Are You Keeping Financial Secrets From Your Spouse?
Author: Alex Cook| Wealth With Purpose.
Are you hiding money from your wife? Do you make purchases without your husband’s knowledge? Are you keeping financial secrets from each other?
If you answered “yes” to any of these but think it’s no big deal. Think again.
Financial experts say “financial infidelity” can hurt a couple’s relationship as much as a sexual affair. Whether a spouse is just keeping a small jar of cash under the bed or covering up a huge credit card debt, research shows that these money secrets will most certainly lead to marital breakdown sooner or later.
A 2011 survey commissioned by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) and ForbesWoman revealed that 31% or Americans lie to their partners when it comes to financial matters. Deceptions included hiding cash, keeping covert bank accounts, cheating on income, and lying about debt. As a result, 16% of the respondents confessed that, once discovered, it led to divorce, and 42% said that it damaged their trust significantly.
A more recent study conducted by CreditCards.com exposed that one in five Americans has kept a secret $500 purchase from their spouse and more than 7 million maintain a hidden bank account or credit card.
While these scenarios may seem like today’s harmless norm, experts assure financial infidelity habits have the potential to incapacitate an otherwise healthy marriage and family relationship.
“Honesty is generally the best policy. If you don’t tell your spouse about these things and they find out, they might start to wonder what else is being hidden. It’s incredibly difficult to keep a household budget when you don’t know how much money is coming in and out. It can be a recipe for disaster,”according to CreditCards.com senior analyst Matt Schulz in a report by CNN Money.
What does the Bible say about financial infidelity?
God intends for a husband and a wife to be united in every aspect of their life. The Bible says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” (Genesis [2:24] NIV)
As husband and wife become “one flesh” this means a union of their entire being—physically, emotionally, spiritually, and, yes, even financially.
In 1 Corinthians 7:4 God commands, “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.”
Without question, God commands absolute harmony and mutual control over everything a married couple previously keeps. If God instructs a joint ownership of their bodies then all the more their bank accounts, regular income, savings, and even debts.
No marriage will flourish with infidelity, and definitely without the foundations of love, respect, and honesty.
This is why God commands every husband to love his wife just as He loves the church, and wives to be in total submission to their husbands.