Book Review: Money & Marriage by Matt Bell

About the Book: In this thorough and practical guide, financial expert Matt Bell helps engaged and newly married couples navigate the merger of habits, flaws, and attitudes about money so two can truly become one.

His writing is full of helpful advice, Scripture, and practical steps to gaining financial freedom together as a couple. Learn to use money in a way that minimizes disputes and maximizes marital happiness.

My thoughts: Well, we're not newly married, but we learned many of these things the book teaches on our own as we made mistakes - but thankfully not any major ones!

This book would be a fanTAStic book for couples to read as part of their pre-marital counselling and I highly, highly recommend it.

Money is often one of the biggest sources of friction in marriage - often due to incorrect assumptions, lack of awareness of our own spending habits (and/or our partner's) and lack of knowledge in the area of finances.

This book addresses all of that and more! The first section is called Decoding Each Other's Financial DNA and addresses literally every possible question about our spending habits and our money assumptions, based in large part on how we were raised and by our personalities.

The second section, A Ten-Step Action Plan for Financial Success, is chock full of financial advice to get your marriage started on the right foot and stay there.

The third section, Fostering Financial Oneness, he addresses how being one financially is a huge indicator of the health of your marriage. We also need to understand who we are and what our lives are about (our purpose!) in regards to money.

God is the owner of our money. We are not the owners, and certainly not the consumers - we are the managers or stewards. What a huge responsibility - what a priviledge!

From the book...
My prayer for you is that you will use money in a way that brings great glory to God; shows love to the people in your lives, starting with each other; and enables you to use the talents and passions God had uniquely given you to make the contribution for which you were uniquely designed. If you arrance your finances around these three God-given purposes, your marriage will be richly blessed, and I believe that one day you will hear these words: "Well done, good and faithful servants!"

Thank you to Stephanie and Amy from Litfuse Publicity for organizing this tour and providing me with my complimentary review copy.