FPU Week 2: Relating With Money

This week Dave Ramsey and his daughter, Rachel Cruze, taught us how money impacts our relationships and how to build stronger relationships with our spouses and how to teach our kids about money.

Dave Ramsey used his humor throughout this lesson talking about the differences between men and women and the differences between nerds and free spirits.  Money is the number-one cause of divorce in North America.  Dave mentions that, "if money has the potential to be our worst area, then it also has the potential to be the best area of our marriage."  In order to win with money, both the husband and the wife need to be making the financial decisions in your marriage.  Of course the more "nerdy" or the one with the natural gift of budgeting can create the initial draft, but both the husband and wife need to have a say and agree on a budget each month or it just won't work.    In our family my wife and I are both on the nerdy side, but after taking the survey at the end of our unit I scored "ultra-nerd", while my wife scored "nerd-ish".

Dave talked about the importance of accountability partners for single people and creating a written plan.  Without these it is too easy to impulsively destroy your chances of winning with money and having financial peace.

Rachel came out on stage and talked about kids and money.  Teaching our kids how to handle money is not the school's responsibility, it is our responsibility as parents.  One of the things that Rachel stressed was to teach kids the value of money is to pay commissions and not allowances.  This  helps teach the principle that "if you work, you get paid; if you don't work, you don't get paid."  We try to use teachable moments to teach William about giving, spending and saving.  He uses three envelopes to save his commissions, money he makes from selling his stuff and gifts he receives from others.   The three envelopes he uses are "giving", "saving", and "spending".  He puts at least 10% of everything he earns and puts it into his giving envelope and then decides what causes to give to at church, school or in the community.  He then is able to divides the remaining ~90% into the other two envelopes. William has learned so much and has already learned to make wise spending decisions.

This was a great class, I am very passionate about living a legacy for William and future generations.  It is important that we teach our kids what the Bible says about handling money so they don't make some of the same mistakes we have made.  Proverbs 22:6 says, "Trains up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."  As parents it is our responsibility to train our children not only how to handle money, but to be people of good character.  The Bible has a lot to say about these things, especially in the book of Proverbs!