11 April 2007
The Hidden Nature of Money - Part Two - The Ring
Two days ago, I opened up a particularly large can of worms (or “barrel of worms”, depending on your preference). We’re discussing the cause, the effects, and the motivation behind keeping financial matters shrouded in secrecy - even from those closest to us.
Today, on my favorite radio station, they had a particularly notable woman call in and discuss a decision she had made, of which she was sure she was correct. She had recently gotten engaged, and the engagement ring she was received had a diamond that was alittle over two carats (that’s alot). She took this diamond to a pawn shop, sold it, secretly replaced it with a cubic zirconia stone, and used the money to pay off credit card debt her fiance did not know she had.
Her justification for this was breath-taking: “I’m sure other people do this. It makes alot of sense, it’s not like he’ll ever know. He’s really good at saving and he would totally freak out if he knew about the credit card debt. Besides, I racked up the debt before I met him, and the whole reason he was attracted to me was because of the outfit and handbag purchases I put on the credit cards.” [rough summary, she said all of these things throughout the discussion].
As far as an example for the hidden nature of money goes, this is about as perfect as it gets. This woman has managed to put two huge strikes of trust against her future-husband before he’s even her husband!
For one, she concealed her credit card debt from him, even as the relationship got serious. I’m not saying you should have a sharing-of-the-bank-statements on the first date, but it seems like pretty important information to be shared before discussions of marriage take place.
I don’t mean to dwell on the negative and harp on and on about this. There are certainly some encouragements to both everyone and specifically to couples to offer on this topic.
- 1. Everyone Else Has It All Together:
- 2. The Spender/Saver dynamic: In many relationships, there’s one person who plays the role of the Saver, and one of the Spender. In my family, I get the dubious role of Spender, ‘deh wife’ gets Saver. Go wife!The encouragement I offer in this situation is to the Saver, not the Spender. In the story about the pawned ring above, there’s one very telling point: she says she couldn’t tell her fiance about the credit card debt because he’d freak out, presumably because he was good at saving. Despite who’s fault it is, the fact of the matter is that the girl didn’t feel she could tell her fiance about her debt. This in no way condones her action, but it certainly didn’t help.
If you’re the Saver in a relationship, please, make it explicitly clear that you will forgive and try to be understanding to your mate should they falter financially, either in the present or the past. It’s easier to deal with such problems when they occur than after months/years of secrecy and distrust.
- 3. Help!: The above encouragements only really serve to deal with open discussion of finances. They do very little for the actual process of budgeting or paying down debts. In alot of cases, your friends or spouse may be just as helpless as you when it comes to the skills to work toward financial stability.Though I have not personally gone through the program, I’ve heard only good things about Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Though not free, it has produced results in people and very simply and plainly lays out steps you can take toward putting your financial house in order. If you want to go more in-depth than that, the web is full of personal finance blogs that discuss financial topics every day of the year. A few of them that I enjoy are linked on the sidebar.
As I stated in the first post, we first have to move past the point that everyone else has it all together. This is a lie, end of story. This is the same lie that tells Christian guys that they’re the only one in their circle of guy friends who struggle with pornography/lust. It’s not every single guy, but its almost impossible that they’re the only one.
I don’t have to quote statistics to point out that on average, most people aren’t sittin’ pretty with their finances (though I will on request =). They struggle. They worry.
More personally, I don’t have it all together. Though worrying about money is my cup o’ tea (this tea tastes bad), the wife and I have roughly 10k in student loans. We’ve got a trip across the ocean for a wedding of a close friend coming up that’s gonna be painful on the bank account.
The problem is people feel such shame or guilt that they are unwilling to share in expectation of being rejected. It requires vulnerability on the part of the first person to speak up about such struggles, and there simply aren’t a large amount of people doing so, inside the church or out.
I sincerely hope this post and series will be helpful to you. Please feel free to comment!
Whew! I love these posts, Eric. I love it when my RSS feed grabs another one and surprises me.
I agree with your assessment of this situation. If you are headed towards marriage, the guaranteed way to fail is to hide something big.
If you are in debt, because of purses or dining out, education or medical, you need to talk about it. It will happen again, especially if you are debt because of purses and dining out. If you’ve made a habit of it before, you will rack up that debt again. Unless you change. Rather than turn a gift of love into a gift of money, this girl should have confessed her problem. he may have still given her a ring, and prepared a plan to pay off her stupid debt. Now, this ring issue will hang over her forever. What if he looks at it and notices its not the same stone? What if he takes it for a cleaning or upgrade, and is told that its CZ? this was a very dishonest thing to do.
The coolest thing I look forward to with Mr. Cartersville, is the marriage income. Where we have had debt separately, soon we will have joint income to help knock out that debt. And we will celebrate when said debt is knocked out, together. why make debt even more devastating by adding secrets? Make debt a way to communicate about finances. Make it a way to bond and grow together!
And my kudos go out to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. The FPU classes are great.