One day this week I was in an elevator with two other women who obviously knew each other. One of the women was excitedly telling her friend the following:"I have my children trained. Now, when we pull up to our house, the kids check to see if Daddy is home. If he's there, we leave most of our shopping in the car and only bring in the essentials. If my husband is gone, the kids quickly bring in all the shopping, and we put it away as fast as possible so that he doesn't see it!"
As they laughed this little story off, I thought about how damaging this scenario is to this family. Mom feels that she can't share her shopping with her husband, and the children learn to hide things from their father. At some point, I'm sure Dad will see that he cannot trust Mom so much with financial issues. It's a vicious cycle.
However, I believe it may be more common than we'd like to admit. I know women that leave their shopping bags in the trunk of their car until the house is empty, as well as have secret credit cards and bank accounts. Now, I am not on a high horse about this. I, too, am guilty. When we first got married, I had a credit card to a certain lingerie store that I didn't bother telling my husband about. I didn't use it a lot, but when I did use it, I made sure to go to the store and pay the bill with cash so he would never know. I did this for about 3 months, when I began feeling very convicted about this. Not only was I essentially lying to my beloved husband, but I know that God was not pleased about what I was doing.
I thought, "If I do this about something "little" now, what will I lie or hide from him later?" This was NOT a good way to start off our marriage. So the very next day, I called up the company and canceled the account and cut up the card. Let me tell you - it felt so good!
Some couples deal with this issue by including some "discretionary spending money" in their weekly or monthly budget. Each spouse gets a certain dollar amount to spend without having to tell the other spouse what they spent it on. We don't do this in our household, but I'm sure it works great for other people. I'd be interested to hear if any of you do this or have ideas!
How does this apply to Frugal Friday? Well, if you are thinking about buying something that you are ashamed to tell your spouse about, you probably should not be buying it in the first place. This will not only be good for our bank accounts, but, even more importantly, strengthening to our marriages! I can't tell you how good it feels that I don't have to worry about hiding anything!
This is a great way to not only be frugal, but also to "build up our homes", as the Bible says:
The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.
Proverbs 14:1
Go to Biblical Womanhood for more great Frugal Friday ideas!
Graphic courtesy of AllPosters.com.
