It’s Not About the Money

When life gets stressful, husbands and wives often respond to that stress differently. Researcher and author Shanti Feldon says when the stress is around money, those different ways of dealing with it can cause isolation in a marriage. When you've lived through times of economic uncertainty, like many of us have lived through, and when you talk to women, they're like, my husband is walking around with the black cloud of doom over his head and he's stressed and he's tense and he's never here and we're missing all this time as a family.

The answer in a lot of men, they're backing away from the cliff by spending a lot of hours at work or taking all the extra overtime hours they possibly can. Well, that takes them away from the family. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine.

You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Often when there's conflict in a relationship about money, the real issue isn't the money. It's what the financial pressure is doing to us.

We're going to talk more about that today with Jeff and Shanti Feldon. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. One of the misconceptions I think people have about issues related to money in marriage is that if you have lots of money, you won't have money problems. You've worked for years with professional athletes, many of whom have plenty of money, and you've seen them still have plenty of money issues in their marriage, right? No, actually, Bob, it's true.

If you have more money, you don't have money problems. That's the truth. You didn't know that? I didn't know. I've actually believed that.

I actually had that. I didn't know it as a child, but I really thought if you just have enough in the bank, you'll have the security that even if you have problems, they're not that bad, and you're exactly right, Bob. Working with millionaire athletes, some of them multi, multimillionaires, it's no different. They have money problems, and it isn't spending or not having the money in the bank. There's fights. There's tensions. There's fears. It's really no different, is it?

Yeah, and we've seen that for years, and so it's deeper than money, as we've already been talking about. We have been talking this week about money and love and how all of that works out, and we've got some friends, friends of yours and friends of mine. We all love them.

How can you not be friends with the Feldhans? Jeff and Shanti Feldhahn back with us on Family Life Today. Welcome back, guys.

It's a pleasure. I'm thinking of how many of our listeners have benefited over the years from the books that Jeff and Shanti have worked on together. Shanti started with For Women Only years ago, then there was For Men Only, and then there was For Parents Only, and then The Kindness Challenge and Good News About Mary.

I'm thinking of all of the things we've talked about over the years, because you guys really are kindred spirit with who we are here at Family Life and our goal here at Family Life. And in writing this book, your goal was to help people pursue the goal of oneness, pursue love in the midst of challenges that finances can throw our way and the issues that get revealed with that. You know, it's interesting, with your lead-in story about the professional athletes, it isn't about the money, and you still have money problems if you're wealthy. But there was one interesting thing that we did find out as far as there is a certain threshold of how much money and cushion that you have. What we found actually was interesting is it doesn't matter how much money you make, because that's the big lie, is if we just had more, we wouldn't be fighting, you know, whatever.

It turns out that's not true. It doesn't matter the level of income you make. What matters for your relationship is whether you're living below that line. It matters whether you're building up some sort of a cushion and have some sort of margin, because it turns out it's not just protective for your finances to have emergency savings, for example. It's protective for your marriage, it turns out. If your car breaks, you don't start fighting with your spouse about whether they should have spent all their tips on that new pair of shoes, you know. It's wise for finances, but a lot of us didn't realize it was actually good for the marriage. The key, though, is that to build up the cushion, what we found is even more important that Trump's building the cushion is to be able to talk about it. And you will find this fascinating, Dave, with all the multimillionaires you guys have worked with over the years, is that we actually found statistically if you have more cushion but you can't talk about money, your relationship is worse.

Wow. I looked at the statistics that came back in some of these spreadsheets, and I went, wait, that has to be a calculation error. Like, it's showing that your relationship statistically is worse than if you had way less money but you could talk about it.

And ran it again, and nope, it was true. I was in a small group study with couples years ago, and we asked the question, if things got really terrible and you had to go into survival mode as a family, how much would you need just to survive? And I said, we're going to take your house out of the equation and figure you own your house. So mortgage is off the table.

Let's just pretend you own your house, okay? This is, what do you need just to get by? And I was curious to see, as these numbers, everybody submitted their numbers independently, the low number from the group was we could get by on $400 a month.

Our family, if we had to, and we're just down to, okay, we're going to do mac and cheese and rice and beans, and we're going to survive with what we got. The high number was $3,000 a month. We would need $3,000 a month to survive. And I'm thinking to myself, you guys have no ideas.

There are people in the world who have never seen $3,000 a month. Their lifetime. And you think that's what it would take you to survive. You have a miscalculation about what survival means. But we all have that kind of calibration in our head. And this goes to something you talk about in the book.

Some of this is not related to how much would I need, some of this is how much would make me feel safe. When does fear kick into the equation? That's one of the key findings from this, right?

It really is. We found that when you talk about, like we said before, when you're having the tension around money or avoiding it, it's not about the money, it's about all this other stuff. And one of those other stuff things is that it turns out that there's under the surface some very kind of hidden, I guess.

You don't necessarily talk about them. But these fears and worries and insecurities that run under the surface half the time we don't even know they're there. And it turns out those, even though we said earlier that money things are not statistically gender-related most of the time at all, there is one that is actually quite correlated with gender. And it's not 100 percent of the time, but we found roughly about 70 to 80 percent-ish of the time men and women tend to have different insecurities and different fears. And it's like a raw nerve that's being hit by the other person because they don't have that same fear. So what are guys afraid of?

What does the research show? So it shows that men, the thing that is the most pulling at them is this feeling of, am I going to be able to provide for the family? It's there, so deep, and it's almost like the analogy that we use in the book is it's like a cliff. Like, you know that feeling, maybe I'm the only one, but you know that feeling when you're afraid of heights and you're standing on the edge of a cliff and you sort of feel like it magnetically pulling at you? You're going to somehow fall over the edge and die. And so you try to back away from the edge.

You try to put a lot of distance so that you don't feel that pull like it's about to happen. Men and women tend to have two different cliffs. Men feel this, am I going to be able to provide for the family pulling at them? Do you guys all feel that? Do you really do? It's multiple times a day. Even though it wouldn't necessarily be something that I'd be able to say, yes, it's in the front part of my brain, but it's definitely there in the back of my mind all the time.

All the time. And it's amazing to me to think women don't have the same level of fear. Well, here's the thing. Women, because some women listening to this might go, well, I'm just as worried about money. Like, I'm the saver.

He's the spender. Yeah, okay, that's a different thing, believe it or not. We can be just as likely to be worried about money and not have this gut level sense we are about to die because this is a very guy feeling. And again, this is not 100%.

This is like 70 to 80%. There are exceptions. But most of the time, the feeling in a man is I'm not going to be enough to keep my family from falling. And we as women tend not to have that. We may still worry about the technicalities, but not because I'm not enough.

So what's your fear for women? So our cliff, it turns out, is not are we financially okay, but are we okay? Am I enough to keep my husband engaged by me?

Like, does he really love me? Are the kids feeling loved? And if you're in a season, and this happens in normal, like, prosperity times, much less when you've lived through times of economic uncertainty, like many of us have lived through, that there is in a lot of men, they're backing away from the cliff by spending a lot of hours at work, or taking all the extra overtime hours they possibly can in order to put distance.

Well, that takes them away from the family. And when you talk to women, and they're like, my husband is walking around with the black cloud of doom over his head, and he's stressed, and he's tense, and he's never here, and we're missing all this time as a family, the answer to are we okay is no. And so what a woman will often do to try to build that emotional security in the relationship, that sense that we're better, we're okay, she'll want to do things together.

She'll want to do things like go out to eat, like she'll want to do stuff to go on vacation. To draw you closer. To draw you closer, well guess what?

That stuff often involves spending money. And so that pushes him closer to his cliff. And so he tries to back away more and spend more hours at the office and then she's like, we need a bigger vacation.

And this is literally just us not recognizing, like the guy not recognizing. Wait, you mean you really feel like we might be pulled over the edge of our relationship and die? Like, wait, just because I drove away angry after that argument this morning, you really are worried? It was just an argument. And to her, no, like this is a real thing.

This explains so much. Well, can I share a quick little story from our own life? I mean, our kids now are 20 and 17 years old. And we're self-employed, we're entrepreneurs, so we don't have the typical... We've been running this ministry for a long time. The typical health insurance. It's basically every doctor's visit is out of pocket for us.

We have high deductibles, all of that sort of stuff. So over the course of our marriage, as the kids are growing up, eventually once every couple of months, a kid would come into our bedroom late at night and say, mom, my throat hurts. To which Shanti goes into overdrive mode and thinks, I need to call the pediatrician, take them to get a strep test in the morning. I'm thinking eight of the last ten strep tests have shown negative.

So therefore, this one will likely be negative and it will cost us $100 to find out that it's negative. So I would tell her, look, pioneer children didn't run off to the ER every time they had a sore throat. And they died.

That one didn't work so well and I'm still working on my next illustration for that one. But what happens is what I didn't realize was that she was being pulled over her cliff that something's going to happen to the kids. And she's letting all of these thoughts begin to cascade in her mind of all these awful things that could happen if we don't identify and get them better from this strep. And it's not just that. What I was willing to do was I was willing to pay money to really be reassured. And to me, it's not wasted. It's worth it.

It's totally worth it. And see, for me, I'm thinking that that $100 spent in the strep test coming back negative, it was wasted. Not like I would have rejoiced if it would have come back positive because I would have gotten our money's worth.

But nevertheless, I didn't struggle with the same things she was struggling with so I didn't understand her motivation. You didn't know what I was paying for. I wasn't paying just for the strep test. I was paying to be reassured that they didn't have strep and that I wouldn't have to spend the next couple of days going, should they be going to school?

Are they infecting other people? If they are staying home from school, I'm going to have to get somebody to be with them because I have a big business meeting I have to go to. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's all these things that pop up. And so paying that money to be reassured that they're okay and that I don't need to do all of that is totally worth it. Young married, I hope you are tuning into this stuff.

This is good. Dave and I on our honeymoon. You're getting a little too excited about this honeymoon. On our honeymoon, Dave and I went to a lake in New Hampshire. But before we got there, we went to Boston and spent the night at this great hotel. We got on the subway. Neither of us had ever been on a subway.

We both grew up in a little town in Ohio. So we're on the subway. This is exciting. We're newly married, just a couple days and we get so lost. And when we're lost, I think this is a great adventure.

This is awesome. Well, Dave keeps getting more and more mad. And we get back to the hotel room.

How are you going to tell this story? Yeah. I haven't even thought about this in 40 years. This is it.

This is it. And so we get back to the hotel room and he's just, he's frustrated. And I said, what's wrong? And he starts to cry. Now, I'm thinking, what in the world? And he says, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't even know how I'm going to be a husband. And I'm thinking, where is this coming from?

He said, I couldn't even get us back to the hotel without help. And here I am. I think I'm going to come into marriage. I have to, here's the word, provide for you. I will have kids.

I'm going to have to provide for them. And then he's like, and I miss my little brother that died. And I am flabbergasted. I don't even know what to do. I'm like, and here's my thought. We can do anything together. As long as we're together, we're going to be amazing. And that didn't comfort you at all.

No. Because you were thinking, how do I provide? Yeah, and of course, going into marriage, and we had been to the amazing weekend to remember, two weeks before that, and basically that night almost. And I remember even at the weekend, remember feeling the same, just a little bit. And this came out later, sitting in the men's session on Sunday.

And now I teach it, how to be a godly husband, how to be a godly dad. I remember thinking, I'm overwhelmed, there's no way. I've never seen this.

I don't know what this looks like. Two weeks later, I mean, I'm literally sobbing on our honeymoon. And here's the thing I just think when Anne shares that story, it's never gone away.

Yeah. That fear is still there, deep down to provide, to be what she needs, to be what the boys need. It's never gone away. And that is what women don't grasp.

I had no idea. We don't grasp how deep that goes and how real that is and how your big, strong, confident-looking husband is really doubting himself and has so much vulnerability. And it wasn't until we started that research a number of years ago about men and women that I started to realize, this is so in Jeff every day, and he runs so many of these money decisions through this grid that is so emotional for him that I have to be tender with that. Like, I have to recognize that it's, again, it's not about the money.

I know we're a broken record, but it's really not. It's about finding out what is going on in his heart and in your heart so that you can be tender with those insecurities. Because in the end, what matters more?

I mean, is it having the perfect finances or is it having this great, intimate, close relationship where you're just trying your best to build up the other person in this area of need? And at the same time, as I hear you say that, Shanti, I'm thinking it's on us guys to do the same thing back. That's correct. Because I easily would dismiss Ann's desire and need to be together with this comment. Do you understand what I'm doing? I'm leaving you to go make money to provide for you. That should make you feel loved.

And she's longing, like, I'd rather just have you home tonight. You don't need to take that speaking gig to get 100 bucks. And I never, I pooh-poohed her and said, you're wrong, I'm right, rather than, there's not a wrong right here, there's an understanding. It's hearing one another. And I think when we respond in anger to one another, we no longer can hear.

We can only hear our internal thoughts of how we're right and they're wrong. And even as you guys share that heaviness of providing, my heart wants to get beside you and partner with you. And I think that that's really important, even for young couples. I'm thinking even as we coach these young couples and these young Shanties and these young Jeffs, you know, what would you say to them if you had to go back into your young years? What would you have done different?

Well, you know, quite frankly, what Shanti actually did do a few of those times was, what is it? Okay, so this is what you're struggling with. This is what you're kind of fearful of happening. How can I alleviate that? What can we do? Let's sit down and be able to talk about some things that we spend money on that you think that I think is a necessity, but I would be fine with cutting it out of our budget, cutting it out of our life. What are those things that will lessen that pressure on you that we have this nut to cover every month?

How can we reduce the size of that nut for you? Well, and it wasn't just the technical thing. One of the things that made all the difference, Jeff said, is when he was working all these bazillions of hours in New York trying to pay down our student loan debt, I never saw him, we were newlyweds. It was really emotionally difficult, as you can imagine. And finally he said, do you think I want to be working this much? I'm doing it because I care about you, right?

Which is what I wasn't feeling loved. And I said, honey, I want you to know, because he's like, you wanted to live in a doorman building, and you wanted this and you wanted that. And I'm like, honey, I will go live with you on a farm in Iowa and be together. As long as we're together, I don't need the doorman building and I don't need this.

I want you more than anything you can provide. And that changed his emotional sort of feeling of pressure to some degree. And I believed her and she meant it. And I knew that she was for me and that she was willing to do anything to get me to a position where I didn't feel that struggle as intensely. Now, it's just because of the way I'm wired, I'm going to feel it.

It's there. But its intensity was certainly lessened by that. And it made you want to have that same kind of understanding back to honor some of the things that really mattered to me. How beautiful it would be, you know, if you think about Philippians 2, I'm sure you remember that passage, and Paul's writing this to a church about unity.

But it's what we're talking about. Look at this, Philippians 2, 1. So if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, look at this, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. And man, of all areas of our marriage to be in one mind, like you said, it's not about money, but it is about money. But it's understanding one another in regards to this area in our marriage. Do you think the enemy really tries to get a foothold in this area?

Oh, I think it's huge. When we talk about Satan being the prince of the power of the air, it's like I say something, it travels through the air, and suddenly you hear something different. Like, I didn't mean it that way.

Like, how often have we said that? And that's why it's so crucial to start from the understanding and believe the best of the other person's intentions. They love you. They care about you.

You have to assume that. And here's one of the advantages that we have as people of faith, people who don't have any sort of a faith relationship. They can take this information and they can apply it in their marriage and it will help.

There are kind of techniques and tips that can be gained and you can apply them and it will help. But how much more should we be rejoicing because we not only have the research and the information, we have the Holy Spirit that is sent to lead us into all truth. And that is truth about who God is, but also about who my wife is, or who my husband in her case. And we can rely on that Holy Spirit to help us understand and convict us when we're wrong. I mean, what an amazing thing to have. And I also think, you know, as I'm old enough, I think we all are, don't want to date us, but I think, I'm guessing you agree and I don't even know all of your story, but at the end of the day, what I've learned over 40-some years now walking with Jesus and the Holy Spirit alive in my life is all those fears I had about money and not wanting to talk about it and almost hiding in those and carrying them myself. I look back now and I realize, and I've said it, I've preached it, but I had to feel it and know it.

God can be trusted in our finances. I can remember all those nights, literally, cannot sleep, eyes wide open, she's sound asleep beside me. She's not thinking about this, worried about this. I'm only awake when our relationship isn't doing well.

That's true. She's awake then, but I look over, how in the world can she not be feeling the college? How are we going to pay for college?

How are we going to pay the mortgage? And I look back and every single money fear God met, sometimes in miraculous ways. And sometimes it was, I took a speaking gig or whatever, but I look back and say, He can be trusted. And I want to say that to you, He can be trusted. I know you're laying there in bed at night just like me.

He can be trusted. Talk about it, you need to talk about it. It shouldn't be hidden, it should be talked about. But at the end of the day, you've got to get on your knees and say, God, please take care of us.

And I'm telling you, He will. My other thought, Dave, which I think that is so good that you shared, is I think for me, a lot of times, I need to come to you and apologize. Like, apologize, like I didn't get it. And I think maybe some of us as listeners can think, oh, I may need to go to my husband or wife and say, I just didn't get it. I thought this was about money and it's much deeper and I'm wondering if we can start a conversation.

And if you take the assessment that is online that'll help you understand how you both think and what your fears are and what the issues are. I mean, some people are going, I'm not taking that assessment because that's just going to open a whole can of worms and I'd just rather sweep it under the rug. Well, okay, that's a strategy, right?

Yeah, how's that working for you? But the other strategy is let's pursue the kind of oneness in our marriage that you were describing from Philippians 2 and that's going to take being honest with one another and opening up on some things and confronting some things in our own lives. But look, the payoff there is worth it and that's what the book's all about.

That's what the assessment is about is to help couples find love and money working together. Guys, thank you for the book and thanks for being here and helping us go through all of this. Thank you, Bob.

Thanks, it's a pleasure, always. And I hope our listeners will get a copy of your book. We're making it available this week to any Family Life Today listener who would like a copy. If you can help with a donation to support the work of Family Life Today, the book is our way of saying thank you for your ongoing support of this ministry. Again, the title of the book is Thriving in Love and Money. I'd suggest this, in addition to the book, make sure you take the online assessment at familylifetoday.com. That'll give you insight into the different ways you approach money and think about money in your marriage relationship.

And then the book is a great guidebook to help you have some good conversations about all of this. And again, the book is our thank you gift when you donate to support the ministry of Family Life Today. We are listeners supported. Your donations are what have made today's program possible, and we want to say thanks in advance for helping to make tomorrow's program possible when you donate today. Go to familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to make your donation to Family Life Today. We look forward to hearing from you.

David Robbins, who's the president of Family Life, is joining us here today. And money tension in marriage, relationship tension, this been an issue for you and Meg ever? I think money's always an issue in most marriages, and it certainly has been for us at times. And yeah, I want to admit that at times that we find ourselves in that 70% where we're not being intentional talking about it. Just stuff it. And we stuff it. Yet right now we're in a season where, oh, we're talking about it because we're in the process of moving and there's house decisions, living out our values. Are we making wise investments? To what extent do we want to put into it? To what extent do we want to save?

There's the whole reality that I have a really old car that I'm just trying to keep going and how we approach that. And here's the bottom line for us, though. We're going to prioritize oneness in our marriage. And money is more of a heart issue than a finance issue. And so therefore, talking about money and continuing to cultivate oneness in that space is really important because our view of money is a window into a much deeper part of our heart.

It brings up issues of fear and hopes and dreams and how we think reality works. And for Meg and I in this season, we are fighting hard not to let the enemy draw a wedge between us like he would want to so much. And this is where I think the assessment we've talked about that Jeff and Shanti have put together on this issue can help so many couples. Again, it's available online at familylifetoday.com, and I hope our listeners will take advantage of that resource and the other resources we're making available this week. Thank you, David. Now, tomorrow we're going to talk about how we can lovingly correct our kids when they need correction because there are times when they do, and we need to make sure we're doing it in a way that's pleasing to the Lord. Sam Crabtree is going to be here to coach us through that. Hope you can be back with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. ¶¶ Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.