This Faith and Finance podcast is underwritten in part by The Good Investor, a book by Robin John. This Faith and Work memoir hopes to inspire readers to view their work and investments as opportunities to honor God and bring blessing to the world. You can learn more now at goodinvestor.com. That's goodinvestor.com. Blending a family takes grace, and so does blending your finances.
I am Rob West. When couples merge families, they're also merging priorities, habits, and sometimes financial baggage. Ron Deal joins us today to show us that with honesty and a shared vision, what begins as a challenge can become a source of strength for blended families navigating both money and marriage. And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000.
This is Faith in Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey.
Well, we always love when Ron Deal joins us. He's the author of several books, including one he co-authored with Greg Pettis and David Edwards, titled The Smart Stepfamily Guide to Financial Planning, Money Management Before and After You Blend a Family. And it is my go-to resource. If you have a blended family trying to navigate money, this is the one for you. He's also written a featured article on this topic in the latest issue of our magazine, Faithful Steward.
Ron, great to have you back with us. Oh, man, it is always a joy and a privilege to be with you. Thanks for having me. Oh, we look forward to it each time. Ron, you began your article in Faithful Steward with a humorous story about a man who seems ready to propose, but instead asks for a credit report and a prenuptial agreement.
It's a funny moment, but it carries a serious message.
So, why is it so vital for couples, and especially those entering blended families, to have an honest conversation about money early? Yeah. And you know, some stories are made up just to make a point. That was actually based in reality.
So that fun story. Difficult situation. Basically, she thinks he's getting ready to pop the question. He's really trying to dig into her financial background and figure out whether they should continue the relationship. Talk about awkward.
That was definitely awkward. But you know, that's rooted in some important ideas that what's below money are often lots of questions. And for blended family couples, life has already taught them that marriage is not forever. Unfortunately, because of a death of a spouse or a divorce, They've already learned that. And so there's this.
Sense of trepidation, like how deeply do I invest in this new relationship? And money is often the place where those questions show up, and so getting to those conversations and moving through them is really important.
Well, as we often say, money issues are heart issues.
So what presents itself as a money conversation is so much deeper below the surface. Blended families, as you well know, Ron, bring layers of complexity, different traditions and loyalties and financial habits all merging under one roof.
So how do these deeper relational dynamics influence the way financial decisions are made? Great question. Everything you pointed out there is spot on. And keep in mind, only 25% of dating or engaged couples forming a blended family ever have a conversation about finances before they get married. Oh, wow.
So it just doesn't think about it or they avoid it. Whatever that is, they underestimate a lot of what they need to uncover. And uncover is the right word because underneath a lot of those financial questions are the bigger questions about belonging, loyalty, children. Trust, power, and control. Again, think about what I said a minute ago.
Life has already taught you: you don't run the world. You're powerless when your spouse dies, you're powerless when an unwanted divorce happens. How do I not lose power again in any new commitments or relationships? How do I not lose influence over my children's provision and care because of this new relationship? Those are the things that need to be uncovered and dealt with.
Otherwise, those issues are going to remain. Just a quick story to illustrate this. I heard from somebody just recently after 25 years of marriage, 25 years, these are two high quality, high caliber functioning adults, right? Both work at world and 25 years. And she writes to me and says, how do I know he's going to take care of my kids?
Because it seems like throughout our life, we've both. you know, contributed equally to our expenses, to buying a house, et cetera, et cetera. But it always feels like his money at the end of the day is going to his children, not necessarily to my children. How do I know he'll provide equally for them? And I'm thinking, after 25 years, you have not answered that question.
It's still residue from the past that's looming in the present. You got to get to the bottom of all that. Wow. Yeah, that is well said. And you are exactly right.
Well, when we come back from this break, we're going to continue to unpack this, especially around one of the flashpoints that come up. With blended families and money, and that is inheritance and wills and prenuptial agreements when we're bringing assets in from a prior marriage and we have kids. Ron has a different kind of agreement he's going to share with you that I think ultimately will drive toward unity, and that's the goal here. Ron deal with us today. He's the author of the Smart Stepfamily Guide to Financial Planning, along with Greg Pettis and David Edwards.
He's also the author of an article on this topic in Faithful Stewart. Stay with us. As the leading advocate for the Christian financial industry, Kingdom Advisors serves the public by promoting the integration of a biblical worldview across every aspect of the financial services industry. And we serve a growing network of thousands of Christian financial professionals, equipping and empowering them to carry biblical financial wisdom to their clients, peers, and community. For more information, visit kingdomadvisors.com.
That's kingdomadvisors.com. Wondering who Faith and Finance recommends as a banking partner that aligns with Christian values? It's Christian Community Credit Union. When you open a high-yield checking, savings, or visa cash back card, you'll help advance the gospel when making everyday transactions. Visit faithfy.com/slash banking and use code FAITHFY when you sign up.
That's faithfy.com/slash banking with code FAITH FI. Membership eligibility required. Each account is insured up to $250,000. This institution is not federally insured. Yes.
Oh. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. With me today, my friend Ron Deal. We're talking about creating a shared vision for blended family finances.
You know, I've talked to enough families and couples over the years to know that this is really a challenge, or it can be, but it doesn't have to be. And the key is finding togetherness and unity, but it often comes with a lot of conversation, and that conversation needs to happen before you get married. Ron's going to give you some handles for that today. And Ron, we shared a couple of stories before the break. And I know you have another story about a couple named Sandra and Dave.
They were navigating challenges around inheritances and wills. What did their experience teach us about the importance of trust and belonging within blended families? Yeah, so quick little summary of the story. Sandra was a divorced mother of two. Her second husband, Dave, asked her to change her will and put him as the beneficiary and leave everything to him.
Now, a couple of backgrounds. Dave didn't have any children of his own, had not been married before.
So asking Sandra to do that seemed really simple and straightforward to him. You know, we love each other, we're in oneness, covenant relationships.
So, you know, just leave it to me and I'll take care of your kids and everything if you were to pass away. But for Sandra, her concern was. She and Dave, like a lot of couples these days, got married later in life, you know, 60 and beyond, and her children are adults. And so they never really had a bonding period with Dave. He's just, to them, he's just mom's new husband, sort of a thing.
You know what I'm saying? And it's not that they don't get along or that they have excessive conflicts, none of that. It's just there's not a deep connection or bond there.
So, in her mind, to put him in charge of everything and then provide for his adult stepchildren with whom they don't really have a super close relationship, just didn't make sense to her, right? Yep.
So, what's behind all this?
Well, it's that, how do I know? That, what I have in store in mind for my kids, my family, and my inheritance will be shared by you, and that you will do with it things that I wish that you would do with that.
So, it's that trust issue. It's that loyalty stuff that we talked about before the break. You gotta, you gotta move through those hard questions because you can't answer the financial questions until you answer the relational questions. Yes. Ron, is there a way to do this in a God-honoring way?
And is it even appropriate to say, I've got kids from a prior marriage, I've got assets that were created, maybe even a business. And, you know, I want to have a way, you know, to be able to make sure that my assets, at least created prior to us, our new marriage, going there. Is that okay as a Christ follower? Absolutely. I think there are a lot of good ways to find oneness.
Oneness is about your agreement. It's not necessarily about where the financial monies flow. All right.
So, for example, we created an And what we recommend to couples is they create a togetherness agreement.
Now, Greg Pettis, one of my co-authors, says, We took the prenuptial agreement, we turned it upside down, and we shook out all the animosity. And we kept the part that's good and helpful. And then we infused it with this idea of come together as a couple, negotiate how you're going to provide for you, children, the other household, wherever kids are moving, whatever money's responsibilities you have, come together, figure out how you're going to provide for that, and find agreement.
Now, this is facilitating togetherness, not separateness. We all know prenups sort of say, This is what you're not going to get if you divorce me or leave me or we're not together anymore. And a togetherness agreement says, This is what I'm going to do for you out of love and respect and admiration for you and your children. It's a mutual agreement about how money flows. That is getting to the heart of the matter: these trust issues, loyalty, belonging.
It's. Deciding how money's going to flow together. No one person gets to dictate how the other person's going to handle stuff. And the net result is: we feel better about us, we feel better about. How we've provided, and we know where the money's going to flow, and we can rest.
We can drop our shoulders and we can just say, All right, I'm invested in you, you're invested in me. Clearly, we've got this thing together. Let's move forward with this plan. Yeah, that's powerful. Let's take it one step further and draw a distinction between a pre-nuptial agreement and a togetherness agreement.
I love what you all say: a pre-nuptial agreement is something done to your spouse, while the togetherness agreement is something done for your spouse. What do you mean by that? Oh, well, clearly, this is how I'm going to provide for you, provide for your children, understanding your needs and desires. Maybe you've got living parents. We've got to be mindful of all kinds of responsibilities that people have, depending upon their age, the age of their children, so on and so forth.
Businesses, you mentioned that. And so this is the width. Strategy. And that's so important because. When people feel like there's a, oh, you're looking out for you.
not us. Then you're withholding. And now I'm not sure I trust you again. And so, all of those old patterns and issues, maybe even from previous relationships, bubble up to the surface and begin to erode our ability to invest and lean in to one another. At the end of the day, this is creating emotional safety.
And safety is what facilitates bonding in blended families between step parents and stepchildren, but certainly, absolutely, within the couple itself. Yeah. Ron, we've said a lot of conversation needs to occur, and ideally a good bit of that would come prior to you all entering into the marriage relationship. You say take inventory, both emotionally and financially, before you put even a togetherness agreement in place. Why is that the important first step?
You guys know, and I'm sure you say this all the time, you have to know where you are before you can figure out how you're going to get to where you want to be.
So, taking inventory is every layer of that, the emotional stuff, the relational stuff, but also what's my debt? What's your debt? Where are we financially? Where are we trying to hit? Then you can begin to figure out.
What's the path? To get there. Keep in mind, we say blended families are born out of loss, meaning death, divorce, something has happened that's led up to a single parent situation, now a recoupling and a blended family. We just want to make sure that the loss doesn't dictate the togetherness. And so it's lots of conversation.
It's an honest reflection on where you've been, where you want to go, what your hesitations are, what your guardrails are. All of that helps couples. Come together, avoid repeating old patterns, but very importantly, that togetherness agreement process is a bonding and a merging of who they are. And that's what's really going to be the foundation for the relationship going forward. Yeah.
We talked about how money should be handled with respect to kids being brought into the marriage. What are a few other topics that need to be talked about, discussed, and a part of this agreement? Yeah, there's many, and we really flesh those out in the book. But joint accounts, separate accounts, how about money that needs to flow to the other household out of for co-parent payments to the other home, for example, or previous debts? How are we going to cover those?
Retirement savings, insurance plans, investments, social security, you know, and then the everyday stuff regarding kids. How are we going to prepare for college and cars and computers and the various expenses that we have just in raising children? It's really, there's a lot of topics. It depends on where you are in life and what you're looking at down the road. Yeah.
We've got 20 seconds left. Finished with just one piece of encouragement for somebody thinking, we can't do this. Oh, yeah, but you can. You can. And financial planners are often helpful because they're going to help you get creative.
About where money goes and how you use it to care for one another, provide for each other.
Sometimes, if you're like me, you don't know all that stuff. You need somebody to give you some guidance. But here's the thing: God's going to give you the grace that you need because submit it to Him, let Him show you and teach you. And this process can help you grow yourself up and grow your relationship. What a beautiful vision for a God-honoring marriage.
Ron, thanks for your time today, my friend. Thanks for having me. That's Ron Diehl. He's the author of the Smart Stepfamily Guide to Financial Planning. Pick it up wherever you buy books.
Your calls are next: 800-525-7000. We'll be right back. If you love what you hear on this program, there's even more waiting for you at FaithFi.com. Explore podcasts, videos, articles, Bible studies, and devotionals, all designed to help you see God as your ultimate treasure and money as a tool to advance his kingdom. Pursue wisdom, practice generosity, and steward God's resources in a community with others who share your faith.
Visit FaithFi.com to take the next step in your faith and financial journey today. That's faithfi.com. Faith in Finance is thankful for support from The Good Investor, a book by Robin John. In his book, Robin shares his journey from an immigrant child struggling in school to co-founder and CEO of Eventide Asset Management, a faith-based investment firm. This Faith and Work memoir seeks to inspire readers to view their work and investments as opportunities to honor God and bring blessing to the world.
More information is available at goodinvestor.com. That's goodinvestor.com. Uh Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. We're taking your calls at 800-525-7000. Let's head to Louisiana.
Dana, go ahead. Hello, let's see. I'm calling just to relieve myself of a question that I've been pondering. Of course, I've not been.
So faithful, and it goes back to not really disclosing with my husband. You know, we have children. and just sort of helping them and just getting through with credit card and it's caused me debt. And he was really upset.
So I'm just trying to determine right now. I did speak to a consolidated credit company, and the gentleman did let me know that Here I am at 26. Um that he could you know, get it down and negotiate a four hundred every two weeks right now. I'm just curious if that would be something that would be I mean, it sounds good, but I mean, is it trusting or are there any drawbacks on that that I should be aware of? Or He said, you know, 10 to 12 years and I could get you out of debt for Four years in four years.
Yeah. So, um. I'm just not sure. Totally understand. Let me just first stand and say, I really appreciate your call.
I know this wasn't easy. This is a difficult situation. I know something that's probably weighing heavily on you, not easy to talk about. And I certainly understand, especially with you being on the radio here, this is difficult. And so I just want to acknowledge that.
I also want you to know the Lord is with you. I believe your desire to be found faithful and managing this well, you know, being transparent and honest with your husband obviously is a key part of allowing that restoration work. You know, God is in the business of restoration, but the starting point is honesty, surrender, and then really just getting clarity about where we are at right now. Let's just be honest about where we find ourselves. And then from that place of honesty and clarity, we can then chart a path forward where we can drive toward unity and oneness between you and your husband, living within.
your means, you know, being content with what God has provided, despite your desire, as we all have, to take care of our kids and make sure they have, you know, the things we want them to have. And it's so easy to allow that desire to bless our kids, to allow us to go beyond God's provision. And yet we have to understand that's not God's plan. And so we need to, you know, guard ourselves against living beyond our means. That's difficult.
I don't want you to think you're all alone in that. There's literally tens of thousands listening right now who are in the exact same position. But I think your place of saying, listen, I want to be honest about this and find a path forward is really the place where God can go to work.
So I just want to encourage you in that. I'm going to be praying for you in this. And I want to give you a couple of things. First of all, so does your husband understand the full extent of what's going on here now? Is that out on the table?
Yes, openly, right. Yes, he's very much aware.
Okay, excellent.
Well, that's that's really important. I'm sure that wasn't easy, but that was a really necessary step. I think, secondly, to your more specific question about this person that you've been talking to, what I think you're describing is what we would call debt settlement, where they essentially stop paying the debt and then use that past due status to come in behind you and try to negotiate a reduced payoff or a lower payment. I don't like that approach. Number one, there's a lot of bad actors in that space.
I'm not saying necessarily that this person is doing something nefarious, but I do think that this whole space of debt settlement is just fraught with people who are just not on the up and up. Number one. Number two is it often will trash your credit. In most cases, it will, because you're going to have to get behind. You're going to get into collections.
You're going to get all the. The calls from the collection agencies. If it goes on too long, they could come after you and trying to get a judgment, which is a legal action. This is just not the preferred way to go.
So, what is?
Well, my approach to this is what's called debt management, which is very different because you stay current with your creditors. There is no part of this that causes you to get behind or pass due. Essentially, every credit card company has what they call a credit counseling department, but you can only access it through a nonprofit credit counseling agency. And our friends at Christian Credit Counselors that we've worked with literally for decades at FaithFi and then before that at Crown and Christian Financial Concepts are Christ followers and they're phenomenal and they'll help you get out of debt 80% faster. You'll end up paying it in full and you never get behind.
In fact, if you're at any stage of being delinquent, when you go into the program, it gets re- Aged, so you're immediately brought current.
Now, why is it so effective?
Well, there's two things. Number one is you will have a monthly payment that's probably about somewhere between two and three percent of the balance.
So, if you've got 26,000 in credit card debt, you know, it may be $650 a month, two and a half percent, and you're going to have to be able to afford that, and they'll work with you on your budget. But They're going to drop the interest rate. See, each credit counseling department at each of these creditors has a lower rate that they offer through credit counseling, usually somewhere between 0% and 10%. And the combination of that level monthly payment through Christian Credit Counselor, and then they send it on to each creditor, plus the lower interest rate is going to help you pay it off 80% faster. We just had a call the other day.
I mean, we get these every week from somebody saying, It was incredible. I'm finally out of debt. It worked. You know, these people are amazing.
So, this is the way to go.
Now, I realize you're going to have to be able to make the monthly payment. You said this person was saying, I think I can get it down to 400. I'm saying 650. But, you know, let's start there because I really don't want you going through debt settlement. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
Okay, everyone.
So give them a call today.
Well, let me give you the website. It's Christian Credit Counselors. Christian Credit Counselors.org. They're wonderful people. They'll pray with you.
They'll work on your budget with you. And then they'll tell you exactly what the payment will be. Start there. If you have other questions, call me back and I'm going to be praying for you, Dana. Quickly to Kansas.
Chris, I've got just about 60 seconds. Go ahead.
So I have the uniform transfer of minors for my one son, and I have another son. And I'm wondering if I should do a 529. I'm just looking for some guidance on this. I don't really want them to be able to get access to the money, which they will have with the uniform transfer of the miners. Yeah.
It's a good question, and you can transfer funds from a UTMA to a 529. You'd basically set up a custodial 529. And so since the UTMA belongs to the miner, the 529 plan also has to be set up for the benefit of the same miner.
So it'll be a custodial 529, meaning the miner will remain the owner of the funds and control the account, which it'll transfer to them at the age of majority.
So if the miner at the age of majority decided to pull the money out, they would lose the benefit. Of the tax-free growth and still be able to use it for some other purpose.
So I think you just need to make sure it's gonna accomplish the purpose you want, because at the end of the day, you're still not gonna be in control of it.
So, hopefully, that gives you something to think about there, Chris. Unfortunately, amount of time. May the Lord bless you, sir. Big thanks to my team today, Dev and Robert and Taylor. We'll see you next time.
Bye-bye. Faith in Finance is provided by Faith By and listeners like you.
