Uncommon Freedom
The High Cost of Financial Disunity
Want to stop money fights from undermining your relationship and business? According to Bekah & Kevin, who have built a thriving marriage and multiple businesses over 25 years, it IS possible. But it takes the right mindset and tactics.
In this episode, Kevin & Bekah share their battle-tested strategies for eliminating financial friction, including:
- Why 100% transparency about debts and purchases is non-negotiable (no more hidden spending!)
- How to choose a money management system that reinforces your "oneness" as a couple
- The weekly habit that will transform your financial teamwork and intimacy
Kevin & Bekah also dive into eye-opening statistics about the link between debt and marital conflict, the dangers of financial secrecy, and how your family of origin shapes your money mindset.
If you want to turn money from a source of stress to a source of strength in your relationship, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now to discover practical tips you can implement today!
Subscribe and tell a friend!
Get my book "The Seven Disciplines of Uncommon Freedom" on Amazon!
Visit bekandkev.com today to sign up for our email newsletter.
Access our Free health assessment HERE
Want to stop money fights from undermining your relationship and business? According to Bekah & Kevin, who have built a thriving marriage and multiple businesses over 25 years, it IS possible. But it takes the right mindset and tactics.
In this episode, Kevin & Bekah share their battle-tested strategies for eliminating financial friction, including:
- Why 100% transparency about debts and purchases is non-negotiable (no more hidden spending!)
- How to choose a money management system that reinforces your "oneness" as a couple
- The weekly habit that will transform your financial teamwork and intimacy
Kevin & Bekah also dive into eye-opening statistics about the link between debt and marital conflict, the dangers of financial secrecy, and how your family of origin shapes your money mindset.
If you want to turn money from a source of stress to a source of strength in your relationship, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now to discover practical tips you can implement today!
Subscribe and tell a friend!
Get my book "The Seven Disciplines of Uncommon Freedom" on Amazon!
Visit bekandkev.com today to sign up for our email newsletter.
Access our Free health assessment HERE
Hey, welcome back Uncommon Freedom Fighters. Today we are tackling a topic that hits close to home for most couples, and that is financial conflict. Did you know that 41% of couples with consumer debt say money is their top source of arguments? Did you know that, beck?
Speaker 2:I have heard that before. So money fights are actually the second leading cause of divorce behind infidelity. But the good news is you can turn your money from a wedge into a source of strength in your marriage.
Speaker 1:But first, Beck, tell us about your recent flight home from Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, yes.
Speaker 2:So a few weeks ago we landed back from our cruise with Optivia, which was wonderful, and I had a flight that was supposed to take off at maybe 11 30 in the morning and I was supposed to go through Dallas and get home to our family around 5 30 at night so I could hang out with our kids and put Evie to bed.
Speaker 2:And it started with a delay for weather they had thunderstorms in Dallas, so we were definitely delayed in Fort Lauderdale and the delays just kept coming and eventually I was going to miss my connection flight connecting flight so they booked me on a 9 PM flight from Dallas instead of one that was much earlier and I thought, oh goodness, but at least I'm getting home. And it took five hours to leave Fort Lauderdale and when I got to Dallas I had another five-hour-plus delay and basically I was seeing delays come through every few minutes on my phone. I think by the end of my travel day I had been traveling for about 13 hours so I could have gone to Europe and I had about 16 or 17 flight delays and I made it home to our actual home at 3 am the next day. So one of my least favorite travel experiences in quite a long time, so I'm very grateful I did get home, but it was a long day in two airports.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and at least with American, they're pretty good about notifying you. I was sharing that about a month ago I was flying home from Cleveland on a nonstop flight on Frontier, which is definitely not my favorite airline. It was just the best option for me, not sponsored by Frontier. Yeah, definitely we do not like them. We won't be at any point.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:But I had multiple delays and their app emails like literally the emails that come through saying your flight has now been scheduled to those come through the timestamp and those emails is after when actually we left. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:That's horrible. So at least with. American there it was very up to date, although every time my phone dinged I thought not again.
Speaker 1:I'm going to curse these text messages we will uh we'll have to do a podcast, maybe with some travel tips for people, because we are quite well seasoned and we've learned a lot We've done the ultra budget thing when we were much younger. And we've learned a lot that money does make travel a lot better. But, definitely, we've also experienced it does not solve all of your travel problems no, it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, for example, we'll save your story for next time. Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah all right.
Speaker 1:So the average couple with consumer debt has thirty thousand dollars in credit card balances thousand dollars car loans and student loans. Now we actually. When we graduated from college back in 2001, you had your master's.
Speaker 2:I crammed my bachelor's into six, three, six years, just like tommy boy, uh but because you're not brilliant, but because we moved and you had to get residency mostly good reasons, just clearing that up.
Speaker 1:For most people, yes, but uh, we had about it was 20 or $30,000 in student loans. We had there's a one year grace period, but within one year of us having to start making payments, the great thing was we were both gainfully employed full time and, you know, god really provided a full time job for you in the middle of a school year, which was kind of a miracle.
Speaker 2:It was, but within one year. Not the easiest way to jump into teaching, but I was grateful for the paycheck.
Speaker 1:Within one year we were able to pay off that school, that $30,000 in school debt. So we've been in the shoes of people who had that much, but that was the only amount we've ever had and we're grateful to have moved on.
Speaker 2:As Dave Ramsey says, we got gazelle intense to pay that off?
Speaker 1:Yes, we did.
Speaker 2:So it was, you know, choosing not to go crazy, spending as we were making the most money we'd ever made in our lives and really dedicating ourselves to paying it off, which wasn't a lot, no, but the great thing is, when you start with a teeny tiny amount, a little bit actually feels like quite a bit. Exactly.
Speaker 1:All right. Tactic number one is to calculate your total consumer debt load as a couple man. This is so important. You know, in what we do with our health coaching practice, one of the first things we talk to people about is we got to know what your current reality is right. If you think of life as a road trip, you know when it comes to your health, you need to know where you're starting before you can map out your plan to get to where you want to go to. Same thing financially.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. The action step is really to commit to a debt-free lifestyle and make a plan to pay off existing debt ASAP. Listen, if you don't have that commitment, or you're unequally yoked in your marriage with that mindset, it's going to be much more difficult to make progress because you're constantly going to be digging yourself. It's like a sandpit. You're basically going to be digging some holes that are filling in at the same time, and so this is going to be a mindset shift. Can you use other people's money?
Speaker 1:Yes, you can. So this is something that's important. It was actually in the wake of my book, which, basically my book was written for the average person. Right and the best financial decision on paper is not always to live 100% debt free. However, in our experience and having many conversations with lots of people through the years, we have learned that most people, you do not have the discipline to use other people's money the way that you can do it and get ahead financially. So, as a general rule, we highly encourage everyone to live debt free.
Speaker 1:Now, technically, you know, if you can earn 10% in some type of investment and you're going to, let's just say, pay $100,000 for a car, a brand new car, first of all, that car is a depreciating asset. It's not even an asset, it's really a depreciating liability because, unless it's a rare collectible type of thing, it's going to go down in value. It will never go up in value number one. So number two is go back to $100,000 in a car. If you actually have that cash in the bank and you're in a scenario where you can get, purchase that car for 0% interest or maybe 2% interest and you have a legitimate way of investing that $100,000 and making 10% interest annually, even if you're paying 2%, you are financially going to be ahead by doing that.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the reason that we say for the vast majority of people we don't recommend that they do this is very few people have the discipline to make that purchase and then go invest that entire amount and do nothing with it, but collect the interest and use that interest to pay the payment on that car. Most people end up saying, oh, I got a two percent interest rate or zero percent and they start to spend that hundred thousand dollars and other things and ultimately they end up behind. So I want to clarify that if you're extremely disciplined uh, that yes, at times you may actually be able to get ahead financially, but just understanding that you absolutely have to be committed to it and when in doubt, it's better to live debt free than to try to get ahead using other people's money and to ultimately, as Dave Ramsey says, if you play with a snake long enough, you're going to get bit and, and that definitely can be a snake.
Speaker 2:And you know what's interesting is we've coached people to better health in their mindset and in their body. Often we see their finances improve, sometimes through coaching with us. So if you're looking for a side hustle or something you can do from home or to make additional income, connect with us. We'd love to talk to you about what we do as coaches. But also because people become more disciplined in one area of their life, it tends to carry into other areas of life, and so we say you know how people do. One thing is how they do most things, and we've noticed that in just people aligning their health goals with what they really want and then having them clean up finances. I also want to say real quickly we are not financial advisors, nor are we pretending to be them, so we're just sharing life experiences and the things that we know. So let's talk about buying a vehicle or a toy, and you could pay for cash. But what are your options?
Speaker 1:Well, we paid for it with cash, but yeah, I mean we we kind of just talked about that. As far as you can pay cash and you're done with it, other than the maintenance you're going to have to make. If you can get it for 0% and you're going to invest that money instead, then you actually are going to make some money. Maybe you'll even make enough that you're paying for all the maintenance that goes into that. It's definitely possible. However, at the same time, for many people there is a mental and even almost a spiritual cost to being in debt yeah, so we don't like it no we, we do not, we're not very comfortable with it
Speaker 1:the only debt that we currently carry, and really have ever carried, other than the school loans we talked about, is a mortgage, and currently we, um, we have an unbelievably amazing interest rate on our home. We actually have a 15-year mortgage, got it for 2.65% or whatever it is there 2.625, I think, is actually what it is and gosh we're what three plus years into it. So we actually only have about 11 1⁄2 years left on our mortgage and we have the balance in the bank account to pay off the mortgage. Um, you know, within a couple of days, if not tomorrow, if we had to imagine how freeing that is, guys.
Speaker 2:We're talking about uncommon freedom so average is debt, um and we're talking about having the ability to pay off your dream home really in a moment's notice, yeah, and because we have that amount in the bank earning legitimately 10%, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now, granted, everyone's tax implications are going to be slightly different, but on paper, we actually earn enough in interest to pay our mortgage payment. So in what 12 years, when the mortgage is paid off, we will have, you know, fully ownership, full ownership of our home, as well as still that principal amount, the balance of our mortgage, still in the account.
Speaker 2:And then it'll really accelerate and just before we move on to the next one. The other thing is, you know Dave Ramsey and others would recommend no credit cards, and again, that is really for people that struggle to live within their means and pay it off every month, and so you know we use credit cards. There's a lot of benefits to that and I know we've shared on some previous podcasts that we like having those options. But if you or your spouse are struggling and some of the things we're talking about is that there's overspending I would highly encourage you to go towards debit cards and stop using credit cards where you have a fine line that you cannot cross, or go to a cash envelope system, something that holds you more accountable if you're lacking that discipline until you build it so, absolutely all right, let's talk about number two.
Speaker 1:One in three spouses admit to hiding purchases from their partner, eroding financial trust. So tactic two is to identify your top three money fight triggers and proactively discuss how to diffuse them.
Speaker 2:We struggled with this for a while because, as we're going to talk about, you know where I self-identified as you're the saver and I'm the spender Tightwad, yes, that was actually the term I used at one point, and you're very, very responsible, which I'm grateful for.
Speaker 2:But at the time when we didn't have such an overflow, it felt like we had no wiggle room for anything fun or anything I really wanted, you know, whether it was like new furniture or updating some things in the home, and um, and we really struggled. As we started to make income with coaching, I wanted to have more freedom to spend, and you were like wanting to invest it and I was like, snore, that sounds horrible and boring, um, and so we really had to come together and say how can we do the both and how can we both be wise with our finances in our future and have some ways to spend now? And so we made like a list of our priorities, what we both agreed on, or, you know, each had things on that list and we worked our way through spending on that list, while we also went into investing, you know, early, because there's wisdom in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we we don't have an issue of hiding purchases from each other.
Speaker 2:Not anymore.
Speaker 1:We're very transparent with that. But one of the things that we found was very helpful to give us the freedom because for a couple I think for most people to be completely accountable for every purchase that you're making is, honestly, it's inefficient and it also actually shows a lack of trust for each other yeah, and I think honestly, a lack of respect for each other, especially if there's one domineering person who's like I need to see receipts for everything that you spend.
Speaker 2:I have friends who are married to those kinds of people yeah, I'm not saying they're all men in this situation, but actually most of them are and I have friends that, like, feel like they do not have the freedom to spend. They have to justify everything and you know, obviously that can be out of control in either direction. But imagine being in a relationship where you have to itemize every expense that you have and report that as if you worked for that person.
Speaker 1:Our solution is the blow account.
Speaker 2:So, going back to even our early days, I think our blow account was about $20 or $25 a month Back in our first couple years, just enough for me to scrimp out a pedicure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it was literally for you. It was like you would use the money to get a pedicure every few months, I think. Actually, back then we could get a basic cable package and you used your blow money to pay for cable because we just didn't have the money and I didn't watch much TV. It was something you enjoyed. I would save my blow money for about four years and then go make a guitar or gun purchase or something like that.
Speaker 1:But the nice thing was because I remember the first time I came home with a gun that we didn't talk about and in today's budget, no big deal In 1998 slash 1999, it was a big deal and it was sometime after that. I believe that we actually, you know, set up the blow accounts and that was helpful because it taught us patience, but it also, you know, we just knew that, okay, we could do whatever we wanted with that blow account and there was no accountability to each other.
Speaker 2:We had the money to do whatever we wanted with, and a lot of your financial mindset probably comes from your family of origin. We've talked a lot about family of origin and walking into marriage relationships and depending on how early you get married, we grew up together so we got married at 21. We've been building a life together for 25 years. Some people are well-established in their habits and their spending and the way they do things, and then they get married and we both have families who are financially savvy and careful. I would say they're different in their own ways, but I think both of our parents live very much within their means and are good at saving, and I don't think either of us grew up with a lot of material things, so we were just modeled hard work and financial responsibility you might have.
Speaker 2:Some of you might have grown up in a home where you know spending and overspending was practiced and so that's all you really knew, and then sometimes, the way we grow up, we actually go way the opposite direction. I've also seen people who've grown up with a lot of scarcity become enormous spenders just because they lived with such scarcity for such a long time. So it's just something good to be aware of. You know, get help if you need some counseling. But just take an inventory of like why do I have the view of money that I have? Where is it coming from, does it make sense and do I need to adjust?
Speaker 1:So the action step for this one is to schedule a weekly money check-in to review progress and head off conflicts.
Speaker 2:I think it's a good idea.
Speaker 1:For some people it might just be a monthly budget, and we used to do this. We're in a good routine now where it's no longer necessary, but until you're really set financially, we highly recommend this.
Speaker 2:Yep and number three separate bank accounts can reinforce a yours versus mine mentality instead of promoting unity. And yeah, again, I know a lot of friends that have separate bank accounts and, um, you know we don't understand all the nuances and different relationships, so this isn't meant to be judgmental, but we can't imagine having separate bank accounts from each other. We are united as one. We've treated everything in life like that for the most part, and, um, we would just really encourage you to question why are you doing that and does it really make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean honestly, you know, and the two shall become one flesh, Like the unity that is really expected by God for us in marriage. I feel like this drives a wedge between couples to say that, you know, this is yours, this is mine, I mean when I earn money, or when you earn money, it's not mine, it's not yours, it's ours. Now there were times when I was a police officer, especially where I'd be like, hey, I want to make this purchase, I'm going to work some overtime, and we would agree about that. A lot of times we would say, hey, we'll split the overtime into our respective blow accounts or something like that.
Speaker 1:But having accounts or something like that, um, but uh, but having a separate bank account, to me, subconsciously, it creates a division there and it's it's just, it opens a, it opens a a crack, uh, in potentially in the relationship. I would highly recommend that. Um, you, you may have a, you know, a separate blow account which more of an envelope like for us, we don't have our blow. You know, a separate blow account which more of an envelope, like for us, we don't have our blow account is not a bank account, it's just something that we track.
Speaker 2:It's into accounts that we can do whatever we want.
Speaker 1:Correct, but we still share the same.
Speaker 2:I mean think about it. You're married, you're giving each other the most intimate parts of your body, but you won't share your bank account. I had another thought and it crossed my oh. I know what it was For people who were like me. Early on in our married life or once we started having kids, I was a stay at home mom. The other thing is I never wanted to feel like I couldn't spend because I was a stay at home mom, not making income, because if you've ever heard some of those recordings or people going through like what it would take to pay a mom to stay home to do all the jobs and chores, just understand it's massive valuables financially and in the investment in kids. And so I think again, in that partnership you don't say like you have a mindset of sharing, you have a mindset of honoring each other. You knew that the household wasn't going to run if I wasn't doing the things all day long to keep it running and I was grateful you went to work every day on very little sleep at times.
Speaker 2:And so again, it's a mutually we're for each other, not against each other, in these things.
Speaker 1:In that season of life you freed me up to be able to go to work, be the primary breadwinner. Obviously, things have changed drastically for us, but even you go back to our early days, you know, with us both working and being in school and just kind of balancing who was working more. It was never okay. This is my money, this is your money. It was. We were married, we were together, we were on the same mission and we both worked together to make as much as we could within reason and to spend it.
Speaker 1:You know as wisely as we could and mutually agreeing you know, for the most part on how we were going to budget.
Speaker 2:And we did not agree on everything. So let's just be clear I mean, even today we don't, but for sure we've come much closer together and we've had to fight our way through our disagreements and learn skillsets for how to improve our communication and our and our tactics and actions. So that's why we're sharing. So tactic three is to commit to 100% financial transparency, with no hidden accounts or secret purchases. Just really be honest in that if you need to clean some of that up, just do it start fresh, and then the action step is to merge your bank accounts or use a budgeting app that syncs all your transactions.
Speaker 1:So yeah, pretty short and sweet this week. Short and sweet this week, uh, but this is important stuff. It really has a huge impact on relationships, and the other thing is is how we, as parents, handle our finances. It really does, uh, trickle down into how our kids are going to think about money, think about others, and how they're going to handle money themselves doesn't mean we're going to be, they're going to.
Speaker 1:If you're great doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be great, but you're going to give them a healthy foundation that they can return to down the road if they don't start life as an adult with these healthy habits.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So we're talking again specifically to couple preneurs and if you want to have a healthy home life and a healthy business life and you want to design a life that you can create, uncommon freedom in it's time to get this part of life aligned. So financial conflict doesn't have to derail your marriage. By pursuing unity, you can overcome debt and discord together.
Speaker 1:All right, and this is really exciting. Your challenge for this week is to schedule a money date with your spouse, so I would be thrilled. Yes, it doesn't necessarily have to even be dinner out, it can be, uh, might just be hanging out outside around the fire pit or something like that. Save the the real date for something where you might uh enjoy it more Uh, but you know what the cool thing is? I think that having common goals and achieving them together, can actually really bring you together.
Speaker 1:When we look at the goals that we've had through the years of giving and just different things that we wanted to accomplish or trips we wanted to take when we accomplished those, it was very rewarding.
Speaker 2:It actually brought us it was a joint victory. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was those. It was very rewarding. Actually, it was a joint victory. Yeah, it was. It was so review your current debts, pick one action step from today's episode and commit to cheering each other on every step of the way we are rooting for you, so we'll see you next time, as we continue to fight for uncommon freedom in our relationships and our finances.