When my wife and I got together she had a lot of school loan debt...I had no debts at all.
She quit her job that was going to retire her debt soon and got another that would but at a much slower pace. Her potential income has always been really high vx her debt and her skill set is off the charts as well.
However we have retired her debt and don't have vehicle payments....just a mortgage but the house is worth more than we paid for it.
I do remember when I was single and dating....some of the women I met were heavy into some consumer debt and nothing to show for it. Clothes, trips, and dinners out created most of the debt. I knew one woman who thought that her disease was going to kill her so she wracked up a ton of debt...but then she got better...no escaping her debt now and it's a crushing weight she can't get rid of.
Then there's the guy who got 90,000 of school debt for acting classes. Then couldn't get a job acting even for commercials. So he tried to be an electrician and wasn't great at that either. So he couldn't get top wages as an electrician either.
He too had issues paying his bills.
Then there's those who have huge child support payments. Each baby mamma gets ⅓ of gross wages. They are desperate for help just living.
Lots of reasons for people working but broke and desperate for help paying bills.
Money, spending, and debt are conversations I don't think enough Christians have -- at least, not before it's too late.
I don't know if it's a case of opposites attracting, but one of the reasons I'm single is because I generally attracted guys who spent a lot more money than they made. Women always get a bad rap for shopping or wanting a life beyond their means and then using a man as an ATM, but somehow I wound up in the opposite situation, and people often wouldn't believe me.
There's also the double whammy that in the Christian mindset, the man is supposed to be the head of the household. But that doesn't mean he's automatically good with or should be handling the money. And that causes a lot of friction, because in the few relationships I had, it usually boiled down to, "I'm the man, so there's no way a woman is going to be in control of the finances. Sure, I know you're paying some of my bills for me because of my irresponsible spending and refusing to change, but I'm the man, and I'll dictate my finances -- and yours." No thank you. I know of at least one case in which the guy had to file for bankruptcy, and I thank God I got out when I did.
And I'm certainly no financial genius. I just had parents who said NO to a lot of things when I was growing up (I always tell them one of the most valuable lessons they taught me was delayed gratification,) lived under their means, and always stressed saving and investing for the future.
It's an interesting -- and hazardous -- phenomenon in the church as well. I was raised in a church where since the pastors were the spiritual authority, they were always seen as the financial authority as well. It didn't seem to cross their minds that people can be great in one area but have absolutely no skill in another. All the church seemed to know how was to make big plans, continuously ask the people for more money, and then say it was to get more people saved -- with the unspoken side effect of bringing in more money (to make bigger plans, to bring in more people, to get more saved, who bring in more money...) And so the merry-go-round went on and on.
Now to give them credit, they were always open about where the money was going. It's just that there never seemed to be any talk of paying off debt before taking on more.
These days, one of my criteria for a church is how open it is about its finances and how much it prioritizes paying off debt (because how can they teach people about this if they're not doing it themselves?)
In my young adulthood, I started attending another church that had a lot of community involvement and was seeing a lot of growth because of it. I remember the day when, instead of asking for money, they asked regulars if they would be open to attending church on a different day or time to allow room for new people during the more traditional service times.
The pastor explained that the church had no debt, and so instead of taking out a loan and building an additional sanctuary, they first wanted to try getting more use out of the space they already owned by offering more services. I was floored. My original church would have just started planning an addition -- the cost would have been an afterthought because they would say that "The Lord will provide" (via expectations that members would just give more.)
I'm certainly not saying there isn't a time or place for each of these strategies, depending on where God leads.
But I remember calling my parents right after the service and telling them, "I've found a church that doesn't have any debt! Isn't that... Some kind of sin?!?"
But all I had ever known was churches swimming in masses of debt as the norm.
It's funny how something can be so ingrained into your mindset that even when you come across a better, healthier way -- somehow, at least at first, it still feels wrong.
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