Putting it into Practice
Marriage as a (True) Wealth Generating Institution
Marriage can make you think differently about money, what you can do with it and it's role in your new life.  Here Lev R., recently married, talks about how this process manifested in his marriage, and the tools, whether practical or conceptual, he used along the way.

I recently heard marriage called a “wealth-generating institution.” My ears pricked up. What could this mean? As a newly-wed, this sounded like something I should look into.

I Googled the phrase, and discovered an article in the Economist from 2007. It cited some findings by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, noting both the social impact of marriage on individuals (e.g. better spending habits due to newfound “responsibility”), and the fact that marriage generates economies of scale. (e.g. two-income household, both partners benefiting from fixed costs like rent and utilities.)

This was a start. It seemed like some people felt that marriage actually helped us save money. Cool. But I wanted to know what light the Revelation of Baha’u’llah had to shed on the topic. In Some Answered Questions, 'Abdu’l-Baha described true wealth as “the good attributes and virtues which are the adornments of [our] reality.” True wealth was not the wealth of the material world, but instead the divine capacities that we potentially show forth.

This month, my wife and I sat down with the "Just Getting Started" monthly budget from a past issue of FUNDamentals. Let me be quite clear: spending an entire evening talking about finances is not fun. It’s exhausting, and it’s challenging because we have to put words to very internal choices. You slowly discover that, “Oh, this is how I make choices about money," and then try to explain that to your spouse. Although talking about how we make financial decisions is difficult, putting words to these internal processes has built a lot of unity. It’s still not fun, but we know that sitting through it will result in a stronger sense of unity, which is an example of the true wealth described by 'Abdu’l-Baha.

Finances are also a great place to practice learning mode. Since the first Five Year Plan (a global plan to lovingly and systematically share the Message of Baha'u'llah), the Baha'i world has shifted to a learning mode, where we take action and then reflect on what we've learned. Finances are no different. We try to reflect every month on where most of our money has gone. As a result, we’ve learned to be much more forgiving of one another. There are no mistakes in learning mode. We take actions with unity, and then reflect at the end of the month whether our proposed budget helped us to meet our financial goals. Because we’ve consulted, and are taking action together, we actually become more loving and forgiving about finances, a topic that can otherwise be the source of a lot of stress and hurt feelings. This the second example of true wealth.

The other example of true wealth we’ve discovered so far is the capacity for patience and focus, and we discovered it while looking into investing. We invest our money more today than we ever did before we got married. Partly this is because, with two incomes, we have a little more money to invest. But it's also because we're thinking about the future of our family on a regular basis. Investing for retirement, our potential children's education, or for pioneering all suddenly become much more tangible goals. Investing has taught us patience, and calls us to see "the end in the beginning."

It turns out the story was true. Marriage is a wealth-generating institution, but maybe not the way I originally thought. Marriage generates true wealth, and each day we “strive that its brilliant jewels may become visible in the world.”

Comments

[creddy]

Yay lev and negin!!!! wooo! i'm going to share this with my new spouse and we'll learn from your learning!