This article is being ‘dugg’ right now.  I think it is sane advice for people getting divorced, but the truth of the matter is that I would really hate for anyone to get a divorce outside of some pretty intense problems.  There is, however, one good piece of advice, and that is that if you do get a divorce: sell the house.  Sell it.  Move into two places, split any equity and be done with it.  Doing anything else will more than likely cause greater contention.

Of course the best choice is to not get a divorce and to seek good, sound, balanced and biblical marriage counseling.  By not getting married, as one commenter suggested, you’ll just set yourself up for other legal problems.  I’m aware of at least one person right now who is in a legal case with someone that they lived with - and that person was booted from the house and is now suing for stupid little tiny things amounting to over ten grand.  No marriage, no divorce, but still legal dumbness (and the guy who got booted was surely dumb for a lot of reasons, but I’m not going down that path).

Its unfortunately sane advice on that post, but its got to be a sad state of affairs for things to get to that point.

I just read this great guest post about a couple’s journey towards financial freedom.  You should totally check it out.  The author’s blog, Millionaire Mommy Next Door, is a read of mine - she’s definitely in my RSS feeds.

As I loosely stated in my last post about finances and marriage: I’m totally, madly in love with my wife.  She has the qualities that I dreamed of and qualities I didn’t know I should have been dreaming of.  One of the things that happened earlier this week was that I bought an iPhone for work.  As a self-employed individual I make choices for the business that can impact my family’s finances.  My wife was behind me on the decision to buy the iPhone.  We were unified.  When it comes down to it she understood the business need, she understood the financial impact, and she understood the tax benefits, too.  Pretty sweet, I know.

In marriage unity is the thing that most people think is ‘lucky’ or non-critical because people have differences of opinion.  Wrong!  Unity in marriage is going to impact your whole marriage: money, politics, religion, sex and toothpaste tubes need unity.  OK, maybe you can get by with different views on toothpaste tube squeezing.   I recommend buying that Mentadent stuff because it has no tubes you can squeeze.  Unity in finances means that you have planned and prioritized together.  You have a unified goal and vision.

If you  look at spending and income and have a unified mind on those areas you will have a great chance of being able to relax there and focus on other areas that need more attention.  Yes, that could mean physical intimacy, but also children being raised, social events, or possibly vacations (yes, those are an important ingredient in a frugal life).  Unity in income & outgo means that extra hours worked or special exceptions in finances are not going to be a big deal like they might be if you were not of the same mindset.  It means that you look at your priorities and decide to buy your children a craft table rather than buying a wii.  The kids can play, learn and grow (and you can help them) and basically get to develop in non-video game ways because you two prioritized in a unified manner and made the best choice for the family with that extra windfall money.

Unity is not easy, sometimes it takes lots of time to work out differences, but it must be a priority.  Absolutely.  If there is an area where you don’t have unity, stop what you’re doing.  Take time off.  Get the kids a baby sitter or send them to a friends house and get things back into a unified fashion.  This will keep you marriage strong and help your finances stay focused where they should be.  Remember: finances are statistically a major part of marriage problems - don’t be a number, unless you’re unified into one mind.

My wife and I have a great marriage. I’m not going to lie: she’s awesome and I’m truly blessed to be married to her. She’s got patience, talent, intelligence and determination. I could list off a long series of qualities she has, but I’ll spare you the reading time because this blog isn’t about how much I love my wife. However, we do have disagreements at times about where our money should go. Not severe disagreements, but disagreements about how our priorities fall. I always find that the resolution doesn’t come from a technique that you can master to get what you want. The resolution that comes comes from a character trait that I have had to cultivate, one that is against every single strain in my pride, but critical to success: humility.

• Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to admit it when you’re priority is selfish.
• Humility is a requirement for priorities because you have to love your spouse enough to think of your spouse first, or at least as a higher priority than finances!
• Humility is important because if you have children they need to see that a strong leader is humble and not harsh or dogmatic.
• Humility is a critical tool when it comes to dealing with conflict.  Own your mistakes.  Apologize for them and move on to resolution of priorities.

There are very few things that I can think of that have been more valuable (with the exception of my faith).  Humble priority setting will help keep your marriage focused on the things that matter, keep things growing, and keep your marriage hat like dynamite.