Strapped

Financial challenges are faced at one time or another for every married couple. Married life has been broken into six different stages from marriage with no children to retired with adult children. The stages as described in Bernard Poduska's book "Till Debt Due Us Part" describe my own experience. After marrying, my husband and I had many other married friends who had struggled with fertility issues. Within my own family I had a history of fertility problems. Because of these two things, together we agreed that if we wanted to start a family we should start now. After all, it could take years to finally have a child! So, 10 months after our wedding day we had a beautiful baby girl. We were quickly, and shockingly, thrown into Stage 2. 

This is when the financial problems began. The problem was that we were still living as if we were in Stage 1 of young adulthood. Poduska states, "As a young adult, you may tend to purchase assets that consume income or depreciate rapidly (cars, stereo equipment, boats, clothing, cheap furniture) instead of assets that produce income or have a chance to appreciate (stocks, real estate, IRAs, savings bonds). You may also be more inclined to spend a larger portion of your income on entertainment and recreation." This describes exactly our lives. We were both working full-time prior to having our daughter, but we were still strapped financially. This constriction was due to our overspending. We bought wants, often on credit, with the plan to pay for them next month. Then our daughter came and we were trying to juggle raising a child while breaking our bad financial habits of overspending. We eventually dug ourselves our of debt while living on far less income than we started out making. It was a long and painful growing experience.  

Today we are in Stage 2 and 3 and are financially much wiser. Poduska states regarding stage 3:

The need to include financial limits and rules is essential to teaching children about money management; otherwise, overindulgence may give them a false impression of what it's like to live in the real world. Parents must increase their income and set limits on their own spending because the costs of rearing teenagers will dwarf the cost of rearing children under the age of twelve.

This is the next step we are working on. There are many looming future expenses coming our way as our children enter their teenage years. We have attempted to teach our almost 13 year old responsible financial decision making through paying tithing, working for compensation, and saving for larger purchases. My own experiences have proven all of Poduska's perspectives to be spot on. I can look back and see how far my husband and I have come in our marriage, especially financially. We are still learning, but I see the benefit of those stretching years to teach us how to be more prepared and plan for the future.

References:

Poduska, Bernard. Til Debt Do Us Part (Ch. 11). Salt Lake City, Utah: Shadow Mountain. (2000).

Family Councils: Divinely Appointed

"...The family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children," states The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Considering the important role the family plays in the life of each person born on the earth, time should be dedicated to ensure this central unit is functioning well. This is where family councils come in to play!

My family began holding family councils this last summer after our Stake Presidency along with President Nelson urged families to begin holding these sacred meetings together. This wasn't new counsel but I was reluctant to try for many years. By the summer I felt like there was major emphasis placed on the need for family councils and I finally decided we should give it a try. 

I'm happy to report it has been a mostly successful endeavor! Our family has held (relatively) regular family councils every Sunday night since August. As part of the family council we try to follow the structure of the apostles and their council. We begin our meeting with greetings in the form of gratitude. We always start with a prayer and then we all get to share one (or more) act of service that was done for them over the last week by someone within our family. We have found this to be an effective way to lift everyone's spirits and maintain the spirit within our meeting which is a fete in and of itself! I have a prepared agenda that I put up on the television for everyone to reference. It typically says a lot of the same things. Mainly we go through our upcoming schedules for the week. Address any conflicts with timing of activities. Plan out the chores and laundry days. And lastly we open it up to discuss any problems that have occurred over the last week that anyone would like help addressing by the group. This is probably the trickiest part of the whole meeting. However, it has worked out pretty well to allow each person to talk and give their suggestions. We have had to strictly enforce the rule of no interrupting, yelling, or speaking in a rude or cruel way. Our goal is to make sure everyone has a voice, even if that voice is 5 years old and offers no comment actually relating to the issue at hand (I.e. My sister keeps leaving her clothes on my side of the room... 5-year old solution: I brought my unicorn to school today...) A few issues have been addressed using the family council method. We implemented this based on the teachings on family councils shared within the last 6 months by the prophet and apostles. But, this portion of the family council is an area we need to work on in order to help increase its productive value. I hope we can one day have a council like President Ballard describes, "They speak as they are moved by the Spirit. They strive to feel the manifestations of the Spirit concerning the item discussed, which may necessitate a change in their own feelings and thoughts in order to be in harmony with the entire Council." 

Overall, I have seen nothing but blessings come from instituting family council. We are all on the same page. Our family as a whole feels less overwhelmed over the coming week because we all know what is happening. Family council has helped our family be more organized and reduced the number of arguments that occur throughout the week over chores, laundry, and activities.