Financial stress can break even the strongest of marriages, but it doesn't have to. In this episode of Team Wade, we promise to equip you with the wisdom and practical steps to master marital finances and avoid the common pitfalls that lead to divorce. Drawing from our own experiences and biblical teachings like Matthew 6:21, we'll show you how to align your financial goals with your spouse, breaking free from the habits and patterns that can sabotage your unity. From overcoming single financial habits to navigating the lingering impacts of parental financial behaviors, we'll share the essential tools to foster financial harmony in your marriage.
Our journey wasn't easy, marked by youthful mistakes and a decade-long financial struggle, but we emerged wiser and more united. Learn from our story as we discuss the invaluable lessons of proper planning, the importance of wise counsel, and the power of delayed gratification. We highlight the critical need to establish financial stability before building wealth and offer practical, actionable advice to help you achieve this. Let our experiences guide you towards a prosperous future, blessed by diligent effort and divine favor. Stay tuned, stay blessed, and join us on this transformative journey.
Financial stress can break even the strongest of marriages, but it doesn't have to. In this episode of Team Wade, we promise to equip you with the wisdom and practical steps to master marital finances and avoid the common pitfalls that lead to divorce. Drawing from our own experiences and biblical teachings like Matthew 6:21, we'll show you how to align your financial goals with your spouse, breaking free from the habits and patterns that can sabotage your unity. From overcoming single financial habits to navigating the lingering impacts of parental financial behaviors, we'll share the essential tools to foster financial harmony in your marriage.
Our journey wasn't easy, marked by youthful mistakes and a decade-long financial struggle, but we emerged wiser and more united. Learn from our story as we discuss the invaluable lessons of proper planning, the importance of wise counsel, and the power of delayed gratification. We highlight the critical need to establish financial stability before building wealth and offer practical, actionable advice to help you achieve this. Let our experiences guide you towards a prosperous future, blessed by diligent effort and divine favor. Stay tuned, stay blessed, and join us on this transformative journey.
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Speaker 1:
Hello everybody.
Speaker 2:
What's happening.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Team Wade, where we're bringing you to so that you can have a successful marriage. Today's topic is going to be about marriage and finances my marriage and my money Money money, money, money money. We know over the years, because we counsel a lot of couples and we realize that finances is one of the primary issues of why couples get a divorce. It's a big deal.
Speaker 2:
Along with communication, finances and communication.
Speaker 1:
Finances and communications are the top two.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, but that money is really really important.
Speaker 1:
So we want to give you some tools today so that you can be sure that your marriage is solid when it comes to how you handle your finances, so that that doesn't cause division in your household.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know. Matthew 621 says where your treasure is, your heart will be there also. So, the first thing we really need to address and deal with is what goals and what are you trying to build together as a family?
Speaker 1:
That's good.
Speaker 2:
You know, a lot of times you get married and if you've been single for a lot of years, if you're in your 30s when you get married, your late 20s, whatever you've been with yourself and you're used to making decisions concerning yourself, but so you're not used to planning around two individuals or and then when the children come, then you're planning around a family. So a lot of times people bring that single ideology to a marriage. So it creates problems because it's still the favorite thing is who money is. What do you say?
Speaker 1:
It's my money, my money, it's my money.
Speaker 2:
Everybody saying it's my money.
Speaker 1:
But see, I brought that same ideology in our marriage early on, before I knew anything about you know, unity or whatever. I did feel like this is my money. Like I went to work I work hard for this money. My husband told me, babe, you need to bring your check home so we can put our money together.
Speaker 2:
Bring that money home.
Speaker 1:
That was a shocker to me, because I'm like what do you mean? Bring your check home, say what.
Speaker 2:
Bring that money.
Speaker 1:
That was a shocker, but I realized that we were better. Actually, when we brought our money together, I got to see pretty much where our money was going. All of our bills were paid, as opposed to me trying to pay my little bills and try to have my money to get my hair and my nails and go shopping.
Speaker 2:
Man we're doing our stuff, and then I'm trying to juggle the whole house while she over there doing what she want with her money and her little bill, right when we got a whole household to run, and so I think that's another thing.
Speaker 2:
When we think about marriage and finance, I think most of it because you know we teach this and we do it a lot of times in ministry. Some things are taught and some things are caught. I think the same thing happens in marriage. Some things are taught to you and some things you catch them by watching your parents or your mother or your father. If you were in a single parent home, you saw your mom do everything, and so out of that, she began to teach you don't do this, don't do that, and this is how you do this and that. And it really may not been the wise counsel that you needed to hear, because it may been out of a situation of necessity and frustration and really looking at your best interest.
Speaker 1:
Well, and I will say this A lot of times, we bring the habits of our parents into the relationship, into your marriage, and if those habits were terrible, it can create a pattern of poverty in your life and in your marriage. And if your spouse didn't come from those same types of patterns, then their clash can happen. It can create some real issues.
Speaker 2:
It's going to create a lot of conflict because you all are seeing things the wrong way. So that is why team Wade like to give a biblical perspective. And so, when you think about it, we live in a day now where you got women saying I'm feminist and then you got men that's been listening to certain men that I'm the prize and then women saying I'm the prize. Well, I think we both the prize because we each have roles. We bring things together and the reality is the world that we live in now. A lot of times it takes two incomes because everybody's not making six figures, everybody's not millionaires and all of those different things, and so everybody got this caviar taste, but yet you got a church's chicken budget. So we got to really look at how do we build to the life that we want? And then you got to understand we also going to grow together. Yeah, income wise when you're young. You got an opportunity to grow and to increase Because I can remember.
Speaker 2:
I still remember what I made when we first got married.
Speaker 1:
Back in the 90s.
Speaker 2:
Back in 1992 to be exact. A whole $5.25 an hour I made $5.25 an hour.
Speaker 1:
Was that minimum wage?
Speaker 2:
That was minimum wage, that was minimum wage $5.25 and you made more than me.
Speaker 1:
And I had a different skill set administratively she had administrative skill set I had work with my hands, skill set.
Speaker 2:
Right more of a blue collar type system, but we brought it together, you didn't tell how much you were making.
Speaker 1:
Well, initially I was, I think, at like seven something an hour, and then I got all the way up to $9.
Speaker 2:
We were rich In something an hour Back in the 909. We rich now and something an hour back in the 90s we were rich, that was pretty good, because I think FedEx was paying like $10 an hour. And that was pretty good. And then finally, I got up when I changed jobs. I was up to $6.50 an hour. You can't tell your boy nothing, but we were making it work. But I also remember bad decisions.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
Because we really didn't have any. We didn't have overwhelming bills.
Speaker 1:
We didn't.
Speaker 2:
Because when we first got married, check out our mortgage for our first house $525 a month for a three-bedroom, two-floor bath home Yep.
Speaker 1:
Oh, in East. Memphis it was ours, we owned it. Oh, we were buying it, and so God was good. Then we had a paid-for truck All the furniture was paid for Because our family donated stuff to us Donated when we got married and moved and we had paid for furniture. Yep, all we had was a mortgage.
Speaker 2:
But then what?
Speaker 1:
happened. And a car note Right.
Speaker 2:
And insurance Right.
Speaker 1:
You had a truck note for a few years. My car was paid for.
Speaker 2:
Then the truck got paid off Right, but look what happened? We were good, we were doing good yeah we were good, but then this is where it started going wrong.
Speaker 1:
We went over somebody's house.
Speaker 2:
Oh, my God Going over people's houses and Fleming Fine Furniture.
Speaker 1:
Oh.
Speaker 2:
Fleming Fine Furniture had a sale no payment, no interest, no payment, no interest for two years.
Speaker 1:
For 48 months. Mm-hmm, those two years were like two weeks, oh. But then guess what?
Speaker 2:
else, because we could not afford that payment. Not only that, other people get new cars.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we went and got our huge.
Speaker 2:
Hey, toyota, you can get a new car and this is what I pay for. So what are we saying? You're looking at other people. You're not looking at your situation.
Speaker 1:
We were looking at other people. We were not considering our budget, but we were comparing ourselves with our peers. And it caused us to make wrong choices.
Speaker 2:
So our appetite.
Speaker 1:
And it put us in a financial deficit and we didn't even have to be there.
Speaker 2:
We didn't, because we weren't there. We were paying all our bills and we had money left over. And guess what, we were always a tithe, always, from the moment we got saved, going to church. We were tired, right, and so we. We did what god said, but our bad decisions was eating up our increase was eating up our blessings, oh my god. Because god promised he'll open us the windows of heaven and pour us our blessings that we all we won't have room enough to receive, and that he would rebuke the devourer for our sake. And and so he was doing that.
Speaker 1:
So question, think about it. Where are you in your finances? Are your bad decisions canceling out the blessings of God? Just think about that. Look at your finances, because I believe that many of you make really good money, but you're not seeing your money because of the bad decisions that you're making. And it can create issues and conflict between because when your money, funny everybody mad around the house.
Speaker 2:
Make you walk hard. Everybody mad they grouchy.
Speaker 1:
They angry because ain't no money in the bank. I'm going to tell you, that's just the reality. Ain't nobody money in the bank. I'm going to tell you, that's just the reality. Ain't nobody around here happy kissing each other and you got a negative bank account.
Speaker 2:
Oh my Lord.
Speaker 1:
So it creates conflict within the marriage when you make wrong decisions.
Speaker 2:
So it really comes down to what kind of decisions you're making. So I want to talk about the power of agreement, because the Bible says if any two agree on earth in in matthew 18, 19 agree on earth is touching anything, it should be done by their father in heaven. So you got a first coming agreement and sometimes we're not in agreement with them. Decisions we make it, and so one person uh sort of coerced the other into making bad decisions for the whole and but all of us suffering.
Speaker 2:
So that's what we did with the furniture and that's what we did with the car, when we had paid for cars and we were in a good position and we should have been patient and waited, but we didn't. And then we compounded it, because this was doing the early 90s, mid-90s, when we learned about the prosperity gospel, where God wants you to prosper, which he does Right. But when you hear information and you lack wisdom, you lack knowledge, you lack understanding. Good counsel Good counsel you process things through your broken mind, right, the broken lens of your mind, the way you think it should be.
Speaker 1:
So all we saw was we're gonna be rich, right, because it's God's will that we are prosperous. Oh my god. So that means instantly rich for us In our mind we were going to be a millionaire Right Instantly.
Speaker 2:
Right, just because we love God and God loves us.
Speaker 1:
That doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2:
No, it's a lot more principles involved, but yet we young, we naive, we're immature, not only naturally, we're immature spiritually. So there are some things that we don't understand as we're processing and hearing the things that we're hearing.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. That's why wise counsel is so important to have.
Speaker 2:
It's so important, so we started a business with no business plan.
Speaker 1:
That was not wise and we quit our jobs. That was not wise.
Speaker 2:
You went home full time.
Speaker 1:
Mom, now remember she made more money than me and so I left my job after I had my second child to stay at home with her, and then he had left his job doing full time entrepreneur in the floor care business, with no business plan, with no money saved no contracts. You gotta go get the contracts in the floor care business, with no business plan, with no money saved. No contracts.
Speaker 2:
No contracts, you got to go get the contracts and no money already in the bank and you got to spend money to get materials to do the business with no plan. You didn't plan for that.
Speaker 1:
So it was just not wise at all.
Speaker 2:
It was bad from the start.
Speaker 1:
It was bad from the start. It was bad decision making, and so we suffered 10 years of financial hardship because of poor decisions. Poor decisions and, you know, not having a plan. We were in agreement that God was going to bless us.
Speaker 2:
Yep, we believed God, that he was going to increase us. He was going to increase us, and have a million dollar, multi-million dollar. Before we 30. Before we 30, we were going to be millionaires.
Speaker 1:
So that was our plan.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
But it was not wise, and so it caused us some hardship that we really didn't have to go through. But guess what the devil didn't do it, the devil did not do it, we did it ourselves. But guess what we learned? We learned that, listen, we took the hard route so that we can be here, sitting here talking to you to give you the wisdom that you need, so that you won't have to take the hard route. And so coming in agreement is good and having wise counsel is good.
Speaker 2:
Amen. So I want to go to you because you mentioned all of those things and I take responsibility as the head of the home that we got in that situation because the head was in bad shape. So thank God for learning from mistakes.
Speaker 1:
Amen.
Speaker 2:
Thank God for recovery, thank the Lord for second chances.
Speaker 1:
Yes, Lord.
Speaker 2:
Thank God for repentance. Yes, change your mind and your direction.
Speaker 1:
Thank God for the maturation process.
Speaker 2:
Hey, mature, all the way, amen. So I want to talk about planning and delayed gratification.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
So let's look at Proverbs 12, verse 24.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
And so I have it right here the hand of the diligent will rule, but the lazy will be put to forced labor. So a diligent hand, a hand that's doing something consistently right, will cause you to rule. And, and one verse says the hand of the diligent make it rich. Yeah, so it'll cause increase to come. That that's right.
Speaker 1:
So diligence is important Absolutely. That's a principle, yeah, that if you are diligent and working with your hands and doing the things, that working with the gifts, whatever God has placed in your hands or whatever job that he's placed you on, you're consistent, you're diligent, god will bless that. He can bless the work of your hands.
Speaker 2:
He surely can. That's so good, and so it's so important that you plan, because we, especially when you're getting ready to make a drastic decision, like we did, start a business and now, mind you, I don't know anything about that, you know, in and five years, most businesses fail in the first three to five years. So I don't know anything about. You know profit and loss and you know.
Speaker 1:
A marketing plan, any of that?
Speaker 2:
stuff, nothing about business. All I know is I know how to do this and I'm getting ready to go make some money. I don't even know how to properly price I don't know price points At that point At some money. I don't even know how to properly price. I don't know price points At that point, at this time. I don't know that, yeah. And so I'm just going out there, I'm just charging whatever I think it needs to be charged, because we need to make some money, right. And so I have a minimum wage mindset. Wow. So with that minimum wage mindset, I may be undercharging.
Speaker 2:
Brought that into entrepreneurship Into a business. Wow. So no mentor, no one to talk to to say how do you price this, how do you do this, how do you do that? And so we were what people would say. We were behind the eight ball from the beginning, from the beginning, and we created a struggle financially. And so why are we sharing these things with you? Because, first of all, we want you to know you're not alone, because I know some of you can relate to our story, because people look at our life now and they think we don't understand.
Speaker 1:
Right, we never been through anything. We haven't been through anything we don't know, struggle, no, okay, right, we never been through anything.
Speaker 2:
We haven't been through anything we don't know. Struggle, no, okay, yeah, but yet we went through 10 years of financial hardship, 10 years. Struggle House about to be auctioned at the courtroom still Repoed. Cars Riding around on donut for a year, people having to bring you groceries, borrowing money from different people.
Speaker 1:
Family members.
Speaker 2:
Family members. Lights get cut off, then you got to get it back on, especially in the wintertime. You remember that time.
Speaker 1:
The heater went out.
Speaker 2:
The heating core. It cost us $200.
Speaker 1:
You think I remember that. I remember that too. The heater went out, the heating core. It cost us $200.
Speaker 2:
You think I remember that, I remember that too, $200.
Speaker 1:
This little piece like that, and that set us back.
Speaker 2:
We could not afford $200.
Speaker 1:
We didn't have any emergency funds in the bank. So that set us back. So any little thing that happened because, we were in this cycle of poverty, in this cycle of poor planning, in this cycle of poor decision making. It cost us. So we're sharing all this to help you understand Plan and delayed gratification.
Speaker 1:
And delayed gratification. So the things that we were desiring back then, that was not in our season to have, we can enjoy now because we're in a different season. We've learned, we've made better decisions, we've been diligent with our hands with the gifts that has been given to us by God and working those things and then working the principles of God by tithing and giving and all these different principles. We stopped canceling out our blessings with our poor decisions so that the blessings of obedience can catch up to us.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
Yes, and it took a while.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
It took some years.
Speaker 2:
Because? But here we are. Because we were creating compound interest off of our bad decisions.
Speaker 1:
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:
We were getting compound interest off our bad decision.
Speaker 1:
So God had to catch us up, so the blessings had to catch up with us. Amen.
Speaker 2:
Because I mean, when you make good decisions, you're investing. There's compound interest. Well, if you're investing in bad decisions, there's compound interest as well. So we had to learn some things and so but that was the blessing, though that was some things we learned out of that season.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely See some of you. You look at the season you're in right now as just a total curse, when really you should be learning. What am I doing wrong? Because some of you are even mad at God and thinking God is not keeping his word, when he does keep his word, but you're not looking at. You're making these bad decisions, putting you further and further in the hole.
Speaker 1:
So go back and look at your track record, look at the decisions that you have made over the course of time and how many of them were bad, and look at that and see why you are where you are and don't blame God for it.
Speaker 2:
Amen, amen. So, as you go, as we close here, this is what we want you to do. We want you to get together. Write down where have we gone wrong. Write it down so you can see. It have we?
Speaker 1:
gone wrong.
Speaker 2:
Write it down so you can see it. And then, as you look on it and look at it, you say now, what do we need to do to get out of this mess?
Speaker 1:
Yes To start the right to start the right course.
Speaker 2:
Now I can. I can recommend a few things, because I guarantee you some of the things you're not willing to do, because this is what I found out A lot of times when you're in struggle, you want to keep luxuries.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
I just cut something out. You want to keep luxury. What I mean? You may not can afford cable. You may not can afford that cell phone you got. You may need to get rid of your plan to get to just a basic model phone.
Speaker 1:
Cutbacks, basically.
Speaker 2:
You may not be able to eat out at all. You may be taking peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to work.
Speaker 1:
But you got to plan to get out of work Because you're coming out, you're coming out, you're removing the burden, so delayed gratification is what we said earlier, right. And planning and planning to get out of what you're coming out, you're coming out, you're removing the burden, so delayed gratification is what we said earlier, right and planning and planning, so that that is what you going going to have to experience in order to come out.
Speaker 1:
Otherwise, if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to keep getting what you get period, and so you, you're going to have to make those hard decisions.
Speaker 2:
Now I'm telling you these things to get the burden off of you Right, because while God is helping you turn this mess around that you all created, you want some peace. So where you get peace is take some of the burden off of you. But no, you want to hold your lifestyle and you can't afford it, right now yeah. So you got to make some sacrifices.
Speaker 1:
So get together with your spouse and look at some of the things that you can cut back so that you can climb your way out of this and see the prosperity that God has for you.
Speaker 2:
And somebody may be needing to do a side hustle like Ubering and and and all that. What is the other stuff? Door dash. So whatever it takes to get us out of the house, hustle like Ubering and all that what?
Speaker 1:
is the other stuff DoorDash so?
Speaker 2:
whatever it takes to get us out of the hole so we can get back to level, because that's where the place of peace is. And now from?
Speaker 2:
there we'll begin to look at a plan of how we now begin to build up, but if you under, you can't build up. You got to get back level first, and so we want to help you to deal with money and finances, and so next time we can build upon that, but right now we got to get you back to level, so we hope this was good for you today.
Speaker 1:
I think it was.
Speaker 2:
This wasn't one to mess and make you shout, but it'll free you.
Speaker 1:
It will definitely free you and I hope that you take into consideration the things that we have gone through oh my God. And our testimony and be blessed by what you're seeing today as a result of us doing the things that we just told you to do. Yes, so we are here because we know it works, and so we want to see you blessed and prosperous. Uh, the way god has for you. Amen, team way. Signing out we will see you next time.
Speaker 2:
God bless you don't forget to share and continue to follow our podcast. God bless you.