and your history with money, but we're going to talk about money. And one of the reasons we want to talk about money is because this is a real challenge for so many of us. And definitely
Military Paycheck Reality And Stress
SPEAKER_00so many 18 to 29-year-olds, so many in our military, just uh money is a real struggle. Britney's got a couple of just kind of quotes just for the demographic. Maybe it'll help you feel like you're not alone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's really interesting. So in the military culture, in the context, I found some stats on a few different websites and it showed that pretty similar breakdown. So I'm going to use these that 70, 17, sorry, excuse me, 17% of officers say they are barely getting by, with over 50% of active duty members saying they are just barely getting by. And by just barely getting by, you know, making ends meet with the money that they're provided from the military.
SPEAKER_01Paycheck to paycheck.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, paycheck to paycheck, and a lot of other factors go into this too.
SPEAKER_00Probably a lot of debt. Yeah. So what do you imagine? So this barely getting by. So I imagine there was a survey. Are you, hey, everything's hunky dory, everything's fine, or I'm barely getting by, or in debt up to my eyeballs or something. And a bunch of people are saying 17% of enlisted or sorry, 17% of officers and 50% of active duty enlisted are saying they're barely getting by. So what's that look like? What's that you ever been there?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_04Yes, oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_00What's that look like?
SPEAKER_04Stress. Yeah. Major life stress.
SPEAKER_03Worrying about what bills are gonna maybe not get paid and waiting, trying to wait patiently for payday so that you can take care of things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, waiting for payday. Yeah. Good. Which is by the commissary. Can I pay this yeah? Yeah. Can I pay this bill or this bill? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it just makes me think of like when we were younger enlisted. It was like everybody grocery shopped on the first and the fifteenth. And the commissary was crazy. Yes. You know.
SPEAKER_00Restaurants here in town. Oh yes.
SPEAKER_01And anything that comes about suddenly becomes an emergency.
SPEAKER_00Alternator goes out in the car, all of a sudden, like we're not buying groceries for two weeks because we got to fix the alternator. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you have the money, it's like, oh, you're just having to take the time to go and bring it to the shop. But if you don't have the money, and it's like, oh man, I can't even pay for this. Now I got to put it on a credit card. Now I'm paying interest. Now I feel like, oh no, I I'm gonna have to cut certain things for the next how many months to pay for it.
SPEAKER_00It feels like this out of control snowball. Yeah. Right? Where it's like any little if you're barely getting by, barely getting by, that means there's no margin for life to happen. Right. There's no margin for the alternator to go out. And when that happens, very intentional word, when, when the alternator goes out, when you need new tires, when the kid needs braces, when whatever. When life happens, this like out of control snowball happens where you're just like, Well, man, now I can't pay groceries, now I gotta put it on the credit card, now I gotta put it on this other credit card, now I gotta do the br you know, the balance transfer to this other credit card, and now I gotta, and you're just this never gonna you're just like, I don't know how to get out of it.
SPEAKER_01And it's not just dollars and cents, it flows into emotional state because it just causes extra stress. And the vast majority of marriages that end up having a lot of problems, it starts with some sort of financial issue. Arguments over money causes fights.
SPEAKER_00So now there's relational stress and stress at work. I need this promotion, I have to get promoted. I've gotta there's temptations, more temptations for get rich quick schemes or nefarious
When Emergencies Create A Debt Snowball
SPEAKER_00things, or you know, other stress-producing things like getting a second job or doing all sorts of other stuff. Yep. Yep. Okay. What what are some of the joys if you could get this under control?
SPEAKER_03Not stressing when the car needs a new alternator.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But knowing that let's be clear. Do you feel like we are barely getting by financially, Kelly?
SPEAKER_03No, not right now.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Do y'all feel like you're barely getting by financially?
SPEAKER_03No, no, not right now.
SPEAKER_00Not right now. In the past we have. In the past you have, and we have as well.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00So what are some of the joys of being on the other side? So Kelly said it's not stressful. We had we had to get new tires on our car last week. Four new tires. Yeah. It's a significant expense these days. And so four new tires.
SPEAKER_03It's kind of a non-event. I mean, thankfully.
SPEAKER_00Praise God.
SPEAKER_03Because we have money and savings for those reasons. I mean, you know, like that is why.
SPEAKER_00Assuming that something's gonna go wrong with the car or something just needs with the car. We own a house, and so when things go bad, like you just have these things. So less stress when that life happens. Yeah, what else? Joys of getting this figured out.
SPEAKER_01Well, the you feel free.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I remember we had a string of things happening. So we were we were on track, we were budgeting well for a period of time, and we were saving for emergencies. And we had a string of things happen at our other at our old house. We lot like it was a water heater went out, we needed uh uh the refrigerator went down, and then it was the dishwasher went up. Yeah, all like within two months. And those each one of those is hundreds of dollars. Oh, yeah, and it just added up really fast. And we were we were having to pull from our emergency fund for these emergencies. And I remember talking with Britney, I don't know if you remember this, but if she was like, Oh no, what are we gonna do? And I just went, Well, that's what it's there for. Right.
SPEAKER_04And so because now I struggle, like we don't want to touch.
SPEAKER_01I know don't touch it. That money is sitting there for an emergency. We want the buffer. Thank God we have it, and then we build it back up. We now we have to build back up. Yeah, exactly. Because this string of things won't keep happening, we'll have other things, but like that's how the emergency fund works instead of using a credit card.
SPEAKER_00What you're describing is a good version of feeling in control. Yeah. Okay. So being controlling is usually in a negative connotation. However, in Genesis chapter one, the first instruction that the Lord gives to the man and woman is to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all those things, right? And so you having dominion over the things the Lord has placed you in dominion over is a good thing. And you feel in control, which is the opposite of stress. Stress is feeling out of control. And so this is a good version of being in control when you're like, oh, we put money over here in a pile and called it an emergency fund. And then when an emergency happens, like the dishwasher is out, or you know, that's a minor emergency, it's a first world emergency. Yeah, let's call it what it is. But we go into that pile of money and we pull it out and we replace the dishwasher, and then we look and we're like, oh, let me now in control build that emergency fund back up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's interesting because it reminds me of when Hurricane Florence happened.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That was some years ago now.
SPEAKER_00But if you lived in eastern North Carolina, significant damage to both of our houses.
SPEAKER_04Yes, significant. And what I learned through that, I learned so much about insurance, right? And and it made it opened my eyes to why people struggle, even though they have insurance, because we had to front all the hotel like until the insurance started reimbursing us.
SPEAKER_03And we had to start with the work on our house. Right.
SPEAKER_04You're like, I don't know. It just having that buffer has really taught me a lot from our young married days of really living paycheck to paycheck, being financially illiterate.
SPEAKER_00And virtually every insurance policy I've ever looked at has a deductible. So you've got to be able to pay the $500, the thousand dollar deductible, or for wind and hail insurance for a hurricane, it's a percentage
Emergency Funds And Insurance Deductibles
SPEAKER_00of the value of your house. So you've got to have some money, even if insurance is paying most of it, you still gotta have the the amount for the deductible. Yeah. So yeah, that's good. Okay.
SPEAKER_03Well, I was gonna say one another joy that we didn't mention is just being able to give generously, like and joyfully. I mean it, you know, just like it's harder when you're every cent needs to go some, you know, like it's just harder to go above and beyond. Yeah, you know, maybe a regular tithe or to even have space to think about being generous to other things. So I think that is a joy that when you are more secure financially, yeah. It's just fun.
SPEAKER_00It is fun. It's a great word. Yeah, it's a good word. When it's we're we've got a conversation that we like to text keywords to each other, like, hey, here's a conversation we need to have, and there's a conversation about a generosity opportunity coming up for us that we need to discuss. And that's a fun conversation. It's like, oh, cool. Like, are we gonna give more to this or how are we gonna give to this or whatever the case? Do we need to like stop giving to this other thing so we can give to this? Like, when you get to the point where not only are you tithing to your local church, but which that may be so far in your mind of like 10% to my local church, that feels like a lot. When you can even go beyond that and give to other things, that gets really exciting. And and where you really get to steward before God, like, why did you give us this money? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I love that you said steward because it's not ours.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So what's that concept? We're we're segueing into like what does the Bible say about money?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think stewardship just reminds me, it's not ours, it's somebody else's that and I'm taking care of it. So the money that God's given our family, are we utilizing it in a way that honors God? And we had a lot of debt in our early marriage. And I learned through scripture that that is not pleasing to the Lord to just be paying all this interest on all these credit cards and continually borrowing and not having a savings buffer and those things. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've seen that too. So we are stewards. So the Lord, the money that we have that comes through our bank accounts that comes through our hands, is ultimately from the Lord and how we spend it, how it goes out of our bank accounts, how it goes out of our hands, we are responsible to the Lord with the decisions that we make regarding that money. If I could summarize all of the Bible teaching about that, about money, that would be it. Yeah. It's all God's. We are merely stewards, and we are responsible to God for how we steward the money.
SPEAKER_01I was counseling a fellow about stewarding God's money well, and and we were going through his budget, and he was he was like, I want to give,
Stewardship, Tithing, And Generosity
SPEAKER_01I just don't know where it would come from. I want to do these things, I just don't know where it comes from where I look at. And I showed him where the money was going, and he would had this realization. And he looks at me and goes, I know where all my money's going. I'm eating it. We realized that too when we made a bunch of. I was like, explain that a little further. He's like, I'm eating out a lot, and every meal is costing me 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks instead of instead of going to the grocery store and instead of you know a $30 meal, it's a three-dollar meal. He was just like, This is crazy. I need to start. This is why people bring bag lunches to work. I was like, yes, it's a normal thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You do Yeah, I it'd be fun to go to the grocery store and figure out like how much how many days of lunch, one loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and and jelly or honey or whatever you're gonna do with it. Oh, yeah. Like you could eat a lot of lunches that way. Oh yeah, or or something else. Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when you're trying to get out of like if you need if you are listening and you've are in a financial situation where you're like, wow, that all sounds amazing. You guys have it all together, which we don't have it all together, but you can do some things and you're gonna have to do some things in order to get yourself into a position. It doesn't just happen, it's intentional and very purposeful. Yeah, and we did. Yeah, you're gonna have to make some choices, decisions, right?
SPEAKER_00Decisions. We talked about that on a recent episode.
SPEAKER_04Starbucks coffee four times a week is not great.
SPEAKER_00So talking to myself. Yeah, let's so Joshua, you just you said you led a brother through this process. And one of the processes is let's look at your expenses. You could do that now. Most of our expenses, if they're happening on credit cards or debit cards or whatever the case is, you can see it. Like just pull up in the bank statement or the credit card statements. Where is all the money going? Yeah, that is a great first step. And just doing that, just open it up and look at it. Just look at it.
Find The Leak By Printing Expenses
SPEAKER_00And I think you're immediate. And if you have this idea, I'm responsible to God for every one of these expenses, you're gonna have some immediate aha moments. Like that guy, it sounds like that happened really fast. Oh, yeah, it was easy.
SPEAKER_01You look at it, he's like, I'm eating it. He's looking at percentages, and it's like, whoa, 80% of my money is going in my mouth.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Or if he's doing so getting food delivered to your house. Oh my goodness. Is a very like that's probably the someone else preparing your food and bringing it to your house. Everywhere else in the history of the world, we would call you an extremely wealthy person. If someone else is buying, making, preparing your food and delivering it to you, we would call you extremely wealthy. Yeah. And now we that's actually making you poor. Yeah. Right. And some of those types of things. So get out your expenses, hit print. We're paper pen people around here. So hit print on that stuff. Hit print. There's everybody's gonna try to sell you an app. Everybody's gonna try to. We ain't selling anything here. There's no app. We got nothing to sell at the end of this. That's right. You're welcome. So, like hit print on the thing. Go pull open your bank statement, pull open your credit card statements, hit print on the last three of them and do some math. Amen. From our math teacher over here, do some math, add the stuff and look at it and and do those things. The the other thing the Bible says is what Kelly launched us into was that we are to be giving, we are to be generous. Christians historically have really mimicked the Old Testament tithe, which is 10% of our produce. For us, that'd be 10% of our income, would go to our local assembly, our local church. And there's a passage in scripture, maybe somebody will look it up here in a second, but where God says, You are robbing me. Like when you don't bring the full tithe into the storehouse, you're robbing God. And so your brother that you were talking to, he's eating it, and if he's not tithing, he is actually eating the tithe that's supposed to go to the Lord. Yeah. That's power. Like if we just man, we to me that that will get you 90% of the way there. Look at all your expenses, prayerfully consider Lord, I I bet I have a spending problem. We're talking to military folks, you're getting money twice a month, every single month, if the government doesn't shut down. But you so you're getting all that. What are you doing? It's primarily at it's primarily an expense problem. There are times that it's an income problem, but for most of you, it's an expense problem. So write it all down, add it all up, and just prayerfully ask the Lord, Lord, where am I robbing from you? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I think too, like, which I know you're probably gonna get into making a budget, but when we early in our marriage, when we looked at our finances and were like, ugh, this is like we're going in a bad direction with just like at snowballing debt instead of getting out of it. And you were like, We we need to live on a budget. And that was an eye roll moment for me. I'm gonna be honest. Another eye roll moment where I was like, oh, like I just felt like I'm gonna be restricted from you know, just everything. I don't know. It is, but it was good restrictions. Oh, it led to yes, good things. But I remember one thing that you modeled well and led well, and I just like learned from is when you made the budget, the very first thing that came off was our tithe. Like you
Build A Budget That Starts With Giving
SPEAKER_03were just like, this is where we start because it is and like it was it was like you were teaching me through that. And I just that was like that's a memory that I have that I was just like where I was learning, you're right, because I had lived on my own in college and worked and you know, gave every now. I just it wasn't a regular thing for me. So I was still learning what that looked like. We would call that tipping.
SPEAKER_00So just I was very giving every once in a while in an undisciplined way is kind of like tipping, right? And you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now give a little bit here, a little bit here, but we want to give in a disciplined way. So another thing that was a big epiphany for me uh around that same season that you're talking about, Kelly, is we did our first, I did, I think, our first net worth calculation. And so stick with me, it is a math problem. You write down all your assets. So if you have a car, you write down how much is that car worth? You can go to Kelly Blue Book, you can go somewhere else, find out how much your car is worth. If you own a house, how much is your house worth? If you own, you probably, you know, you might not own much else. We got some stuff around the house that's not worth a whole lot if you try to resell it. Like, how much could I actually sell this to another actual human being for? List out all your assets. Then you list out all your liabilities, your credit card debt, your car loan, your house mortgage, your all your student loans, if you have those. You list out all those liabilities and you take your assets and you subtract out your liabilities, and that is your net worth. Okay. When somebody talks about being a millionaire, what they're talking about is that math problem equals one million dollars or more, then you are a millionaire. Some people don't I don't know, they think weird about what a millionaire actually is, but that's what it is. It is your net worth.
SPEAKER_01Usually people think it's because they have a million dollars sitting in their checking account. Right. And that's Yeah, that's not a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00That's not the case. Or they make a million dollars a year or something. That's not right. That means your net worth is a million dollars. Right. The first time I did that math problem, our net worth was somewhere in the neighborhood of negative $30,000. Wow. I had been an officer in the Marine Corps for three years. And you know, you make decent money. We didn't have kids.
SPEAKER_03Part of that time was dual income, no kids.
SPEAKER_00Some of it was dual income. I I call them ding.
SPEAKER_03That's embarrassing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dual income. Dual income kids. And our net worth. If we both died in that moment, we owed the world money.
SPEAKER_04Isn't that weird? That's an interesting thought.
SPEAKER_00It feels icky. It felt I it feels like it made me sick. I was like, something's gotta change. And so so I would encourage you to do that math problem. Like list out your assets, list out your liabilities, look at it. Do it on pen and paper. Look at it and say, Is this am I honoring the Lord with my wealth? Am I li honoring the Lord with the paycheck?
SPEAKER_01We didn't do the math, but we probably would have been in the same category in our first six to ten years of marriage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Negative net worth. Negative net worth.
SPEAKER_03It's possible to start because I think some people are like, well, I it's just not possible. But it is like you just have to start taking steps.
SPEAKER_00So what are some of the other lies we tell ourselves? I think that's a big thing on this. And the Lord is all about truth. Yeah. So I don't make enough money. What was the one you said right before that? It's not possible to get out of this hole. Your $30,000 negative network. It's it's impossible to get out. That's not true. I don't make enough money. Probably not true. Might be, but let's talk to somebody about that.
SPEAKER_01A big one is this is normal. This is normal. Everybody has to do that.
SPEAKER_00Not an excuse, but yeah. Yeah, that's that is true, but it's not helpful. And it doesn't jive if you picture yourself standing in front of God. Like, hey, everybody's doing it. Like, yeah, I don't think that passes muster. Any other lies we tell ourselves? Or anything that we blame, which is kind of like a lie, blaming others. Oh, I I've heard of people, yeah, blaming others. I don't know how. Okay. Ignorance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, absolutely. Politics.
Net Worth Math And Common Money Lies
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the politicians are not paying us enough. They just don't pay the troops enough. A recent one is. The economy's bad.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. People are blaming certain entities and portions of our economy have gone up or down over the years. And so there's this, oh, well, back in the 30s, you could buy a house for this much and have this income and be a single-income family, but nowadays you can't do that because houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive, but our incomes haven't kept up and all these things. And what I would say to that is, yeah, but our our like lifestyles have also had a lot more budget, like item billing items that have been put in there. They didn't have cell phones then. They didn't have cable and internet and wifi and running water.
SPEAKER_00Like electricity we use all the time. And yeah, everybody doesn't need a thousand dollar phone.
SPEAKER_04Uh so I was a stay-at-home mom. Yeah well, all of our children's childhood. I I owned a couple businesses along the way, but I think a lie that I thought or told myself early on was well, it's just always gonna be this way because we've made the choice for me to stay home and we only have one income. And I just want to encourage you out there, if you're listening, we did get out of debt on one income on a military enlisted paycheck, enlisted enlisted with me staying home, homeschooling our kids. Like it can be done. I love what Dave Ramsey always says like you just have to live like no one else, so you can live like no one else. And now I don't advocate all his principles and stuff, but really he was extremely influential in Joshua and I learning financial uh wisdom and literacy. So we had to make the choice. We're like other people.
SPEAKER_00All right, let me rapid fire a couple things. So uh writing uh so a lot of this is being honest and looking at things black and white. Look at truth, look at reality. So print out those expenses, look at them prayerfully. Lord, where am I overspending?
SPEAKER_03And yeah, do being willing to be honest, because I think I've talked to young people, including our children, where they will say things like, It's impossible because I don't make enough. I'll never be able to. And then when we look at it, DoorDash, things that are not necessary, you know, like completely clothes, like you have clothes, you don't need new clothes, like not in this season. Yeah, yeah, sorry. But just being really honest.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, calling it.
SPEAKER_03You have to get to a level of being like, I don't need this.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So the other one, calculation, net worth calculation, can be helpful.
Cutting Subscriptions And Budgeting As A Team
SPEAKER_00Just to be real about where you're at, and then budget, or you might call it a spending plan. So here's how you do that.
SPEAKER_02It sounds pretty.
SPEAKER_00It's a plan, a spending plan, right? You're making a plan. So at the top of a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, again, you don't have to buy an app. You can buy an app if you want to.
SPEAKER_04There are free templates.
SPEAKER_00There are free templates. You could you could do this a what anyway, but if you want to go the old fashioned way, free templates if you need to see it. Here's the old-fashioned way. You write your income at the top of the piece of paper, and then you plan how you're going to spend that income ahead of time. You tell every single dollar where to go, and at the bottom of the page, that all has to equal zero.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_00And if you if it equals a negative number, your expenses are bigger than your income, which is most likely true the first time you do this, then you have to do the hard work of saying no to things. We are not eating at restaurants, we are not doing DoorDash and Uber Eats and whatever else does that these days. We are not, we can't afford that. We can't afford that. We don't, and so you've got to cut some things. You also may need to simplify your life. Simplify your life. You may not have cable subscriptions or all the subscriptions to all the streaming services. You may not be able to do all the activities for your kids. You may not there, you will have to say no to things.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And on the entertainment side of things, there's a lot of people with subscriptions. A lot of people are paying for a streaming service and then paying for the movie that they want to download to watch, and then paying for apps on their phones. That's the thing in our case. If you need to look at all of that stuff and start gutting it and getting rid of it, you can have just as much entertainment value by going to your local library and using free subscriptions and watching the free movies on your on your TV.
SPEAKER_00Most restaurants and entertainment is where most of the money is going. It's all most of it is on frivolous things. Okay. So make a budget and talk about it with your spouse. Do it together. If you're married, you've got to be doing this together. You've got to be on this journey together. We have a problem. We have a spending problem. You don't have a, you know, it's usually both. Uh we have a spending problem. We need to work on this together. We need to talk about this and we need to figure this out. Lots of we language. If you can't have that discussion, then you've got a marriage problem and you need to work on the marriage problem. And you need to maybe bring a third party in the room to do that.
SPEAKER_03I do have a question that I I just heard recently. That's why I'm bringing this up. On the tithing,
When Spouses Disagree About Tithing
SPEAKER_03what if one spouse feels strongly about tithing and the other spouse does not think that it's necessary? Yeah. And say the husband does not think it's necessary. The wife desires to tithe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, wow, that's a great question. I know. Sorry, I just want to throw that bond. I imagine you're talking about an unbelieving husband in that situation or a brand new believer in this case, yeah. I would bring in maybe some pastoral counsel in that situation. Like, hey, could we talk if it's a new believer, if it's a non-believer, I would actually encourage the wife to submit to that for the time being. Or ask or make sure that there is an allocation for like like most good budgets have some like we call it blow money. It's like not to not to buy drugs, but to like spend just on my own whatever I want, a cup of coffee or whatever the case is. And so she should ask, Hey, could I have some of that? And then she could tithe, she could give a little bit off of that and honor the Lord in that way. And so it may not be a full tithe at the full family income in that situation, but she should submit to that and then find a way to honor the Lord in that would be my quick answer to that. Okay. All right. So we just got started in this conversation, and it is also over. Uh one last thing, one last thing. Find an actual person, an actual Christian you know that seems like they're handling money halfway decent and bring them
Ask For Help, Share, And Closing
SPEAKER_00into the problem as well. So I've got a few folks of those that I've had in my life, and I think all of us have. And now we we get to act as that in in other people's lives sometimes. But anyway, if this has been helpful for you, thank you for sticking around to the end. If you have somebody in mind, this might one this might be a little awkward one to share with somebody, like, hey, you might need this, but feel free to share it. Definitely share it with your spouse and start the conversation. Thanks for stopping by. Email us whenever you want with your questions, concerns. Hello at militarywellness collective.com. Hello at military wellness collective.com. I love you guys.