Indebted to Love

Sherry Lowe knew she and her husband Brian had some debt.

She just didn't know it was six figures of debt until her husband told her it was time for a talk. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. If there's money, stress in your marriage, it's affecting your oneness, your relationship with each other. We'll talk more about that today with Brian and Sherry Lowe. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Do you guys ever have money conflict in marriage, money issues? Bob, does any couple not have money conflict in marriage? We rarely had money conflict, and part of that's because my wife is very thrifty, so there was never any overspending stuff. Ann, did you hear that?

His wife was thrifty. What is that word? What's that mean to you? We've touched on the nerve here, haven't we? Oh, boy.

We've had some doozies. I can't wait to talk about this book. Well, we're going to talk to Sherry and Brian Lowe, who join us.

They've written a book called Your Money, Your Marriage. Guys, welcome to Family Life Today. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. And your story is a part of why you wrote not only this book, but the book Slaying the Debt Dragon.

Correct. And I asked you, Sherry, earlier, so how far in debt were you, and what did you tell me? Yeah, so we paid off $127,482.30. And when she said 30 cents, I go, this was a hallmark deal, wasn't it? Well, fun story. We actually overpaid Sallie Mae by 33 cents, and so we called them and tried to get the 33 cents back. Did you really?

Yeah, they didn't think we were very funny. I wanted interest. This is your second foray into this subject, because there was some stuff when you wrote about Slaying the Debt Dragon that you really didn't get to talk to about the relational dynamic of all of this, right? Definitely. You know, we really learned so much through writing that first book, and it was interesting to get feedback from readers who said, this is a good book about money, but we think there's some better ideas in here about marriage, even.

And so we wanted to further explore that a little bit and to do that together. Well, it's interesting, because the subtitle is The Secrets to Smart Finance, Spicy Romance, and Their Intimate Connection. I'm so intrigued. Well, if you think about it, okay, just for a second- It's a little speechless there for a second, bro. This is your subtitle.

This is my- I didn't realize it made the cut. Okay, so let's see if you think about it. Arguments about money pull us apart, so we started considering, well, agreements about money can't help but push us together. Well, that's anecdotal, so then we kind of dug into some empirical data to see if we were right about that. Oh, so you have evidence.

Sure. It turns out people fight about money. But if you think about it personally, like the last time that you had a fight about money probably didn't end in a night of passion. So, you know, we began to kind of dig deeper into that, that certainly we know that sex and money are two of the top reasons why people get divorced.

But was it possible that the things that you learned about managing money well together could be transferred into more intimate areas of your marriage as well? So let me back it all up, because for folks who don't know, how did you get $127,000, whatever the number was? How did that happen in the first place? By not paying attention.

That's the main way. Certainly, we had a lot of student loan debt, and I think a lot of people in the United States especially are saddled with student loan debt. We had credit card debt to the tune of about $16,500, which is actually the national average. So if you have that, you're not alone.

A lot of people do. We had car debt. We had medical debt because we had actually just had our second child at that point. So babies are beautiful and a blessing, but they're also very expensive.

Amen. We had purchased furniture on a payment plan, so we had that. We had a gap loan where we were unemployed. It was just this mixed bag of assorted debt where we were taking everyone else's advice about money and really not paying attention. Brian, how long into all of this debt accumulation did it take for you to move from, I'm okay with this, we can manage it, to, uh-oh, we're in trouble and I'm starting to panic here? We started April 2nd of 2008 really being committed because you never start anything on April 1st. This is paying down the debt?

Paying it off. And so two years prior to that, I actually communicated with Sheri that I wanted to get out of debt, and that's exactly how I communicated it to her, and it failed. Because one of the things that I realized, and it took a couple years to realize, is that if you don't approach something in love, you're never going to succeed. So you didn't go to her and say, sweetheart, you know, I've been praying about this, and this is something that's on my heart, and I'd like us to just kind of come together and see if this might be what the Lord would want for us to get out of that.

That's not how you handled it? I should have talked to you first. That was really good, Bob. Dave, did you hear that? That was good.

I didn't hear a thing. You just went and said, I want to get out of debt? It was more by fiat than anything else. It was more, here's what we're going to do, I want to do this, let's do this. And two years later, we still hadn't begun. So two years later, what did you do? You changed something.

Changed everything. I started thinking about casting a vision, or what a lot of folks call postcards from the future. What will it look like if we pay this off? What could we do for the kingdom of God? What could we do to change our family tree?

What could we do to send our kids to college, our community, things that we wanted to give to? Could we retire early? Could we spend more time together?

Could we go on vacation? And so those types of things where I'm more inviting Sherry into the journey with love is really the approach that I took. Sherry, did that help you? Was that motivating?

Oh, my word, that set my heart on fire. Because when he encouraged me to dream big and really answer that question of what would we do if we weren't putting so much money every month toward payments and interest, I was like, yes, I want to be there. I want to do that. Now, is this a planned evening that you decided to do this over time? I'm thinking of a couple out there that are thinking, I want to do this. Do you go out to Ruth Chris and spend a whole bunch of money and say, let's do this? No, I'm kidding, obviously. But really, did you sit down and say, today's the day? Yeah, there was no distraction.

I mean, it's one of those things where you have to set an environment up. In the book, we talk about popcorn. Everything's better with popcorn. So having a snack, I don't know that we actually had popcorn in that moment, but having a meal, maybe not Ruth's Chris, if you owe a lot of people money, but having a meal together, breaking bread together, a literal communion with your spouse to talk about important things and to dream big together. So I think it was a few of those where we talked about it.

And Sherry, as a practical matter, couldn't wrap her brain around it because she did the day-to-day finances. And I didn't. And she did the grocery shopping, and I didn't.

And so that's something where I really had to listen to her concerns and her needs. Now, you said it was approached this time with love. That's right. Let me ask you this. Was there any anger?

And I don't mean bad anger, but wholly discontent anger, like this is enough. Not with each other. Yeah.

Not with each other. But you got to that point. Talk about that. I think any time that you start a big journey, and this is going to sound weird, but it comes out of a place of disgust. I mean, this is not where we wanted to be.

We were disgusted with our present situation, and it was overwhelming. And it was really the first time. I had a really long legal pad. It was the first time that we wrote everything down and added it up and looked at how long it would take. I mean, the loans that I had were 30-year loans, the student loans. Wow. That's a long time.

Our kids would have been in college or done with college by that point in time. So that was overwhelming. And then the weight becomes heavy, and then it becomes, no, I'm not going to let this bring us down. Sherry, the first time that Brian came to you and said, by fiat, we are getting out of debt, and you didn't react well to it, were you comfortable with the debt you were in?

I don't think I really knew the totality until he had that legal pad moment where everything was written down, and it hit me like, wow, this is a huge amount of money. And if we keep living the way we're living, it's not going to get any better. It's going to get bigger.

That number is going to grow instead. And so we have to do something. We can't just stay here. And I always tell people there's no good time to begin paying off debt. There is only today. And that really was the sentiment where we were living right then was today. This is the only day we have to begin doing this because there's always going to be a car that breaks down or a birthday party or a vacation that comes up.

If you don't start doing something today, it's never going to change. What you're talking about in your new book is a subtle and sometimes invisible connection between how we're handling our money in marriage and how we're doing as a couple in our personal relationship in marriage. And I think we tend to look at those as separate and distinct.

Like, those two don't fit together. Our money and our relationship should not be intermingled. But if two become one in marriage, then this is all in the same blender, isn't it?

It is. It's so intertwined together that you can't pull it apart even if you try. And so we really began to look at the different areas where couples struggle.

And we found eight key areas where really it's difficult to manage money, but it's also difficult to approach intimacy as well, things like communication and trust and vulnerability and leadership and even organization that lead to either a happier marriage or a not-so-harmless union. Well, you got to talk about a phrase I've never heard in my life at the beginning of your book. And you want to get somebody interested, you got me interested. I'm like, financial foreplay.

What in the world is that? It's great that you never heard that phrase before because we believe it's original. We've got a working definition in the book. And if you wouldn't mind me engaging in some readers' theater.

No, go ahead. Tell us what it is. To us, financial foreplay simply means husbands and wives investing in smart financial habits and relational capital to clear the way for spicy sex and meaningful togetherness. It's taking care of bank business so you can get down to business in bed, leaving cash conflicts far behind. It's a complete trust, vulnerability, and connection when it comes to both our bodies and our budgets. It results from a continued mutual pursuit of improved shared money habits and communication. So you're saying that the emotional and physical intimacy that you guys, because you had that when you were in debt. Sure. But you're saying that the emotional and physical intimacy today when you're out of debt and you're managing your money more prudently than you were before.

Is spicier. That's the word that he used. That's absolutely right. And if you think about some of those words that are used in that definition, communication, vulnerability, trust, those words are both about money and they're both about intimacy. And when you build, those transcend one another. So if you build together with money and you communicate well about money, you will communicate well about your finances. And when you achieve goals together, you are faithful in your finances, then the other spouse trusts you even more. For us, just working together to pay off the debt and accomplishing that together brought us closer together because we had to be closer together to accomplish something. Yeah, you have to be on the same page. You have to be on the same page together. And so that brought us closer together as a couple. And you've actually found out this isn't just you. Other couples have experienced the same thing. Yes, definitely. And Brian has some statistics that he can share specifically about the broader base of people and marriages within the United States.

And they're kind of jarring when you read them. So 70% of couples fought more about money than household chores, togetherness, sex, snoring, and what's for dinner combined. Oh, combined.

Combined. And so people are struggling. If you fight about money once or more per week, you're 30% more likely to get a divorce than other people. And one of my jobs is that I'm a family law attorney. I help people going through divorce situations. And the number one reason that people come into my office has to do with money.

Dave and I struggled with that, especially at the beginning. Not the sex part, just the money part. For the record. Just for the record. I'm wondering if that did affect our intimacy in every way. Hey, if it did, I'm getting debt-free right now.

I'm just telling you right here. And I think what I didn't realize, because I'm a spender on other people. And so it wasn't necessarily on myself, but I'm very generous to others. Where Dave was like, we need to get a, no, you need to get a handle on this.

And I would get defensive thinking, I am doing this for other people. This is nice of me. But what I came to realize, the more we talked, and I remember asking, you may not even remember this, Dave. I asked him, do you feel like this is disrespectful to you?

And he said, that's it. This makes me feel like you don't care about us. And I was shocked by that answer. Well, and that's very vulnerable, too, you know, to admit that, like, here is this place where I feel wide open and betrayed in some ways. And so when it comes to both, you know, our bodies and our bank accounts, we are fully on display. Every mistake, every flaw, everything is visible.

And that's scary. I think for a lot of us, both to be able to vocalize, here's how what you're doing makes me feel, as well as, will you still love me, even though I'm not perfect and I'm a mess. Yeah, what you guys are tapping into, which is so cool, so almost deep and profound. You probably know this, but let me try and say it in my words, what you're tapping into. The sex aspect of a human is soul.

We teach this all the time. It's like, you know, God didn't give us the gift of sex and it's just body to body. It gets to the soul.

That's why it's so intimate and so beautiful. And you need to protect it in the covenant of marriage. The interesting thing about money is it's about soul, too. And I know this as a pastor, because often whenever you mention money from the pulpit, you hear from people. Why do you hear from people? Because it's a blessing from God, and yet you're tapping into the treasure, which is connected to the soul. So you guys are taking those two soul things that God's given us and you're putting them together.

Because I know this. When I said to Ann, yeah, I feel disrespected because here's what's going on. I've told her, I lay in bed at night, honey, and I can't sleep thinking about money. And then you're going to go give more money to our kids or to a friend.

Think about that. You guys have tapped into that. And I think it's beautiful to help couples understand that, that this is at the heart.

And again, why did Jesus talk so much about it? Because he knew this gets our heart. And you're showing people, wow, just as money pulls us apart, if you get on the same page, it's going to bring you together.

Not just in the bedroom, but in every area. What a great motivation for couples to say, I want to pick up this book. I want to start doing what you did to get where you got. I've got to ask you this, though. Because when you hear your story, okay, you paid off $127,000, $456.30.

I don't think I got it exactly right, but you know every penny. A lot of people are thinking, do you have a life anymore? Oh, yeah, do you have fun?

Yeah, do you enjoy life or are you just stingy, you can't enjoy a thing? I mean, talk about that. That's because I used to say that. But that's what people think. I think so, too.

You know what? If you look at the word frugal, which you said your wife was very thrifty. Frugal is another adjective that people use sometimes. The root word of it actually means to enjoy, which is mind-blowing.

It's the same place where we get the word fruit and fruitful, too. Frugal comes out of that. And I think the number one thing that I learned while we were paying off debt was what I really loved, which is crazy. Because I love a good bargain, and I was chasing all these other things. We weren't crazy spenders ever, but I'm like a clearance warrior, you know.

I'm going to find it out there. But I was buying things I didn't necessarily always love, which is crazy. And as we whittled down, I thought, I love to laugh. I love a good glass of iced tea. I love my kids. I love my husband.

We certainly love our community, our small group, our church. And I think as things kind of got stripped away, I'd open my eyes to, you know what, there's a lot of stuff out there that you could have. But in the end, when you lay it all down, you're not going to long for the stuff.

You're going to long for the people and the experiences that you love. And so that was an eye-opening moment for sure. On the other side of debt, we've been able to do some fun stuff. We've gone on vacations, you know, a lot of those things that I think people dream of being able to do. We've given money away like crazy. So now we have an account that we call the Generous Account. And if I'm in the grocery store and I see a mom struggling, I just buy her groceries. And we have an understanding here. See, she loves that radical generosity. But if you set up the account for it, we even have a debit card for the Generous Account that is just for that. And so four classifications of people we love to bless are veterans, young families, pastors, and teachers.

And buddy, if we're out for dinner and we see one of those four, you better believe that they're going to get their check picked up. So it's kind of amazing to be able to do that and not feel that stress or worry of, do we have enough in there to be able to do that? You've become very intentional. Oh, absolutely.

Yes. But, you know, four years is a long time. You know, it took us four years to pay off that debt. And we had a child that went from an infant to being literate and ready for school.

In that timeframe, we always measure how long the journey's been. We had a daughter born right before we started paying off debt. It's been that long, that high, you know, since we've been doing that. But the four years, we still had a blast in the process. There were rough times, but we had a blast in the process.

And God blessed us with amazing opportunities while we were paying off debt too. There was a season in our marriage where we had moved twice in the course of a year. And we still had not sold the house that we owned in our first city. We had bought a new house in the second city. We'd now moved out of the second city to a third city.

So we're renting in the third city while we're paying two mortgages in the previous city. And we were right at the thin edge of what we could get by on. So there was a lot of ramen, you know, a lot of mac and cheese. It was those moments we were not – here's what we started to do. We would still have the impulses we'd always had that, I need a new suit.

I need this. You know, and we would start to say, when we have money again, the first thing I'm going to do is buy this. But we didn't have the money, and we were committed. I don't know why this happened early on, but we have never in our marriage not paid off a credit card immediately.

Somebody told me that years ago. We've stuck with that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to take on credit card debt. So we started writing a list down of the things we were going to buy when we had money again, because I knew one of these days these houses are going to sell.

We're going to have a windfall. We'll go to the list, and we'll prioritize. And Mary Ann and I, for months, we'd get out the list, and I'd say, if we had the money today, what would you buy first?

And we'd circle. So then the next month, we'd get out the list again and say, okay, if we had the money today, what would you buy first? And I said, last month you said it was this. And she said, yeah, I wouldn't even buy that anymore.

Love it. That was an aha moment for us when we saw how much we were doing on impulse that four weeks later we wouldn't even think about. And it changed the way we related to our own desires. And even when we had the money again, we would say, okay, we're just going to keep the list there, and we're going to wait and vet that desire for a period of a month and see if we still have the desire a month later, rather than just doing it impulsively.

It was huge for us. Yeah, and I think you can even do that with so-called needs, too, because one of the things that happened to us while we were paying off debt was our microwave blew up. And we just kind of pressed pause, and we said, let's just wait 30 days.

We don't have to run out. I know almost every household has a microwave, but I'm pretty sure my grandma survived just fine without one. And so we waited 30 days to see if we could work our way around it, and it turns out we decided not to buy one, and we still don't have one to this day. Wait, wait, wait. You cannot live without a microwave.

I'm glad you're sitting down for this. You guys can do that? Eight years or so?

Yeah, at least eight years. You have to cook something up for like ten whole minutes. Oh, it's crazy, right?

I use the oven or I pop popcorn on the stovetop, which tastes so much better anyway. It does, it does. And there's plenty of ways to work around it, so I think always just pressing pause and pushing back and saying, all right, I know that's what everybody else does, but does it make sense for us? I just have to wonder how many listeners are motivated like Dave's motivated, where they go, okay, so if I get out of debt, my marriage will be better, and I'll have spicier romance, right? Nothing else has worked to try and get them out of debt, but the thought of spicier romance might be enough.

You've got to have some motivation. To get a copy of the book Your Money, Your Marriage, and I'd say to get a copy of Slaying the Debt Dragon and read both of them together, these are great books to help you be thinking about the relationship between your money and your marriage, but also to be thinking about strategically, how do we overcome the mountain that's in front of us? We've got copies of both books, Your Money, Your Marriage, and Slaying the Debt Dragon in our Family Life Today Resource Center.

You can go online to order either or both books. Again, our website is familylifetoday.com. By the way, Sheri has a personal finance blog. It's called Queen of Free, and we've got a link to her blog, again, on our website at familylifetoday.com, or you can order either of the books or get more information about the blog when you call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the website familylifetoday.com, the phone number 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. We know for a lot of you, the last several months have been months where you've experienced some challenges at home in your relationship, in your marriage. Some of those challenges may be related to what we've talked about today with your finances and debt, but there may be other challenges you've been facing that have put a strain on your marriage relationship. We talked earlier this week with Jeff and Sarah Walton who shared with us their stories of going through hard times together as a couple and how they faced the choice of either isolating or pursuing one another. They've written a book called Together Through the Storms that we're making available this week to Family Life Today listeners who can help support the ministry with a donation. Family Life Today is here because listeners like you have made it available for all of us, and we're asking you to do the same thing. Consider making Family Life Today possible for people in your community, people all around the world, who are in need of practical biblical help and hope for their marriage and their family.

That's what Family Life Today is all about. If you can make a donation today to support the ongoing work of this ministry, we'd love to send you a copy of Jeff and Sarah Walton's book, Together Through the Storms, as our way of saying thank you for your ongoing support of this ministry. You can donate online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate.

Again, the website familylifetoday.com, or call 1-800-358-6329, 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. When you make your donation, be sure to request your copy of the book, Together Through the Storms, as our thank you gift, and we do appreciate you. And we hope you'll join us back again tomorrow when Brian and Sherry Lowe will finish the story they started today and let us know how their marriage is different and how they're handling money differently today. Hope you can be 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 Ann 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.