Marriage and Finances

By

Laura Doyle

By Laura Doyle

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Laura Doyle is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Relationship Expert, Host of The Empowered Wife Podcast at Laura Doyle Connect.

| Updated: 12/20/2023|36 Comments on Marriage and Finances

If only getting married made your finances as cinchy as economists make it seem like they’re gonna be.

Sharing the rent or mortgage, the grocery bills and utilities saves so much money, there should be less financial strain on you both–not more.

And study after study shows that married couples are at the top of the financial heap for net worth and earning.

But even though we have more than our unmarried counterparts, somehow husbands and wives fight about money more than anything else.

My husband and I contributed to that miserable statistic for years.

Fighting about money is not conducive to intimacy, and it wasn’t helpful for our prosperity, either.

Thankfully, I finally learned what I’m about to share with you, and we haven’t had a fight about money at the Doyle house in many years.

Here are 4 simple ways we got closer and richer as a couple:

1. I focused on what we had (not what we didn’t have)

You might be rolling your eyes right about now and thinking that it must be pretty easy for us to be lovey-dovey when it comes to money because we’re rich.

I agree that we are very rich.

Of course, rich is a subjective term, but I like to say I’m rich every chance I get because I know that what I focus on increases.

I’ve even been training my teenage niece along those lines because it’s been so valuable for me to learn to affirm my wealth instead of affirming lack.

When I take her to lunch, we have a ritual where she calculates the tip and I suggest we round it up to the nearest dollar. Then I ask, “And why do we do that?” And she responds, “Because we’re so rich!”

Then we both smile.

What does that have to do with financial intimacy in marriage?

It’s an example of the practice that leads to having enough—the habit of focusing on what I have, how rich I am.

Before I learned to do that, I was in the unhappy habit of focusing on what I didn’t have and feeling resentful about it.

I’d be mad at my husband and look at the ways that he was causing me not to have the things that I lacked by not making enough and spending too much.

Then I would tell him so, and we fought about that quite a bit.

I caused a lot of NET (Needless Emotional Turmoil) because I was afraid. I was in the habit of choosing my fear over my faith in those moments.

Today, I know what to do when the fear hits: drop and do 10 gratitudes—meaning make a list of the things I’m grateful I have.

And breathe.

Ahhhh. That’s better.

2. I spent frivolous money on myself

One of the reasons I was so quick to get resentful about what my husband was spending or how he wasn’t making enough is because I couldn’t bring myself to spend money on the things I wanted.

I talked myself out of them because they weren’t necessary. I told myself I could get by with what I had and other dreary, martyrish things.

My thinking was that if I had to sacrifice like that, then so did my husband.

I would tell him so.

You can imagine his excitement about that idea.

No wonder I was focused on how much we didn’t have. I couldn’t let myself buy any of it!

It was many years ago, but I still remember the utter thrill and discomfort I felt when I first hired someone to clean our house.

It wasn’t a reasonable financial decision, given all the debt we had and the savings we didn’t have. That was the terrifying part.

I was pretty sure I should have just sucked it up and cleaned the house myself. It seemed like it was supposed to be my job.

But it made me feel like the richest woman in the world to have a clean house without having to scrub the toilet or dust the bookshelves myself.

It wasn’t easy, but I chose my faith over my fear in spending what little money we had at that time on the housekeeper, and I was amazed to learn just how much romance there is in a house with clean toilets and dusted bookshelves.

I also discovered that feeling rich and being rich are the same thing.

3. I joined with him financially

One man told me that the benefit of keeping separate accounts when you’re married is so you can buy a present for the other person without them knowing how much you spent, or having it come out of their own bank account.

I can see why he feels that way, but for me, wanting to have separate bank accounts was more about fear that I couldn’t rely on my husband.

I wanted to be able to put my hands on money in case I needed something important…like a divorce lawyer.

In other words, I wasn’t all in. I was sitting on a pointy, uncomfortable fence.

And my husband knew that I didn’t trust him. And that made him feel bad.

Who wouldn’t, right?

Feeling that your wife doesn’t trust you is not great for your self-worth.

It’s not good for your net worth either.

I wanted to have faith.

But faith without action is dead.

When I finally became willing to join with him financially (no hold-out accounts or credit cards), our intimacy and our bank account both grew.

4. I gave my husband financial authority

Speaking of not trusting my husband, I also was sure I was smarter than he was with money.

I didn’t think he could handle all the juggling that had to be done with the bills, especially since there never seemed to enough, and it took all kinds of scheming to keep the wolf away from the door.

But I was also exhausted with trying to do it myself, and he never seemed to be paying attention when I was telling him about how I’d paid half of the electric bill so I could make a minimum payment on a credit card.

Of course he wasn’t listening. Who would? I was just monologuing and not asking for his input.

It wasn’t until I handed over the finances and acted like I had faith that he could handle them that he started giving the situation his best thinking.

And his best thinking led to significant financial abundance that we hadn’t experienced before.

He started his own business.

Our income more than doubled.

And I got to stop worrying about him ordering something too expensive on the menu when we went out.

That was an embarrassing habit of mine when I was juggling the bills, and it was not conducive to intimacy.

Letting my husband pay the bill when we went out without worrying about how much it cost was just what we did when we first fell in love.

By Laura Doyle

Hi! I'm Laura.

New York Times Bestselling Author

I was the perfect wife--until I actually got married. When I tried to tell my husband how to be more romantic, more ambitious, and tidier, he avoided me. I dragged him to marriage counseling and nearly divorced him. I then started talking to women who had what I wanted in their marriages and that’s when I got my miracle. The man who wooed me returned.

I wrote a few books about what I learned and accidentally started a worldwide movement of women who practice The Six Intimacy Skills™ that lead to having amazing, vibrant relationships. The thing I’m most proud of is my playful, passionate relationship with my hilarious husband John–who has been dressing himself since before I was born.

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