Chapter 28
Our Finances
"I appreciate the position of a woman in the family as envisaged or defined in Proverbs 31:11-31 and I try to encourage Mary towards it. I see her also as the co-pilot of an aircraft that achieves a safe-landing."
The issue of managing finances by a family is one of the most fundamental issues that have built or destroyed several homes. The lack of understanding of how to manage homes financially is an unending trouble to current day couples. It will continue to be so for the foreseeable future!
However, to alleviate this problem and enable couples to live happily together, there are three main theories of managing financial resources to avoid jeopardy to matrimonial homes. None of the three recommended approaches is superior,one to the other.
First what is important is the underlying mutual understanding that exists between a couple. They have the essential need to co-operate with one another to ensure the success of the method of financial management they adopt to work for them. A sensible couple should interchangeably try out periodically any of the three methods as and when the subsisting practice is failing to deliver on expectations maximally.
The switch or change-over must be mutually and maturely managed to eschew any acrimony whatsoever. In the end, they might be able to stick to the most enduring method that aggregates the smooth running of their home.
The first theory is about the husband and (especially the working) wife maintaining a joint account whereby they put all their incomes in the same purse. And then decide together how and when to disburse the common wealth.
This method requires total transparency as to the incomes earned by the couple. They plan together and do everything in common. Since the management of money is a major source of problems between people, the ability of any family to operate a joint account successfully leads to a closer rapport between them and invariably eliminates the scourge of suspicion totally.
However, its practice has remained very difficult. This is because of the unfathomable changeability of the human being, resulting from pre-marital agreements and expectations being broken by character changes after marriage. Add the fact of the strong natural tendency to be in control of one's personal affairs! Divorces, breakages and breakdowns do occur, and the threat of them disrupts even ideal arrangements. Wills get disputed or litigated after the death of couples, and settlement for myriad beneficiaries or interests can be messy. So along the way, reality intervenes to stump or put asunder a bond of good living! Particularly in Africa , by the peculiar nature of family configuration and relationship, joint accounting is the exception rather than the rule.
The second practice enables husband or wife to have total control of their separate earnings but they contribute pro rata to the upkeep of the house. The main feature here is that there is flexibility and freedom. It is not to say that the freedom is absolute or that each partner is not financially accountable to one another. It may work this way for instance: if the couple is pursuing a capital project, the wife might take over the responsibility of providing for the house such as feeding, clothing, etcetera, while the husband's income is expended upon such capital project. At the end of the specific project, the husband resumes his full responsibilities again and the wife reverts to her previous role, whatever it might have been.
Another benefit is that this practice establishes the man as the main provider for his home including his wife. Though the woman contributes but her income should not be a factor in running the home. But what happens in the situation where the woman earns more than the husband? This still does not change the principle per se. The man only needs to be transparent in his financial dealings with his wife. Once a woman is so convinced, she willingly takes on responsibilities that will benefit her family without complaint or immodesty. However, it is important therefore that the man seeks and strives continually to improve his financial status so he does not degenerate eventually to relinquishing his responsibility to and headship of the family!
The weakeness of this method of financial relationship and management is that the inherent freedom could result also in gross abuse and lack of transparency whereby married partners go their separate lifestyles which probably results in broken homes. Only a very compatible and transparently honest couple can practice this method successfully. (This is the method we adopt, for now, in our own marriage and it is working perfectly for us).
The third financial management style is one whereby there's an agreement between husband and wife to jointly manage a certain percentage of their incomes. For this, a joint account is opened. The husband contributes a certain per centage (say between 60-70%) of his income while the working wife contributes, say between 30-40% to the same account. This arrangement is particularly good when a couple decides to jointly finance capital projects such as building houses, establishing businesses, paying school fees of childen and so on. This ensures a common understanding between couples that are in well paid employment, and they are thereby left with freedom to expend the rest of their separate incomes any way they each like to do. .
It is also, perhaps, the most appropriate method for a couple to start their marital life in that it allows for them to truly understand one another after which if successfully practised, they can progress to the second method and from there to the first method, if need be.
This method is attractive as it provides appreciable but limited freedom for either party to enjoy part of his or her income while it enables the family to pursue a joint vision, or such-like. However, where a couple is not compatible, it may fuel or engender controversies as to what extent any estate so jointly financed belongs to the woman exclusively since, often, all relevant documents bear only the husband's name. Also, a partner may wish to withdraw midway through the project, with the attendant reluctance or bitterness of the other partner, thus creating an impasse or legal debacle.
Like the totality of marriage itself, which is humankind's greatest life's navigation, all three aspects of accounting have merits and demerits!
We Chose To Manage Our Finances Independently
In our financial understanding, while Mary might be accountable for her own income, mine is subject to family budgeting because it is my responsibility alone in the first place to provide for the home or family.
This means that she sees the slip of my take-home pay and the complete documentation of its expenditure. Though her voluntary contribution to family expenditure is enormous and highly appreciated, I have not made it part of family budgeting. Rather I consider it to be a cushioning income and record them as “Mary's contribution” to the house in my budgeting books. I don't even know precisely how much she earns, talk less of budgeting it!
What have we gained from this approach? Apart from defining the nature of our interrelationship and statehood, this method has fostered a better understanding between us and helped me clearly to appreciate and quantify the maginitude of Mary's voluntary contribution to our home. Whenever I seem to totter under a capital project or the strain of (paying) our children's school fees, she comes readily to manage the domestic front.
Women And Financial Independence
Another gender issue that is of importance to me concerns my wife (and women generally) being able to own properties and being generally encouraged to do so by their husbands. I do not see why my wife or any woman for that matter cannot be economically independent. I encourage this desire a lot in Mary and I know that such attainment would neither inflate her ego unduly nor make her materialistic in life.
So I advise her at every opportunity, because I cherish a fulfilled woman who would not suffer indignity even in widowhood or single parenthood. I appreciate the position of a woman in the family as envisaged or defined in Proverbs 31:11-31 and I try to encourage Mary towards it. I see her also as the co-pilot of an aircraft that achieves a safe-landing. Mary is aware of my rather grandiloquent vision of woman, which she happily shares. This picture of good living is a necessary by-product of sound financial management by any sensible married couple.
People who don't read books tend to find life boring, dull and their lives are static. So cultivate a reading habit! Yemi Omogboyega
No comments:
Post a Comment