Money can make our lives easier and provide more choices for a better life. When it comes to marriage, money can either bring couples closer together or tear them apart. Sadly, financial stress is one of the highest causes of divorce, so the incentive to get our finances in order is paramount.
Brett and Kate Ryan from Focus on the Family and Alex Cook, founder of Wealth With Purpose, share their knowledge and expertise in a Marriage and Money seminar designed to provide practical tools and biblical wisdom for managing your money and strengthening your marriage. The seminar was live-streamed from Vision Christian Media’s Brisbane studios and hosted by Neil Johnson from 20Twenty.
It’s not just couples who can benefit from the valuable insights and expertise shared by Brett, Kate and Alex; everyone will find gold nuggets of wisdom in this seminar series they can apply to their lives to help them make sound financial decisions and build strong relationships.
The 10 10 80 Rule
Alex Cook has developed a very simple principle of money management called the 10 10 80 Rule. It’s based on making the first 10% of your income for giving to God. The second 10% is for saving, and the remaining 80% is to live on. When adhered to, this simple method not only helps you live beneath your means so you are not accumulating debt but ensures you have savings for an emergency, renovations, a holiday or whatever else you want to plan towards. The 80% needs to be planned into a budget so you are not dipping into the other 20 per cent.
‘What happens is when people create budgets, God often gets the scraps. They’ve worked out their mortgage, their car repayments, and everything else, and God gets the scraps. That’s not how we’re to live. We’re called to live with God at the centre. So, if we say He’s first in our life, surely He should be first with our money too,’ said Alex.
By developing the 10 10 80 Rule, you’ll be reaping the rewards of good financial habits in no time.
Sowing and Reaping
Neil believes that if we’re generous to God, He promises to be generous to us. It’s the concept of sowing and reaping. If you sow generously, you’ll reap generously. However, Alex pointed out that we need to take care that we are not giving with the expectation that God will make us wealthy in return. Alex gives the example of John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”
God loved us so much that He gave his one and only son. He died for our sins. That amazing generosity towards us should result in an outpouring of love from us by putting God first in our lives. This includes our finances and sowing into things for the Kingdom that God puts before us either through our church or various ministries.
Neil reminds us that we are not immune from hardships, but as the Apostle Paul said, there are times when we need to be content with a little and other times we’ll be content with a lot.
‘We’re not guaranteed to have a lot, but God is giving us a level of promise where He says He’ll be our provider. So, our attitude to money might be an important element in how we actually have hope and expectation of God’s provision,’ said Neil.
The Rewards of Living a Generous Life
Alex encourages us to read chapters eight and nine of 2 Corinthians which teaches us all we need to know about living a generous life. The summary of those two chapters is based on Genesis 12:2, where God stated that He will bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. People get fearful when the media is constantly reporting about a recession and higher interest rates, but there’s no recession in heaven. God is a God of abundance. If we can remember that, we will live a stress-free life, fully trusting in God for our daily provisions.
You can find helpful resources on the Focus on the Family and Wealth With Purpose websites by clicking the links.
To view the full Marriage and Money seminar, click on the link below. The topic of give, save, spend, begins at the 46:55-minute mark.
