TWELVE FINANCIAL DANGER SIGNS IN MARRIAGE – Albert Aina

Allowing these to build will usually result in greater problems in your marriage.

1. INDEPENDENT SPIRIT
   The number one danger sign is “his money and her money” attitude. Beware when you begin to feel like saying, “Listen, I work all week, long” “I need some money for myself”. Marriage is not a 50/50 relationship. Marriage is 100/100 relationship, on both sides. You must be willing to yield your rights to your spouse. If you are not willing to do that, it won’t work. For husband and wife to go separate ways on finance is a demonic compromise, making the word of God to be a lie Gen. 2:24; For this cause a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” Doing your own thing in your individual way is an indication of demonic rebellion. Divorce is only the climax of several times of putting yourself asunder.

THE FOLLOWING TWELVE ATTITUDES INDICATE GRADUAL PUTTING ASUNDER.

1. When there is “It is my money, your money”. “Husband Account, Wife Account”.
2. Refusal to pursue a common goal
3. Starving your partner of food, fund and fun (sex)
4. Staying long outside the home – no longer enjoying the company of your partner.
5. Lack of openness to each other
6. When you start hiding your money and earnings from each other
7. Cautious relationship
8. Individualism, instead of doing things together
9. Separation of beds, rooms, possessions and properties
10. When job/business that separate families are not resisted, with attendant anti-family temptations
11. When how regularly you have sex is determined by flow of cash in the family. The woman now tells her husband, “You can’t take care of the present children, I won’t allow another one”
12. Wife no longer submits to the husband because he fails to meet the family financial responsibility.

Have you noticed that most family arguments start within 2 – 3 weeks after the last salary? Pocket is dry. The baby husband now engineers a fight around this period, to create excuse for not putting down housekeeping money. They now seek reconciliation after the wife has run around to cover up. Get rid of poverty! Is anything wrong with giving a car gift for your wife’s next birthday?

No viable marriage can survive a “his and her” relationship for long. They may live in the same house or even sleep in the same bed, but they have learnt to live separate lives that is totally contrary to God’s plan.

2. LACK OF COMMUNICATION
   When you find out that you hardly talk on the issue of finances together, you are headed for problems. Every couple needs to sit down together and develop short-range and long-range financial goals such as

(i) what are we going to do about educating our children?

(ii) What are we going to do about retirement?

(iii) What happens when either of us dies?

If you can’t talk about those things, that’s a sign of poor communication and you need to deal with it. It is recommended that every couple go away somewhere, by themselves, for one full day regularly to do nothing but plan.

3. UNEXPLAINED FATIGUE
   Fatigue is often a sign that your body is reacting to emotional stress. Some stress is not due to illness or infection.

It is not unusual for a money-pressured woman to suffer from chronic fatigue. Often it comes on so subtly that she can’t remember when she last felt good. She wakes up in the morning, still feeling tired and confronted with exhausted husband she faces the day defeated before she begins.

You feel something is wrong with you without being able to identify it precisely. Explosion and hot exchange of words is common. Provo 15: 16 “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, then great treasure and turmoil with it.

4. IF YOUR THOUGHTS CONTINUOUSLY GO BACK TO YOUR FINANCIAL PROBLEMS, WHEN YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES CONSIDERABLE CONCENTRATION.
   If you can’t take time off to relax without harrowing tension, you probably have excessive debts.
5. FINANCIAL PRESSURE CAN AFFECT SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP
   Women, especially, are the easy targets of financial pressure especially when debt is involved. It usually makes the wives to be frigid, and irresponsive to act of lovemaking.
6. IRRESPONSIBILITY.
   When you see husband withdraw from leadership in financial matters, there is problem. The husband that leaves all decision making about family finances is running away from his responsibility.
7. RELIGIOUS ESCAPE
   A lot of people having financial difficulty, instead of facing it squarely to see what has gone wrong, fall back on religious cliche such as “I am trusting God to provide” Hear me: it is good to trust in God, but if our bad habits have created the circumstances God wants those bad habits changed first. We are to be participants in God’s plan, not observers. God is the provider – but He also directs us to use our abilities and to be responsible for our actions Luke 16: 12 “‘And if you have not seen faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own”
8. WORK ALCOHOLIC
   Some husbands, and even some wives, overwork themselves to secure the family’s future so that their family can have the best. Without balance, giving yourself to your work, to the neglect of your spouse and children, leads to frustration. The wife now wonders “who did you marry – the job or myself “But I am doing everything to make you comfortable”, the man says; But that won’t make a woman to be satisfied. Rambo Sylvester Stallion gave $10,000 daily as personal allowance to his wife. She divorced him eventually! The reason? “He doesn’t have time for me. I am tired of being left alone, lonely in a mighty mansion” . In a family where spouses focus on work with little or no time for themselves, the wife often becomes snappy and irritable. Arguments start even on trivial matters. A wife may go on spending sprees to punish her husband or get his attention. Threats of divorce is common, as well as imagined illness, alcoholism, flirting, or a total dedication to outside interest Ps. 127:2 “It is vain for you to rise up early, you retire late, to eat the bread of painful labour, for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep” (NASB)
9. IF A WIFE MUST WORK
   When a wife feels like she has to work, and there are no alternatives, that’s a danger sign. When a wife has to work, then you are living above your means. More money won’t help. The wives income should be saved and used for family investment e.g., buying land, car or shares. Even if the wife income is eliminated, you should be able to still survive financially.
10. WHEN YOU CAN’T TITHE
    You will never make enough money to tithe. It doesn’t get easier to tithe Nl,OOO when you make NI0,000, than when you make NI00,000. Why? Because, you adjust to spending more. Lack of tithing indicates a couple that no longer truly put God first. Mal. 3: 10 “Bring the whole tithe into the store house, so that there may be food in my house and test me now in this says the Lord of hosts if I will not open for thee windows of heaven and pour out for you blessings until it overflow.
11. WHEN YOUR INCOME BARELY MATCHES YOUR EXPENDITURE, WITH NO SAVINGS
    10% of your spendable income should be set aside for non’ spendable things. The only solution is to cut some of the expenditure Provo 21 :20 “There is precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man swallows it up”
12. WHEN THERE IS NO BUDGET
    There is no one with financial difficulty that has a budget. N one is financially balanced without a budget. A budget requires that all purchases be preplanned and all credit be offset by monthly income.

    Albert Aina is a Management Consultant and Chief Executive Officer of Christian Leadership Skill Inc.
    Reach him at albertaina@yahoo.com.