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BYU-Idaho Online Learning

Video Transcript

Class 1 Marriage and Money

[One speaker.]

[Title that says “Marriage and Money: A Mini-Course on Family Finance” is shown.]

Travis Perry:

Hello! My name is Travis Perry. I am an online instructor for BYU-Idaho and I’ll be teaching you a
little bit about marriage and money. This is a mini course on family finance and is split up into three
main sections.

[The next slide is shown with a caption that says “Financial Industry Since 2002 Working with
Married Couples” with logos of State Farm, Northwestern Mutual, and Parry Wealth Coaching shown
at the bottom.]

And for this very first part, what I’m going to do is just give you a quick background about who I am,
and what I’ve done with my experience in industry and how that’s informed my research and my
teaching.

So I’ve been in the financial industry since 2002, working with married couples. I started at a
company called State Farm. They provide auto, and home, and life insurance, and even some
investment products. And I got excited working with couples and wanted to create financial plans
and really become a financial planner. So I joined an up-and-coming company that actually had been
around for a long time. They kind of remarketed themselves as a financial planning firm called
Northwestern Mutual. I joined up with them and began really getting licensed in different areas with
investments as well as insurance to help couples. Later, I struck out on my own and created a firm
called, Parry Wealth Coaching and have been involved with financial coaching, planning, and even
financial counseling and therapy in that realm.

[Next slide is shown that says “Not able to accomplish financial goals, Strained relationship, Family
issues-Divorce/Remarriage/Special Needs” with an image of a couple looking stressed in the
background.]
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Well, what I noticed in this experience of mine before going back to school to get a PHD, and I’ll
explain kind of how that works here in just a second and how it all worked for me. I noticed that a lot
of couples were unable to accomplish their financial goals. We get started with a great plan, or a
good recommendation or a group of recommendations. But several couples just really didn’t have
what it took to finish and get through these goals together. Some of that was because they had a
strained relationship. Maybe some family issues like divorce, remarriage, or had special needs
children, or even siblings that they were taking care of. And I wasn’t truly prepared to help them. I
was trained as a financial planner, as a financial advisor, to help these couples, but really didn’t
understand the relationship side. The best I could do is what worked for me or what I’ve seen work
for others and that doesn’t always work for people, because one thing I’ve learned is that you may
actually intervene in someone’s life only to potentially cause more harm.

[Next slide is shown that says “Married Couple Case Study Financial Plan and Implementation” with
an image of a couple getting counseled in the background.]

So let me give you a quick case study scenario about this type of situation. I had a couple who we
created a plan together. Husband was into summer sales and made a great deal of money. Wife had
just had their second child and she was really wanting safety and security for their family. They were
living in a condo, looking at buying a home and so they wanted some savings. And she really
explained that she wanted income that would be smooth and average income. Not this up and down
kind of experience that they've had. Well, he’s also under pressure to perform at work and to retain
and recruit others into the sales that he was doing. And so despite all the recommendations of
setting up an account—a separate account to get this income smoothing plan working—he took
$30,000 that was supposed to be used for this plan and emergency funding and other things, and
decided he would buy a truck over the weekend with cash. He didn’t really consult with his wife and
that obviously created a lot of strain.

When they came in to meet with me, I had no idea this was going on until I saw the look on her face.
So I was asking them and following up with certain things, “Hey, did you accomplish this?” “Did you
go to the tax accountant to work on your taxes?” “Did you go to the attorney to set up a will or trust
for your estate?” and things like that. And as I went through the list of recommendations, she just
kind of flat out said, “Why don’t you talk to him?” That’s when he disclosed that he had purchased
the truck. And he was kind of proud of himself. But like, hey, this was a good financial thing. It’s good
to buy a car with cash, right? So imagine here I am trying to help this couple reach their goals, but
obviously they’re not really communicating very well and they’re having a really difficult time doing
much of the recommendations that I asked them to do.

[Next slide is shown that says “Re-Married Couple Case Study Financial Plan and Implementation”
with an image of a couple sitting together in the background.]
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Another case study is a remarried couple. A little bit older and mature and wiser, right? And they
had come to me as a referral from an accountant. He couldn’t really help them with certain things
and wanted me to help them with some investing. But also, he felt like this was beyond his realm of
expertise as he didn’t know much about how to help couples in a remarriage situation. I wasn’t
really sure what he meant, but I said, “Sure I’ll help them.” As they came to my office, they paid for a
plan, and I was working through that plan with them as a financial planner at the time at Parry
Wealth Coaching. And when the husband took a phone call, he went into the other room. And I
noticed that there was some strain here. I noticed that they weren’t getting along completely on
everything financially. So she turned to me and said, “Travis, if you could do anything for us, please
help my husband. The previous marriage really was ruined because of his financial mismanagement
and I’m trying to help him. I’m trying to do everything I can. Tell us what to do.”

And here I am, mid-twenties, trying to help out a couple who had twenty years more years
experience with marriage and with life, giving them advice financially and I felt very under qualified. I
did the best I could and helped them with some of the research that I’d seen about mixing and
matching investments and budgets and things. But there were some underlying relationship issues
here that I was not qualified to deal with, and, for lack of a better word, was wary of referring this
couple onto those who I knew might be able to help them professionally.

[Next slide is shown that says “Behavioral Science Degrees Macro-Micro Levels” with an image of a
man sitting in a library in the background.]

So, what I did with these experiences, I really did what most financial advisors and planners do. I’ve
done the research on this and I am actually publishing a paper that looks at what do financial
planners or advisors do when they see visible relationship problems. Most of them help them
themselves and don’t refer to a marriage and family therapist or psychologist.

I had done that in several other cases, but there are these sort of borderline couples that I think a lot
of financial planners feel like, ‘no I can help, and I can help financially.’ Well, there’s more to this
picture, and so my inquisitive mind, I went back and got several degrees.

[A red ring is shown on the slide with the word “sociology” at the top.]

I finished a degree is sociology, a very broad degree of social science just understanding groups and
how they work and got a little bit into individuals and some psychology there. But I realized I needed
a little bit more help, and that help came in the master’s degree that I obtained in psychology.

[A blue circle is shown in the center of the red ring with the word “Psych” inside it.]
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I wanted to understand what is at the individual level. What is it that makes people tick? Why do
they do these kinds of things? Why do they not take advice? Why are men and women this way? So I
really dug deep in this study of psychology.

Now, at the end of my masters degree, I realized that psychology in and of itself, the studying of an
individual by his or herself is not enough. I connected these ideas with society, but there is really
something missing. And long story short, my counselor at BYU when I first approached him with
some ideas of my career path and he actually told me to get a degree in family relations. Essentially
what I am teaching now. And I kind of balked at the idea and I told him, “Hey, no. I want to be a
financial planner and public speaker. These are my ideas and this is where I want to go.”

And so I kind of left that and got the quickest degree out of BYU, which is in sociology, and I thought,
“I’m smart and I’ll do this. I’ll make it on my own.” Well, I ate a whole lot of crow and [A green ring in
between the red ring and the blue center circle appears with the word “Family” on it.] actually did a
degree in family and human development at Utah State University and really studied then how these
ideas from sociology and psychology, really attached to this unit. This most important unit in the
world, the family. Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is in support of the family. It’s
a family unit. So as I studied, I thought I would leave finances behind, but I realized halfway through
that actually this is where I was needed. My experience over the last 13–14 years in financial
planning and advising led me to be a credible and good asset to those who are struggling to find out
how to help families, specifically married couples. And this is what this mini course is really all about
for this section of family relations.

[Next slide is shown that says “Psychological Well-being is positively related to Financial Well-being.
Married couples fight over money more than any other topic. Financial Stress puts strains on
individuals and families.”]

Now, there’s some main things that I’ve discovered through that process and others that I might
teach you in this course, but generally we understand that psychological well-being is positively
related to financial well-being. If people are happy, typically it’s maybe not because of, but they
definitely have a good financial situation in general and vice versa. Married couples fight over money
more than any other topic that has been researched. Or at least they explain when they suggest or
report that they fight over this topic. Even when you include things like sexual intimacy and others,
the research is pretty clear that money is still the number one topic.

Financial stress? Well, as financial stress, we know it puts strains on individuals and families and
when there’s increased economic stress, that increases stress on families. A lot of research has been
done here. Part of which, I spent the last few years doing with my dissertation.
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[Next slide is shown that has a caption at the top that says “3 Financial Areas” with a photo of a
brain underneath that has the word “Psychological”, a photo of a couple in counseling that says
“External”, and a photo of a couple in love that says “Relational.”]

Well, I’ve boiled this down. The reason why I’ve mention these other areas, is there are truly three
financial areas. When we think of finances, a lot of us don’t pay heed to these other two and so I’m
going to kind of explain a lot in these first two parts of the course. What these have to do with us.
How does this have to do with anything as members of the Church? I’m going to bring both research,
and scriptures, and personal experiences to help us understand this.

[Next slide is shown with a title at the top that says “Where should people start?” with an image
underneath that shows three circles overlapping with the words “psychological” in the top circle,
“Relational” in the circle to the left, and “External” in the circle to the right.]

Well, my question is, where should people start? If they have financial problems, should they start in
the psychological area or the area that is mainly considered motivation, cognitive, or even
behavioral types of solutions? Meaning maybe, should psychologists help you if you’ve got money
problems? Relational professionals will say, “No, no, no. We need to start with the relationships. It’s
a married couple. They’re a family. Let's do family therapy.” The interesting thing about both the
psychological and relational realms is neither of them have in their coursework or licensure, have
any courses that are required in financial planning or financial education or really anything
financially related. So I called the external area—I’ll just point to this down here—this external area
[Arrow moves on the screen and points at the “External” circle.]—as the traditionally thought of
financial area. And this is typically financial planners, advisors. Literally the world that I came from.
And so even with my expertise, it’s really hard to know. Do we start somewhere psychologically
[Pointer hovers over “Psychological” circle.], relationally [Pointer hovers over the “Relational” circle
and then moves directly over to the “External” circle.], or externally in the financial realm?

When I do this presentation for others out in the industry in either one of these areas, a lot of them
would suggest their own area because that’s where they have expertise. That’s where they have
skills. But there is an area here that’s not represented that I am going to suggest is where people,
married people, should start. And that’s right here in the middle.

[Caption at the top of the screen changes and says “In the middle!” and a white arrow appears and
points to the middle of the three overlapping circles.]

What’s in the middle? What is it that overlaps in this diagram? In this space between psychological,
relational, and external, there is something that overlaps. Something that I have researched in my
dissertation.
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[Next slide is shown with a title at the top that says “Shared Goals/Values (Parry, 2016).” There is a
rectangle at the lower left of the screen with the words “Shared Values and Goals” inside and an
arrow pointing to the right, that has a circle with the words “Financial Stability, Individual Well-
Being, Marital Happiness” all at different parts of the circle, creating a continual cycle.]

I just published that in 2016, what I looked at was shared values and goals of married couples. We
looked at over 3,000 couples in the United States and found that when couples had the shared
values or it wasn’t just, “Hey, we like ice cream.” Those are just more shared preferences. But shared
values. Things like they value marriage, they enjoy parenting, they’re of the same religion. Those
were the things that showed up the most and commitment. Commitment to marriage. They had the
same type of commitment, not just of the institution, but the fact that they found each other as
someone who they would commit to—committed to the person.

Well, sparing you all these details—you can read that online if you’d like to someday—but this idea
of having shared values and shared goals, we found was directly correlated to marital happiness, and
marital happiness was correlated with financial stability and individual well-being. Individual well-
being was correlated with marital happiness and financial stability. Financial stability was correlated
with marital happiness, individual well-being. They were all coordinated.

[Pointer circles around the image of the cycle.]

All these three elements here were correlated together. Although we did not find a direct link
between shared values and goals to financial stability, other papers or other articles had. In my
dissertation, because it was, to spare you all the details, but this was secondary research, I had to
take what questions I had and there was simply no financial values that I could estimate here. A lot
of individual and marital values that we asked, and that’s why the correlation between the marital
happiness and individual well-being was very strong, but we didn’t find anything here. But when we
ran these three variables [Pointer circles around the cycle.], all three of them were highly correlated.
So this theory, we call the Shared Values and Goals Theory. This area is where I believe, couples
need to start first.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Shared Values and Goals Training” with two bullet points
underneath that say “Research Based-Shared Values and Goals Theory (Archuleta, 2013; Gottman
and Silver, 1999; Parry, 2016),” “Evaluated for effectiveness-Case Study (Parry, Minney, Seedall, in
press).”]

Now, what this theory has become, there are other researchers, Archuleta, Christy Archuleta out of
Kansas state. John Gottman out of Washington is an incredible researcher of couples. They each
have researched couples and found, Archuleta found, shared values and goals to be true. To be
correlated with financial stability and financial well-being. Gottman found this to be true with
couples and their relationship satisfaction. And again, I have tried to put both of those together with
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individual well-being. So, it’s a theory that’s emerging. We’re finding more and more evidence for
this. Now another study that I have personally conducted with my research assistant and Ryan
Seedall at Utah State University. We actually created, well I actually created, an intervention that
helped couples to first, identify their shared values and goals and then to improve upon them in all
areas. Individually, relationally, and financially. And found that in this case study of three couples, I
know it was small, but we actually found some significant, well, I can’t say significant, but I can
definitely say we found some good evidence that this intervention was effective. And the reason
being is because it was based in shared values and goals. So what does that mean for any of us? Well
again, we need to understand that this is research based. This is cutting edge. This is happening
really as we speak. I mean, this paper is in press right now.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Shared Values and Goals” with four bullet points
underneath that say “Individual Values, Individual Goals, Overlapping Life Values/Goals, Financial
Aspects of these Shared Goals.”]

But we’ve, and I’ve presented this at several conferences, but really what we need to know is if
individuals who are married, married individuals, if they can understand what their individual values
are.

[Cursor on screen points to the bullet point that says “Individual Values.”]

What are these in life? What are your values? What does that mean then to shape your goals?
Unfortunately, a lot of people set goals, but they’re not really based on what they value. They’re
based on what somebody else values. Their parents, society, their work, coworkers, or friends. They
don’t really spend the time to set goals the proper way.

Now, I’m not going to give the entire intervention here. That’s not the purpose. I’m going to give you
some brief tips and hints throughout this mini course and presentation that will help you. The
biggest thing that I help people do in the values aspect, is have them write a mini obituary. Have you
ever thought about writing out what people might say at your funeral? If you died today, what
would you want people to say about you? My suggestion typically for people is to pray about it, read
their patriarchal blessing if they have one, take some time and write this out. It’s a fantastic exercise.
In fact, most classes I’ve ever taught on human development, we get to the end of life section and
the challenge that I give them is to write out a miniature obituary of their own self. Not focused on
how they died or all the things that they accumulated in life. But to then pull the values, those things
that they hold dear. And maybe, those values that their Heavenly Father wants them to really latch
on to and attributes to improve upon. That should be the basis of setting goals. Then I have taught
people in this intervention to set goals. Individual goals in all areas of their life. That’s really the first
part of it.
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The second part, is teaching the couple how to then look at their own individual values and goals
because they are individuals. To look at all these overlapping areas and find what’s similar. What’s
fascinating about research on this area of shared values is most couples who, at least the research
that I’ve seen on religious values, marital values, parental values, and then with my dissertation
doing the lit review to this, found that couples that had shared values were actually initially
attracted to each other. Yes, physical attraction both for men and women is incredibly important,
but most couples will actually choose to marry eventually because they have enough in common.
The initial physical attraction is there and hopefully there for a long time, right? But that is not the
determining factor of the relationship or the quality of the relationship. It essentially comes from if
you value each other. In layman’s terms, in religious, LDS terms, are you going the same direction?
We all know the triangle. And you’ve got the husband on one corner, the wife on the other, and God
at the top. Well, the closer you move towards God or essentially the same goal of the celestial
kingdom, that the more you have in common, and the closer that you become as a couple until you
reach that point.

This isn’t anything really incredibly new, but it is something I think that a lot of couples don’t actually
go through the process of doing. Now, once couples have shared values and goals in all areas of their
life, we have them pull out their financial aspects. If we’re not careful, a lot of people count their
financial success as the key in everything to their life. We know as Latter-day Saints, that is just not
the truth. That there is more to life, but it’s important to understand finances. So where do these
come from? Well really, financial aspects should be part of your overall goals in life, and they should
also be attributed and part of your relationship. So that is a three hour training into five-six minutes
there, and you can spend all the time you want to actually do this if you’d like, but this is really
where couples started in this intervention.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Marriage and Money” with words underneath that say
“How to set financial goals that you will actually accomplish together. Travis G. Parry, Ph.D., M.S.”
and a title at the bottom that says “Psychological.”]

Well, once couples have these shared goals and values, we teach them, in the psychological aspects
of this, how to set these financial goals and accomplish them together. But we need to really first
understand this psychologically.

[Next slide is shown with a title at the top that says “Overview”, an image of a brain below it with
the words “Class 1” over the top, along with the words “Money Scripts, Money Scriptures, Money
History, Shared Money Future” to the right of that.]

The overview here, we’re going to talk about money scripts, money scriptures, money history, and
what we call shared money future. Class 2, we’ll talk about all these other things that have to do
with the relational side and class 3 will be building on the external side. You can watch this all the
way through, you can pause, and then continue on at the end of each class for this mini course.
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[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Money Scripts” and words underneath that say “Most
Common Money Scripts: Money Worship, Money Status, Money Avoidance, Money Vigilance
(Klontz, Kahler, & Klontz, 2016).”]

So as we get into this, what we want to first understand is the research. And there have been some
psychologists that have looked into money related issues and found that there are really four type of
money scripts. Scripts are things that we tell ourselves. If somebody looks in the mirror and they like
what they see, they might say, “I’m good looking.” Or they may actually say, “I’m ugly,” or “I am of
worth.” And if you think about the young women and young men, a lot of times they will repeat
mantras. Those mantras are essentially scripts. Those scripts can be good, or they can be bad. So,
we’re going to look at your money scripts. For example, young women will stand up on Wednesday
nights and they will say, or they’ll repeat, I’m a daughter of my Heavenly Father and am of worth and
you guys go on, or you girls go on and say the rest I don’t remember at all. The young men will get
up, and I’m more familiar with that, and sometimes will often recite some of the boy scout mottos
and slogans: be prepared, scouts are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Some will add hungry. Okay, cause that’s what scouts
are when they’re 12-years-old or 13-years-old.

But it helps to install these scripts or these ideas that suggest that this is who we are. Well we tell
ourselves, unconsciously, several things about money. I’m going to show you what researchers have
found to be the top four. These that they found in research to be the most common money scripts
or the things we tell ourselves about money. And then we’re going to contrast this with money
scriptures.

[The words below the title change to say “Which Money Script do you associate with? Which ones as
Latter-day Saints help us to become who God wants us to be? Money Avoidance, Money Worship,
Money Status, Money Vigilance.”]

Which money script do you think you associate with? Which ones as Latter-day Saints help us to
become who God wants us to be? To become. Here are the four: money avoidance, money worship,
money status, money vigilance. I’m going to explain each of these and I want you to answer these
questions to yourself. Which one do you associate with and which ones do you think Heavenly
Father wants us to become or be?

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Scripts-Money Worship” and four bullet points
underneath that say “Things would be better if I had money, Money will make me happy, Money
would solve all my problems, Lower income, higher debt.”]

First one, first money script is money worship. Things would be better if I had money. Money will
make me happy. Money would solve all my problems. Those are three common things that people
tell themselves in this money script or money worship script. So if you’ve ever felt that way, you may
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have a money script of money worship. Typically, lower income people that have higher debt, may
get caught in this money worship idea. This isn’t necessarily somebody who’s rich. Typically,
someone with lower income that thinks that if they just made more money, that life would be so
much better. Now, research does show that when people have been able to pay their bills and have
a decent wage and decent living, that they have decreased stress. It doesn’t necessarily mean that
money makes happiness, okay? Because after about $65,000 in American terms here, after people
reach or go past that, that basic standard of living for a two-parent, two-child household in America,
the amount of happiness that is achieved after that does not necessarily correlate. Meaning, if I
made $100,000, I’m not going to be twice as happy as if I made $50,000. But there is a basic, out of
poverty level idea. So that’s important to note. Maybe you’ve dealt with this, maybe you’ve had
these scripts before.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Rich Man” with words underneath that say “Institute
Manual, New Testament. The Savior asked him to give up his earthly possessions and follow Him,
but riches had gained such a powerful hold on the young man that he went away grieved, unwilling
to make the sacrifices necessary to inherit eternal life.”]

Let's look at some scriptures. Now, we often talk about this rich man. The rich man that Jesus meets
one day on the road. And in the institute manual, just this little while ago, I came upon this. I was
doing some research on this for an education week talk that I gave and found some incredible
significance about this interaction. We have to put it in perspective because a lot of times, and we’re
not, as Latter-day Saints, we’re as guilty as other people are in other religions of taking things out of
context to make it fit what we want. So what I’m hoping today is not to offend, but simply to explain
how others may have seen this interaction and give some thoughts and maybe how you can see
other money scriptures throughout the scriptures.

Now, the institute manual says, the Savior asked him to give up his earthly possessions and follow
Him. If you remember, the rich man came up and said, “Savior, I’ve done everything. I’ve followed all
the commandments,” he said. “Lord, I’ve done all the commandments.” He really acknowledged Him
as his Savior. But he said, “What else do I need to do?” And there was a talk about this in the recent
general conference about finding out what we need to do. How can we change? And the phrase is,
“What lack I yet?” It’s a fantastic talk there and I can’t remember the general authority who gave
that, but you can look that up. What lack I yet? And that’s when the Savior turned to him and
pointed to him and said, ‘You know what? If you sell everything you have and come follow me then
you’ll gain eternal life.’ Look at what the institute manual says. A lot of us tend to focus on that as
well. He couldn’t do that and riches are bad because here’s a rich man and he shouldn’t be wealthy,
he should not be wealthy and come follow the Lord. Look what the institute manual says, but riches
had gained such a powerful hold on the young man that he went away and grieved, unwilling to
make the sacrifices necessary to inherit eternal life.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “What Lack I yet?” with words underneath that say “Elder
Larry R. Lawrence. “The young man was stunned; he had never considered such a sacrifice. He was
humble enough to ask the Lord but not faithful enough to follow the divine counsel he was given.
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We must be willing to act when we receive an answer. President Harold B. Lee taught, “Every one of
us, if we would reach perfection, must [at] one time ask ourselves this question ‘What lack I yet?’
(October 2015 General Conference).”]

Now, here’s the general premise for the next slide. Perfect. “What lack I yet?” is the talk Elder Larry
R. Lawrence gave. “The young man was stunned. He had never considered such a sacrifice,” says
Elder Lawrence. “He was humble enough to ask the Lord but not faithful enough to follow the divine
counsel he was given. We must be willing to act when we receive an answer.” Wait, I thought we
were talking about finances here. Well, of course we are. Elder Lawrence says, “President Harold B.
Lee taught, ‘Every one of us, if we would reach perfection, must at one time ask ourselves this
question: What lack I yet?’” So really, although this was about the rich man [Screen returns to the
“Rich Man” slide.] who was unwilling to give up his riches, this was truly a teaching point for the
Savior to teach this man.

If we’re not careful, we take this out of context and we say, ‘Well all rich people are evil.’ And this
puts us into a very difficult circumstance because that’s not true. That is absolutely not a true
doctrinal statement. But the Lord saw as the Lord only can into this man’s heart and mind and asked
him to give up that which he may actually care about more than the Savior himself. [“What Lack I
yet?” slide is shown again.] He was not able to do it. But I’ll give you this: we don’t know what
happened to this young man, this young rich man, this young rich ruler, whatever we call him in the
scriptures there or in the New Testament. We never hear about him. We don’t know if he repented,
we don’t know if he actually heeded the Savior’s advice and followed Him. We don’t hear about him
ever again. This was not some story that was made up. This was a true story that happened. There
was several accounts of this. So I’m going to give this man a pass as I don’t know the outcome. He
may have done exactly as the Lord asked.

Why do I bring this up? Well, if we go back to money worship [Screen goes back to the “Scripts-
Money Worship” slide.], money is not necessarily going to solve all of our problems. But again,
having a basic understanding and a basic level of income to have a life that is, you are able to
provide for a family and put food on the table, is part of life and it is a stressful thing. And those who
are in poverty have a difficult time. But here, I think sometimes, if we’re not careful we tend to think
that a desire even, not even a money worship, but just a desire to have money [Screen changes back
to the “Rich Man” slide.] is a bad thing because maybe of this story of the rich man and others in the
scriptures. So, we’ll look at some of those scriptures and I challenge you to look at those money
scriptures in your own scriptures and think of these own experiences you may have and we’re going
to challenge you just a little bit later.

[Next slide is shown that has a title at the top that says “Scripts-Money Status” with three bullet
points underneath that say “Net Worth = Self-Worth, Only as successful as the amount of money I
earn, Highest tier of wealthy-motivating for greater wealth.”]
 12

Money status. This one is about net worth. Typically, these are higher tiered, wealthy individuals
who are really motivated for even greater wealth. They already made it as a successful business
person or politician or whatever it is, but they really want more and so they think that their net
worth or their financial net worth is their self worth. They equate it to be the same. They make
$100,000, they need to make $200,000 next year and then they feel like they’re a better person.
They’re typically only as successful as the amount of money that they earn. If you’ve ever felt that
way, you may have money status as a script.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Eye of the Needle?” with words underneath that say
“Institute Manual, New Testament. Some have asserted that the eye of the needle was a small door
in the Jerusalem city wall that required a camel to be stripped of its load in order to enter. There is
no evidence that such a door ever existed. Others have proposed that altering one letter in the
Greek text would change the scripture to mean that a rope, not a camel, would have to pass through
the eye of a needle.”]

Well, let’s explain another scripture in the New Testament. This eye of the needle concept, I know
actually growing up in seminary and sometimes even in institute, this was taught a little bit
differently than what the New Testament Institute manual has now. And let me read this quote to
you. Some have asserted that the eye of the needle was a small door in the Jerusalem city wall that
requires a camel to be stripped of its load in order to enter. There is no evidence that such a door
ever existed. Others have proposed that altering one letter in the Greek text would change the
scripture to mean that a rope, not a camel, would have to pass through the eye of the needle, or
truly, the eye of a needle, one that you sew with.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Hyperbole.”]

However, when Jesus Christ referred to a camel passing through the eye of a needle, it was likely an
example of hyperbole, an intentional exaggeration to teach that a rich man shall hardly, or with
difficulty, enter into the kingdom of heaven and you can read the rest of that in Matthew 19.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Trust in God.”]

So what we need to understand by this is further, Joseph Smith Translation, that Joseph is able to
add here. “With men that trust in riches, it is impossible. But not impossible with men who trust in
God and leave all for my sake, for with such all these things are possible.” Again, if we trust in riches,
it’s impossible. But not impossible for men who trust in God. I think this actually connects the story
of the rich young ruler. He trusts in riches more than he trusted God at that point. Maybe he
repented, we don’t know, remember. But I hope this adds a little bit of understanding of what the
money scriptures talk about. Meaning, these parables, these ideas, that come from using money or
riches as part of teaching from Jesus Christ and we need to remember to always look at those
footnotes and understand what the Joseph Smith Translation has to say for us.
 13

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Scripts-Money Avoidance” with three bullet points
underneath that say “Money is bad, Don’t deserve money, Money doesn’t grow on trees!”]

Now, moving on to money avoidance. This is, I believe, partly because of money scriptures and that
are misunderstood, but a lot of times people think that money is bad. We don’t deserve money. You
might’ve even heard your parents say ‘money doesn’t grow on trees,’ or maybe you tell that to your
children now, or don’t spend it all on one place because it's going to go away. But I’ve had several
circumstances where I had a couple where the wife really believed this because her grandpa and
then dad had taught it to her, that money was evil. So her husband made quite a bit of money, but
she would spend it all and you would think, well that’s, that’s awesome! Here she has an okay sense
of money. Actually, no. It was because she had such a bad sense of money, she wanted it out of her
bank account. We eventually had to get there with her and teach her how to deal with this. Several
of us, I know a lot of people, especially in religious circles, a lot of times we don’t have a hard time
with maybe money status because many of us aren’t there.

[Screen changes back to the “Scripts-Money Worship” slide.]

Money worship might be easier when we’re younger because we don’t have anyone depending on
our situation.

But really, this one, this money avoidance, I think could be based in some of the misunderstandings
we have about gospel teaching.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Filthy Lucre?” with words underneath that say “1900’s-
“the filthy” = “money”, Currently- “filthy rich” = “extremely wealthy’.”]

So let’s talk about some more gospel teachings, more money scriptures. In first Titus one, eleven:
“Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not,
for filthy lucre’s sake.” We’ve heard that term filthy lucre or dirty money; however, you want to talk
about it. In the 1900’s, “the filthy” was a term that actually meant “money.” Obviously there’s some
religious connotations here. Currently, if somebody is quote, unquote “filthy rich,” they’re extremely
wealthy, right? But it tends to have an inference on that they obtained this money in an illegal,
unethical, unfair way. And unfortunately, leads to money avoidance.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Amulek vs. Zeezrom.”]
 14

Let’s look at some other scriptures and an example here with Alma and Zeezrom, is how we say it
correctly in the back of the Book of Mormon. “Behold here are six onties of silver and all these will I
give unto thee if thou wilt deny the existence of a Supreme Being.” So remember, Amulek and Alma
are actually conversing with Zeezrom. And he’s a lawyer who we found, in the Book of Mormon, to
actually create problems and then, because the people need help with solving them, he ends up
getting paid to solve those problems. I won’t go on and give any lawyer jokes right now—I’ve got a
brother who is a lawyer, and we could go on with those. But at that time in the Book of Mormon, six
onties of silver, this wasn’t like, “Hey, I’ll give ya fifty bucks,” this was quite a bit of money. I don’t
think many of us sat down and think about, well how much was six onties? If you remember, in the
book of Alma, chapter eleven, I believe it was at the very beginning, there is actually a detailed list of
what an onty is and how you got there from all the other money that the Nephites used. But many
of us don’t calculate it like I have and researched it out to know, well how much is that?

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Amulek vs. Zeezrom” and words underneath that say “6
Onties of Silver = 42 Days Pay of Judge. Annual Median Pay of Judge = $155,000 (Salary.com). 42
days = $26,020.”]

To give you an idea, six onties of silver is forty-two days pay of a judge at that time—says the
institute manual and other sources. So let me give you an idea of today’s dollars. If we were to say
okay, let's translate that, forty-two days pay today. Let’s look at what a median pay or the average
pay of a judge might be, or the median pay range here: about $155,000. Salary.com, you can go look
that up. If you take forty-two days, and you might even consider a week of vacation, maybe I would
even drive it down or drive it up a little bit more. We’re talking about 26,000 dollars. That’s how
much six onties of silver was. Six onties was closely in our day, about 26,000 dollars.

[The words under the title change to show the scriptures from Alma chapter eleven, verses twenty
three to twenty four.]

This is what Amulek said. Now Amulek said: “O thou child of hell, why tempt ye me? Knowest thou
that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations? Believest thou that there is no God?” And by the
way, before I finish this, Amulek was a business owner. Amulek was well known. People knew him in
his town. He’d done business with a lot of people. He wasn’t very active until the angel came back
and reactivated him and said: Hey, you are going to host a prophet and you’re going to help him? He
was putting his reputation on the line. Zeezrom knew who he was, Zeezrom knew how much Amulek
made. We don’t know how successful he was, but we do know that he was a business owner and he
had had previous success. I don’t know at that moment, that that temptation he’s talking about
there could’ve been because of his business and maybe he needed the money. We don’t know,
okay? “I say unto you, Nay, thou knowest that there is a God, but thou lovest that lucre more than
him.” Amulek started to paint this picture, that Zeezrom, you obviously care about money more than
he does, or more than God and I don’t.
 15

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Money the Root of all Evil?” with first Timothy chapter six,
verse ten underneath.]

I think what the big issue here is that this common concept, of money is the root of all evil. In fact, in
a lot of research I’ve read and helped other people understand in my classes that I teach in family
finance, I’ve found this idea that people who are in religion circles or outside religious circles, they
tend to actually pick out the King James version of the bible and show that, well, there’s certain
areas that talk about the loving money, the rich man, the rich ruler, and all of these other money
scriptures incorrectly. They don’t have the JST, they don’t have the Book of Mormon, they don’t
have other scriptures to cross reference, and so they find that money is this root of all evil. I’m sure
you’ve heard that. Well, in first Timothy six: ten, it’s not the money, money isn’t the root of all evil,
“for the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from
the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” It’s the fact that money, whatever
that stands for, if that’s power, if that’s more materials, if that is just status in a society. The fact that
people seek after those things before they seek after God, before that they obviously treasure those
things of the world more than they treasure God. That’s when money or the love of money becomes
the root of all evil.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Treasure is their god.”]

“But wo unto the rich, who are rich as to the things of the world,” second Nephi, nine: thirty. “For
because they are rich they despise the poor, and they persecute the meek, and their hearts are upon
their treasures; wherefore, their treasure is their god. And behold, their treasure shall perish with
them also.”

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Treasure = Heart.”]

And Matthew six: nineteen to twenty-one, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where
moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If you string these
scriptures together, I think we have a better understanding. Money isn’t necessarily evil, the love of
money, putting it before God, is.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Scripts-Money Vigilance” and three bullet points
underneath that say “Doesn’t flaunt details about your wealth, money should be saved not spent,
must have Emergency Savings.”]

Now, okay. So money isn’t necessarily evil, but if we love it, if we put it before God, it can be. So how
do we as Latter-day Saints, how we answer that last one? And again, that second question. [Screen
 16

starts to quickly go back through previous slides.] That first question, if we go way back, sorry if I’m
going too fast here. You’re not supposed to see this. If we go way back, [Screen stops at the “Money
Scripts” slide from the beginning of the presentation.] which money script do you associate with up
to now? Are you money avoidance, money worship, money status, or are you this next one: money
vigilance? And then which one of these money scripts describes Latter-day Saints and who God
wants us to be?

I’ve been kind of leading you here for a very good reason. But the money vigilance [The “Money
Vigilance” slide is shown again.], this person doesn’t flaunt the details about their wealth. Now,
some people are so secretive. A lot of times it’s just simply our society. It’s how a lot of people are.
It’s something we don’t talk about and it is taboo. In fact, more taboo than really, let’s just say, it’s
more taboo than sex in our society. That’s out there more than talking about money. And
oftentimes, money is not displayed as something that these last few money scripts would agree
with, okay? So it tends to reinforce those. But this one, money vigilance, people who don’t flaunt
their details, don’t show it off. Money should be saved, not spent. Well, there’s good and bad things
about that and we should save our money. We’ve been told save, save, save! Don’t spend more than
you have. Get out of debt. The Lord’s been telling us to do that since the beginning of the scriptures,
okay? To be self-sufficient. But then also, you must have an emergency savings. Now, there’s part of
this money vigilance that’s good. I think a lot of us would agree that this is where Latter-day Saints
should be. If we’re not careful though, we could take this money script to an extreme and that is,
you never spend anything. You only save it and you never even talk about your money with your
family who really could use you to help them manage their own money. And so there’s some
definite issues here.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Alms in Secret.”]

But let’s talk about this. Third Nephi thirteen, four: “That thine alms may be in secret; and thy Father
who seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly.” Like about what you give, I don’t think it’s
any surprise that people don’t go to the pulpit and tell you how much money they gave for tithing
that year. It’s not a contest, it’s not showing off, it’s a ten percent rule and everybody can live it, no
matter what their income level is.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Prepare Every Needful Thing.”]

But we should, in Doctrine and Covenants eighty-eight, one through nineteen: “Organize yourselves
and prepare every needful thing. Establish a house, a house of prayer, fasting, of faith, of learning, of
glory, of order, and of God.” Now we know that is directly a revelation about the temple. The temple
to be built, I believe in Kirtland, that the saints needed to do that. But if we apply that to our own
lives, and that our homes can be a temple on Earth then we can say that we do need to prepare
every needful thing. And every needful thing can be meals on the table, it can be food in the
cupboards, it can be clothes, it can be those things that are needed, and I’m going to teach you
 17

about the research behind how we do that. What are our needs? What are our wants? How can we
deal with that? We do know the Lord says, we need to prepare and provide for our own family.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Provide for Family.”]

And here we go, in Doctrine and Covenants, seventy-five, twenty-eight: “And again, verily I say unto
you, that every man who is obliged to provide for his own family, let him provide, and he shall in no
wise lose his crown; and let him labor in the church.” He should do both. He has a calling and he
provides for his family. Now, we talk about in a section about marital roles and the Proclamation is
pretty clear about these marital roles when a husband and wife are married, that the husband is
primarily the provider, and presidor, and the protector. So, we know that this responsibility and
“him” in this case and “man” in this case, does not mean man and woman, it means man. And “him”
meaning him. This was directly a revelation to men.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Destructive-Money Scripts” with the area underneath
divided into three sections that say “Money Avoidance, Money Worship, Money Status.”]

Well, I call these first three, destructive money scripts. And if you relate to one of these, I hope that
your mind is at least aware. You’re awakened to this and realize, whoa, maybe I do ascribe to these a
little bit more than I should. And it’s okay if you actually have all of these. And the fact that you have
come to this conclusion that you may have a little bit of avoidance, and maybe you actually do
worship money because you hope it’ll solve some of your problems, or maybe you are in the upper
echelons of income or wealth, and have this idea that it provides you better status. Well, I think it’s
okay to understand that this is what you might be dealing with. And what you might be thinking
psychologically, as long as you change because look what happens.

[The three sections of the screen now change. The section to the far left says “Poverty, Inequality,
Depression, Poor Health” the middle section says “Consumerism Focus on things vs. people, Related
to Individualism” and the far right section says “Pride is the Root of all Sin.”]

And unfortunately, poverty, inequality, depression, and poor health are related to money avoidance.
Money worship. People buy items, materialistic things that become so much a fad. It’s a part of our
society. You are who you are by what you drive, what phone you have, what watch, what wearable,
the clothes that you have. I remember going through junior high and high school. It was horrible
dealing with this idea of you have friends based off of what kind of clothes you wear or the groups
you fit into because of how you dress and act, because what you could purchase. So consumerism is
the height of so much wrong in our society where we focus on things versus people, and it’s related
to individualism. The first part of my dissertation, we took apart individualism and how it’s fueled by
consumerism. Think about it: iPhone, iPad, is not just Apple, it’s a lot of other products that focus on
the individual, but it’s an easy target. Where it’s really focused on the individual, societal player
 18

here, it’s no longer about family, it’s about what I want. Me. What are my needs? And that’s the
state of a lot of societies today, especially western societies because of consumerism.

Now this last one, as we talked about money status, it really is about pride. Now pride, we know,
Spencer W. Kimball wrote a whole book about it. But it really is at the root of all sin or of all evil.
What’s interesting and what it is related back to is families. Do you know families that avoid money
because they think it might be evil and, therefore, they actually are constantly needing a handout in
this cycle of poverty and they can’t make it out. Maybe it is because of family structure. A single
mom in this depiction, in this picture here. Maybe it’s because of poor health, or mental health
issues that might be related. We as ward members and the Lord has asked us again in other
scriptures, but also in conferences many times, to help people. Unfortunately, sometimes help
doesn’t come the right way. We had a couple in a ward that I lived in and they were constantly
asking for help and they constantly needed things, and were on Facebook asking, it got to be
inappropriate. I was their home teacher and had to sit them down and help them to really
understand the principle of self-reliance. Cause self-reliance we know, the cycle of poverty should
not last our entire life, because we need to learn how to be productive in our society. Obviously
worldwide, there are cycles of poverty. Some countries, we start way below, where even the lowest
of Americans could say they start. But I’m not going there. What I’m saying is the principle is about
being self-reliant. What can I do to provide? At one point in in my life, I had four jobs just to provide.
2008 and 2009 were horrible years for many people: lost their homes, lost their businesses, their
wealth, I saw it all. I was not immune to that, and there was a point in my life where I was working
around the clock for a short period of time so I could put food on the table. Now, the Lord doesn’t
want us there our entire life. I do believe that He wants us to be prosperous. And we will talk about
that later in lesson three, or class three as part of this mini course.

Consumerism, if we’re not careful, this also has ramifications. Again, I talked about marriage. But
one of the biggest things the opposite of shared values and goals, is individualism to the extreme.
Consumerism that fuels that and it pulls married people apart. A recent study that I’ve actually been
looking at, that looks at how when women purchase things at high rates, at high consumer rates,
that husbands are fairly unhappy in their marriage. And so it’s no secret that consumerism is related
to individualism, but then also helps to drive people apart in their family. And pride, being the root
of all sin, divorce, unnecessary divorce. We talk about it in our class that I teach there, that there’s
sometimes when divorce is necessary, but unnecessary divorce or pride typically is the root of that.
So related to money, we can see how these underlying principles, can be destructive to families.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Helpful-Money Scripts” with a picture of a savings jar
underneath and words that say “Vigilant/Discretion” underneath that.]

Now what about a helpful money script? Not only is this helpful in your financial life, but it can be
helpful to your family. It’s important to be vigilant, but not over vigilant. We’re not talking about that
and unfortunately, some of that kind of came up. We’re not talking about people who cannot ever
spend. They’re hoarders or that kind of nature. No, we’re talking about with discretion.
 19

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Helpful-Money Scripts” with words underneath that say
“Millionaire Next Door.”]

There is a book that I recommend in every family finance class I’ve ever taught and to every couple
I’ve ever helped. And that is a book called, “Millionaire Next Door.” Stanley and Danko, two PhDs,
set out to find out what makes people millionaires. A lot of people in this world, especially in
America, we’re not going to talk about American exceptionalism at this point, but they do get to it.
They talk about how they previously thought it was because a lot of people were trust fund babies or
they live off their parents and they want to truly become wealthy by living off that first generation.
Well, they studied millionaires and they found that those millionaires in America, at least, in the land
of prosperity and in the land of the American dream, that most of them had several things in
common. The first one was that they had a good education. The second one was, that a lot them
were actually second generation immigrants. Meaning, the first generation immigrant came to this
country, worked really hard, saved a lot of money, and were incredibly frugal so that they could pay
for the second generation to go to school. And those who got a good education were able to have
better jobs to then break that cycle of poverty.

I saw that in my own life. I am a third generation immigrant family member. My grandmother came
from Denmark and from the other side, my grandmother came from Ireland. My grandfather came
from Ireland. So I’ve seen this in America and know that that second generation, I’m a third
generation. Second generation really benefited from the frugality from the first generation. Some of
which in this case, in this time frame, came from Depression Era thinking or mentalities. And what
could translate is that people made good amounts of money, had a decent wage, and then were
able to not spend it all. They were able to save first. That money script of being vigilant and saving is
what ultimately helped them. There were a few that they found, it was the minority of millionaires,
were not self-made. That they were truly trust fund babies and living off of that first generation or
whatever generation it was that got into wealth. And we find that in the third generation is where
this happens. The second generation makes it wealthy, the third generation, realizes they didn’t see
grandma and grandpa struggle, they didn’t really know about it. They just saw mom and dad being
wealthy. And so they realize, I can do whatever I want, and I’ll be wealthy. They may get into school
like mom and dad did because of connections or what not. Not necessarily a lot of their own work,
and hard work, and labor, but kind of riding on the coattails. And in the third generation, they find a
lot of these family businesses and these empires that the same generation sort of builds up, breaks
down. And sometimes, if they’re not careful, become trust fund babies and live off that second
generation. So why do I bring this up? Well, it’s those tips in the “Millionaire Next Door” about how
to build wealth that I don’t really get into here. I talk about how to manage it. But how to build the
wealth truly comes from being frugal, getting a good education, and a good career so that you can
truly then be able to save and not spend everything you have.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Your Money Scripts?” with words underneath that say
“Money Worship, Money Status, Money Avoidance, Money Vigilance.”]
 20

So money scripts. Talking about money worship, money status, money avoidance, money vigilance,
which one do you have? Which one do you think will help us be better members of the church?
Again, we looked at those three destructive ones, the one productive or helpful.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Different Money Scripts” and a question underneath that
says “How are your Money Scripts different/similar from that of your spouse’s?”]

But what’s interesting, how this translates to couples. You have to ask yourself, as a married couple,
and maybe you’re not married yet, or you’ve been married and are looking to remarry as most
couples do, or maybe you’re in the later years of your life and you simply want to help teach this to
other people. Well, the main concept here, is to understand how couples money scripts might be
different. How does your money script, whether it’s worship, or vigilance. Maybe your spouse might
be status and avoidance, or status and vigilance, I don’t know. But there’s typically not one. There’s
typically several combinations and I am not advocating this is your personality. This is a script, it’s
something you tell yourself. Therefore, if it’s something you tell yourself, then you can stop telling
yourself that and improve upon that by giving yourself the money vigilance or other helpful money
scripts in your life. It’s important that couples know what the differences are. A lot of money
problems as a couple have been found to be related to not understanding your money scripts. For
example, if one spouse is worried about avoiding money, you got a money avoidance situation,
okay? And the other spouse is in a money worship script. Essentially, those two are polar opposites.
They’re working against each other. One thinks it’s evil and of the devil, and the other is thinking it’s
the answer to all of our problems.

And I actually had a couple, who once we were able to, and she was the money avoidance that I
mentioned earlier. Once we were able to help her have a healthy relationship psychologically with
money, and help her husband then kind of tone down his money worship, they became more on the
same page financially. Years later after the training I did with them, I actually found out they started
a business together because they were on the same page financially. And they started to make these
things work better in their lives and money work better in their lives. So yes, is psychology related to
money? It absolutely is.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Money History” with a picture of a woman holding up a
twenty dollar bill and smiling.]

One way you can do this. How do you change this is really the question. It gets asked next and I
mentioned to you kind of the secret there. Because it’s something you tell yourself, you can un-tell
yourself and you can replace. I’m a big fan of, if you’re going to to repair something, a lot of self
improvement and self mastery, comes from replacing something bad with something better. The
good, better, best kind of scenario. Well, if you’re at good, then get to better early, get to best. But if
you’re at someplace bad, and it might be an addiction, it might be a bad habit. If you can repair it
with something, I’ve heard countless, actual stories on LDS.org about people who had pornography
addictions. There was a gentleman who began working in the family history center and because he
 21

replaces time with surfing on the internet in bad sites, to going to work at temple related work here
that he was worthy to do at that point, to search for the names, that it actually helped in his
addiction to overcome it. Well, the same principle here is true.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Money History” with three sections below it. The section
to the far left says “Feathers, shells, beads”, the section in the middle says “Gems, precious metals,
coins”, and the section to the right says “Money Today”. Underneath the far left section has the
word “Past”. Underneath the far right section says “Present.”]

If we look at our money history. Let’s talk about money history. And if we can understand it and
replace it, this is really that key. Money. We talk about money in general. We know that it was used
to trade. It didn’t start off with these paper dollars and bills in America or other countries. But it
started off as shells, feathers, beads to trade for other things. We needed something—a system
between those who maybe fished for a living, and those who baked for a living, and those who made
shoes. They needed to trade easier or to barter and a lot of bartering and trading can be good. But
the problem is if you have two loaves of bread, you’re trying to trade for one pair of shoes, but the
shoe maker can really only give you, he only wants one loaf of bread, so do you just take one shoe?
It doesn’t really work, does it? So that’s how money, or what we call currency was truly invented.
And it became gems, or precious metals, or coins and now paper, and other coinage. And today
really, I would add credit cards, debit cards, other electronic forms of payment. It’s kind of the
natural progression here.

[Next slide is shown with a title that says “Your Family Medical History” along with the image of a
pedigree chart underneath.]

Well, what about your family? What I would suggest is just like we look at our own medical history,
we look at our siblings, our parents, our uncles, father’s, and mother’s side, even grandma and
grandpa’s side, and we analyze our medical history. Because we want to know, are we at risk of
cancer, heart disease, lung disease? I mean, what is it out there that may cause our demise? And
some of us who are a little more careful about our health and care about that, we look into this. And
your doctor. If you came to them with maybe something, a rare disease, they might look into this
genetic type of medical history as well.

[A big red circle is drawn around where you are on the family pedigree chart.]

Well, there you are and you’re affected by genetics. I could spend an hour talking about that, but
that genetic code is passed onto you, much of which, medically, you can’t change. Thankfully, with
money, what’s been passed onto you, can change, unlike your medical history a lot of times. Some
things can be changed medically. You can change your diet, you can change your regimens, your
exercise regimens and things. But you can change your money history, or your money future, but
understanding your history. Some couples, they have different money scripts, but they also have
 22

different money history. So you want to analyze as a couple, how has their money history been
different? How is it similar? And have that conversation. This is a great question to ask each other.
You may actually know this. This might be something that we know Grandpa, this is how he talks.
But actually talking about it as a couple or as a family, can really improve your situation, and
understanding, and relationship psychologically with money. This is where we leave class one and
we’re going to go into class two.

[End of video.]
 23

BYU-Idaho Online Learning

Video Transcript

Class 2 Marriage and Family

[One speaker.]
[The video opens with a slide that says Marriage and Money: How to talk about finances
with your spouse without arguing—Relational. The slide background is of a happy looking
couple.]

Instructor: Welcome to Class 2. Here we’re going to be talking about the relational aspects
of marriage and money, really how to talk about finances with your spouse without arguing.
Recently, we had just been talking about in Class 1, money history, money scripts, and those
money scriptures that help us to be grounded and based in gospel principles, and the kind of
money script that you and your spouse might have and the challenge there is talk about
those differences.

[A slide comes on screen titled Class 1 Summary with a picture of a brain with the label
Psychological.]

And then learn how to really understand your history so that you can change your money
future. Just a quick note on that, it’s important that you each understand the different
money scripts that you have, and your different money histories. As you talk about that, as
you deal with that as a couple, it’s where you can really get a benefit of understanding each
other. Now I didn’t give the details about how to change your money future—everybody’s
different, but the idea in general, to summarize what we previously talked about, was that
one can replace that using replacement therapy, or replacement techniques to then think
and say and act according to that type of script that you want to continue to reinforce.

I have a private practice in which many couples, really, come to me for financial therapy. I
teach them how to replace these psychological money issues that they are dealing with, and
replace those. And a lot of it actually has to do with their stress, their anxiety with the way
that they manage their time and several other things that we don’t have the time to discuss
in this section. But I would encourage everyone who is married or even if you’re thinking
about getting married, you’re preparing for that, you’re engaged, this is a great time to be
discussing these topics. If you’re a single mom or grandma or grandpa, something to talk
 24

about with your children, and depending on what your family situation is, this may just be
something that in the future you can help others to learn. So regardless of how you apply
this, know that these tips again are for married couples, that’s really the area that I’m
specializing in here, but can be applied to all types of families. Families or couples you help
in the future.

So with Class 2 [Slide changes to the Class 2 Overview with a couple in the background with
the label Relational.] what the overview we’re looking at here are the four rules of money
communication, money time, money differences, and discussing your money history, your
scripts, and your future. Again, these principles that I’ll be teaching today, scratching the
surface, really giving some summaries, there’s gonna be some challenges and some
assignments for you to think about doing. And some of that might be very applicable to you.
What we weren’t able to cover in that last part of changing your money future is really going
to be discussed here as a couple. So that aspect of it, the application at the end, will be in
what we discuss today.

[The next slide shows a graph that displays the problems that couples bring to therapy. It is
a bar chart. The y axis shows a list of problems, and for each problem it shows how often
the woman has that particular problem that is brought up during therapy and how often the
man has that particular problem that is brought up during therapy. The x axis is scaled from
1 to 4, 1 being never a problem and 4 being very often a problem. The three most common
problems for both males and females are communication, finances and intimacy.]

With that in mind, what we are first going to look at is a study from your textbook. It’s, well,
from this textbook, the 2012 edition of Lauer and Lauer, in where they look at a study of
why couples really come to therapy in the first place. What problems they bring, which may
indicate why they may come. So in a study adapted from Miller et al. (2003) you can see
communication is one of the number one reasons why couples think, or the problems that
they bring with them to therapy. So maybe an issue of communication in general. Finances
were number 2. Intimacy—sexual intimacy—is number three and on and on. But as you can
see, communication and finances really is the number one and two spot.

I’m gonna show you another study that we talk about in the text as well and that is this idea
of something that starts an argument.

[Changes to a slide that shows another bar chart, this one displaying the things that start
arguments in a marriage. The y axis says “percentage of arguments”, and it ranges from 0
percent to 100 percent. There are color coded things that start arguments that fill the whole
bar, from 0 to 100 percent. The x axis has three groups. People married for 1 to 8 years,
 25

people married from 9 to 25 years, and people married for more than 26 years. The graph
has a key that shows what color relates to what problem. There are 7 problems with their
each color, and they are “No Specific Issue, Communication, Money, Careers, Chores, In-
laws and Children.” The most common specific argument starter in all the demographics is
money, with no specific issue being the most in only the married 26+ years.]

Here we have a longitudinal study, where this one was a cross sectional study, [Referring
back to the first bar chart.] just looking at couples and why they might be coming. And by
the way the blue is females, gray is males. Females suggest that communication is very
often a problem, as you know the indicator of number 4. Males suggest that it’s almost the
same, where finances are pretty close to again second place. But what is it that they’re
really fighting about? Let’s pretend that they are arguing, and there are some
communication issues. What starts that argument is interesting. Stanley, Markman and
Whitton in 2002, they looked at a longitudinal study of couples, followed them over time,
and found that couples married for less than 8 years that money—you can see this light blue
right here—was clearly the majority of what started these fights, these communication
arguments. And after about 9–25 years of marriage, sort of in the midlife, you can see that
money is still an issue with this bright blue here. But children, this gray, is the number two
spot. It was also the number two over here, [Referring back to the married 1–8 years
demographic.] but you can see very clearly it’s even a greater number two. Children being
that issue. What’s going on here? Well, they have teenagers. [Laughs.] We know in a
parenting section that most of what we deal with as parents, grandparents, or as seen in
ourselves is this idea of trying to find independence while living at home with mom and dad
and listening to their rules and following their orders.

So there’s a lot to be said about parents and the stress of parenting these children, so they
may be arguing about how to raise their children. And back to our original discussion from
Class 1 that first course about shared values, I’ve found that in my dissertation work
parenting was actually the most highly correlated value of any of the shared values. So
when parents were on the same page, their marital happiness was really high. Now that
could be that they parented really bad together, but they were still on the same page. We
didn't delineate in that study. In another study I go a little bit further with another one of
my colleagues to look at what is it? Are they happily sharing that responsibility or not. And
as you can probably guess, those that are happily sharing those things and are dedicated in
their marriage, and want to be, not forced to be, they have higher marital satisfaction.
That’s beside the point! Look at married 26 years plus. Money still the number one
argument starter. Children is gone down significantly. They're leaving the home. Hallelujah.
Or they might still be arguing about those who are still at home. But here—this one right
here—this kind of really light gray almost white color, that’s the fact that married couples
now have lived so long together that they don’t know what they’re fighting about anymore.
[Laughs.] There’s no specific issue.
 26

[Referring to the “No Specific Issue” Color, which constitutes about 50 percent of
arguments for the people married 26 years or longer.]

Right? But the number one specific issue that we can find over time, is money. You can see
that over time, at least it’s dipping down, but it’s still the number one identifiable issue—
longitudinally speaking. Well what’s interesting, again kind of, this previous study, so even if
couples are coming to therapy for better communication, with finances being a high number
two, interestingly those marital arguments have to do with finances the majority of the
time. There are other studies done with money as a number one marital argument. Not only
is it such, but it is also the most emotional, second to sexual intimacy. Again in our society
talking about sex is not taboo, but money is—still very much is. Now as LDS members of the
Church, we obviously understand the sacredness of talking about sexual intimacy,
sometimes I would say that we, like other topics that we consider sacred, they become
secret, and we don’t teach our children. And in the sexual intimacy section of this course,
we do talk about how to talk to our children about this. Well this same should be said about
money. In fact, if we know that money is the number one cause of argument and specifically
over time is still the greatest issue, the most emotional issue, and the number three
argument to this, as Dew found in 2012 is that it is the longest lasting of all arguments, we
should be paying a little bit more attention then we are. What I found in the literature is not
a whole lot of solutions. You find a lot of people, again on the psychological side, “We think
we have the answers!” some on the relationship side, “We think we have the answers!” and
some on the financial side, “We think we have the answers!” But not a whole lot of people
that are putting these all together, and this is why I wanted to add all three components to
explain.

[Slide moves on to one entitled Communication with pictures of money growing on trees.]

But if we are to specifically tune into communication for couples, there are several things
that we’re going to focus on. We're going to talk about money histories and money scripts,
but look how futures and how those can be different. We can shape and create our better
money future through understanding our history, changing our script to have a better
outcome. And we’re also going to talk about money, or communication skills in general.
We’re going to talk about talking. We’re going to talk about listening. Metacommunication,
is what we have phrased it. Basically talking about talking.

[A graphic entitled “Relational Process” appears on the screen.” There are 6 boxes. There
are four across the top row. The box on the far left says “Ideas Feelings.” An arrow points
from that box to a box to the right of it, which says “Encode Message.” There is a dotted line
 27

arrow that points back to the “Ideas Feelings” box on the left, and a solid line that points to
the next box to the right, which says “Decode”. The line is labeled “Media (Verbal and
Nonverbal)”. There is another line pointing form the “Decode” box to the next bow to the
right that says “Ideas Feelings”. There is an arrow pointing straight down from this box to a
box that says “Encode”. There is a dotted line that points back from the “Encode” box to the
“Ideas Feelings” box. There is also a solid line that points to the left to a box that says
“Decode”. This line is labeled “Media (Verbal Nonverbal”). There is an arrow from the
“Decode” box that points upwards to the very first “Ideas Feelings” box in the top left
corner, completing the cycle as a closed loop. Above the three boxes on the left, it says
“Sender”, and above the three boxes on the right it says “Receiver”.]

Well let’s first understand, again, in the text of Lauer and Lauer, 2012, there’s a relational
process here. So while a lot of therapists will say, you know, if communication is the issue,
let’s teach you how to communicate better. And I’ll tell you, some researchers have found—
Fowers has found, I believe 2012 as well—that if all we do is teach couples how to better
communicate, then they’re just going to fight better. They need to focus on values. What is
it that we value? Interestingly enough, our very first discussion in this mini course was to
talk about our shared values. What is it that we share, what is it that is this overlapping
area? Well, with that as the foundation, wanting to improve communication, we can look at
this system [Referring to the Communication Process graphic.] and as a family systems type
of idea, that a person as the sender has an idea or a feeling, sends a message to the receiver
either through some type of verbal or nonverbal communication or media. Meaning, if it
was verbal, something you are speaking, sound you are making. If it was nonverbal, pretty
much everything else. We won’t go into all the details about this process, but a lot of what
we say is communicated nonverbally. And the decoder, or the receiver, will decode this
encoded message. It encodes through the verbal or nonverbal cues, and so the person who
is receiving it might misunderstand what you’re talking about when you’re raising your
hands really high, or shrugging your shoulders or rolling your eyes. Or they may totally
understand what you’re saying when you do all those things. So that’s really important to
understand. As a sender you have a responsibility to send the message in a clear way. The
receiver will decode the message instantly in their brain by connecting these sounds to what
the meaning is of those words, or what they think the meaning is, or the actions to what
they think that that person was trying to say. They will have these ideas and feelings, they
will encode and send a message back through verbal or nonverbal. The initial sender will
decode, and do the exact same thing over and over. It’s a cycle. This communication
process, really important to understand, because it is where a lot of arguments happen. So
number one, a couple needs to understand how to be a good active listeners and good
communicators of thoughts. That is in and of itself a whole different lesson, but it’s at the
basis of this that we begin.

[The slide 4 Rules of Money Communication appears.]

 28

My four rules of money communication are going to be pretty self-explanatory as we go

through this. I have several tips here that if we can focus on will really help couples as they
talk about money. Now obviously if there’s a communication issue in general, just the fact
that the couple doesn’t have the skills to do that then they need to learn these skills. Once
they master these skills, then there’s additional tips or rules for how to talk about money.
Well, the first one is to really avoid any negative communication. [An image of two people
shouting with bull horns appear.] To often a time we focus on our spouses inadequacies,
the problems that we see. We’re so good at pointing those out. Our society teaches us to be
critical, critical of each other, critical of our family members and it really doesn’t have any
place. If you’re trying to get to a shared goal financially, there is little good done by being
critical of the other person. For example, I hear all the time, from certain people, that their
spouse is so good at spending this type of money, you know, this amount of money, and a
lot of times they’re complaining to me or to the world, on radio shows or in telephone
conversations, and it’s difficult because my wife and I have made this as a rule a long time
ago that we would never talk about each other negatively. And then number two, to do that
in-person to point fingers really does little good at all. Let me explain.

[Shows picture monkeys grooming each other.]

Nit picking, or nagging, is very much like these monkeys or chimpanzees. They actually do
this all the time. In their kingdom, this is actually helpful. What they’re doing is they’re
looking for nits, or other type of insects that are in their fur and their skin. And as they pick
them out, then they dispose it it. Essentially, when you nitpick, you’re looking for these
inadequacies of other people. Again, here in the animal kingdom it’s helpful. But for us,
when we nitpick, we’re essentially trying to find—through all the good—something that
may be evil. Now, some may justify and say that that may help them. In our kingdom, it truly
does very little good. A person, a whole reason why they might change, really, often times,
it has little to do with when somebody points that bad thing out that somebody does. We’ll
talk about how to constructively deal with and talk about something that’s going on that
should not be continued. That’s not what I’m talking about here. What I’m talking about
here is criticizing and putting down and being negative.

So avoid negative communication. Doctor John Gottman, the foremost researcher on

relationships and especially with married couples had a, what’s called a love shack up in the
University of Washington, where he would bring couples in , monitor them, hook them up
to chairs, monitor their blood pressure, their sweat. He’d monitor all these physiological
responses and have them argue about things and then have them try to solve some
problems together as a couple. And it was interesting the results. He was actually able to, by
97 percent of the time, ascertain whether that couple would divorce or not within 20 years.
 29

And he found that those successful couples did a few things, and the unsuccessful couples
were very much negative communicators. He found 4 things, he calls them the 4 Horsemen
of the Apocalypse. And in his book, he gives more details about how to avoid these. So I
want to start off with just focusing on how to avoid the negative communication because
most of us do some sort of negative communication. Whether we pick those up from our
family origin, our friends, or our experiences. This negative communication is criticism,
contempt, defensiveness or stonewalling. All of which do really no good for us as human
beings.

[Shows a graphic labeled “Criticism” of a man and a woman pointing their fingers at each
other in an accusational manner.]

The first one criticism, let’s talk about that. This is the finger pointing. This is the you are so
bad ... at fill in the blank. You did this and I didn't do that, shame on you type of talk. It’s
finger pointing! The problem with finger pointing is again the old adage, when you point one
finger at somebody, you’ve got three fingers or more pointing back at you. A lot of times,
interestingly enough, we tend to focus on what other people do that is wrong because we
don’t like that we do it ourselves. This is very much a principle of negativity, of selfishness,
and often times we don’t know it. But psychologically we don’t like it when somebody does
a certain thing, so we point it out to them, and often times not in a very good manner.

[Changes to a slide labeled “Contempt”, with a picture of a red button on it.]

Contempt. Little bit of a higher of a negativity factor, if we had a scale. This is you are
pushing their buttons. You know what makes them flip out. And we all know what our
spouse does and if not married you will know, you can’t imagine what those things might
be, and maybe you’re dating a person and you already know what those buttons might be.
Essentially, these hot buttons are what we call contempt when we push them. So it may be
that this person really doesn’t like a certain sound. Maybe it's somebody whistling or
clicking of teeth or it’s the scratching on the chalkboard, maybe it’s something like that. I
know personally I have a high sensitivity to sound. So it’s a strength for me, I can listen to
people and hear what they’re saying. I can listen to students in my class at the back of the
row or the back of the class when they don’t think I can hear them. I can hear every word
they’re saying. So for me I’m highly sensitive. But it may also be that they’re contemptuous
about maybe their word choice, they may be having an argument and John Gottman suggest
that people use contempt. That the spouse might be saying something, and the other
spouse knows that that spouse hates being corrected so he says, “Stop honey, it’s not like
this, it’s like that.” You know, “You said that wrong when you were screaming at me.” Well
now that makes that person who’s already upset even more upset. And the other spouse is
getting a kick out of it.
 30

[Changes to a slide labeled “Defensive”, with a picture of a man holding up his hands
defensively.]

Well the third one—and a lot of people do this instantly—it’s an instant reaction to any time
that contempt or criticism especially is being used, is being defensive. Defensive isn’t
defiant. Defensive is simply pushing back as you see this man pushing back on an idea, that
“No, that’s not me, I don’t do that.” It’s kind of a cousin to denial. When you’re defensive,
you may deny that you actually did something. You may convince yourself “No, that wasn’t
me honey, that was you.” Or it may be, you know, you didn’t pick up after yourself. Well, if
you had done, you know, fill in the blank. Well if you had done my laundry, I wouldn’t have
to. Or whatever it is, really bad examples there, but whatever it is, you’re obviously
defensive. Many many couples have this problem of being defensive right away. I’ve noticed
that when I can acknowledge when I am being defensive, it helps me to diffuse the
situation, which we’re going to talk about in a second.

[Changes to a slide labeled “Stonewalling”. It shows a picture of a woman standing behind a

man and yelling while the man plugs his ears with his fingers.]

The worst of all four of these however, is stonewalling. Stonewalling is an interesting

physiological response, actually. For men, to sort of protect themselves. We’ve done studies
and found out why do men stonewall? Why are women always trying to get their men to
open up or talk about their feelings. And why sometimes does a man just shut down,
completely shut down? Women do this too, I’m not trying to be too gendered, but the
research does show that men are the more frequent of users of this type of negative
behavior. The stonewalling might look like this. Husband and wife are trying to discuss
something, he doesn’t want to, she gets mad at him and pushes some of his buttons. So
instead of him fighting back or getting defensive any more than he already is, he may just
simply shut down and not say a thing, essentially building up a stone wall between the two.
That stone wall is meant to protect him, because if he says something or does something
else, in his mind it will just make it worse. But the reality is, no reaction is almost like
pushing a woman’s buttons because now she feels like it’s contemptuous. So in an effort to
preserve the union it actually makes it worse when you stonewall. Some people will say,
“Well I just need to go away, need to get away.” Typically there are three reactions when
there are a heightened sense of danger. Physiological reactions. And your body actually
preserves its energy, and tries to take all of the energy into internal organs, by focusing your
eyesight, your heart pounds and races if there’s an issue that’s really emotional. And again,
what do we know about financial arguments? They are the most emotional. So if you have a
very emotional situation, a man who has not been able to deal with emotions in the past,
specifically because of the gendered, stereotypical that men shouldn’t cry, they shouldn't
 31

express their feeling when they’re younger otherwise they are sissies and what not. They
finally get married, they have these really important conversations with their wife who's
trying to, you know, I’m giving this scenario here. Trying to, you know, manage the
checkbook and everything else, and he doesn't want to listen. She sees him as not caring,
and not able to express feelings. And he’s thinking to himself, if I can just make it through
the ball game, we can talk about it later. Or if I just leave. And really there’s these three
reactions. There’s what we call fight, flight, or freeze. They used to be called just fight or
flight, but psychologists have found that sometimes people just freeze up. So if you fight,
then you’re being defensive, which is obviously not very good. If you flight, you leave the
situation. And it’s almost like the stonewalling here. But if you freeze, or don’t say anything,
it’s definitely a form of stonewalling. And in a man’s mind, he’s thinking, again, “If I can just
wait this out. If this storm will blow, it always blows over, she’ll deal with it, she’ll get over it,
I’m just not going to pay attention.” He’s thinking in his mind “Darned if I do, darned if I
don’t.” And it’s kind of a predicament.

Well how do we deal with this? If we all do some form of these, and one probably more
than the other. Again, these are not personality traits, I want to be very specific about this.
Human development shows that about half of what we do, behaviors as a human being, can
be attributed to our personality or genetic makeup, where the other half is learned
behavior. How much of that is which, depends on what theorist or what research you
follow, everyone has a different point of view. But I would definitely say that nature and
nurture is at play here. It might be that that’s how one’s father dealt with one’s mother.
So—and that boy grew up watching his dad, you know, walk away or leave the room or go
on a drive. Or stand there and just not say anything. So it really depends. Now—so what can
you do? How do we fix this? Because it's not just only—doesn't do us just enough good to
just avoid it, because that’s really the first part.

[Screen changes to a slide entitled “Diffuse Negativity”. It has a picture of a couple praying, a
note that says “I’m Sorry”, and a note types in some sort of code.]

The first part is recognizing that it’s even happening. And then learning how to try and avoid
that negative communication from even starting. Well what we need to do is to diffuse it.
Once we realize that it’s there, and it’s already in the room with us, this negativity, there’s
several things that we can do. Not only personal experiences, but research has actually
showed us to diffuse a lot of times couples, if they can have a code word, or a phrase. You
can see down here you have this code going on. Well if you have a code word or a phrase,
some parents have it with their children, so they’re not constantly nagging them about
something. And I will tell you, kind of step back just a second, although men are pretty good
at nit picking and those kinds of things—women on the other hand, and men’s stonewalling
and such—women on the other hand, nagging can definitely fall into this criticism point.
And I’m not saying all women nag. A lot of times they’re well meaning, because they’re
 32

trying to get their husband and motivate them to do something. To actually go to the
doctor, or fix that faucet, whatever it is. Nagging is also a very negative communication.
How do we get through that? This diffusing. By using a code word. A phrase. Something
from a TV show that’s funny that you both can agree on. What happens when you diffuse
with a code word or a phrase like “I’m sorry.” Hey, that’s a brilliant one. As soon as that
happens, the energy in the room and your communication will diffuse. It will go from
negative to positive. Energy can’t—just like a toilet bowl. I’m sorry, I’m a plumber, I grew up,
I’m a third generation plumber. My grandpa was an engineer and started a plumbing
company, my father continued on, I’ve been a plumber ever since. That’s why I’m in college.
Or went to college. Sometimes I still feel that I am in college, but I’m teaching now. So I
guess, yes, I could consider that. But the reality is, your toilet is either flushing one way or
the other, depending on the hemisphere that you live in. And oftentimes, what my wife and
I will say is that we’re flushing. Meaning, stuffs going down the toilet, and we’re not going
the right direction. So now you know that Brother Perry, when he and his wife get in
arguments, sometimes they talk about toilets. You figure out what works for you.
Sometimes what we will actually do is we will hold hands and depending on where we’re at,
we will say a prayer. We found this to be very helpful, and we have a set system of who
prays each day, because she’s the female and the woman in the relationship, our stake
president a long time ago admonished us to have her pray on the even days, and husbands
because we tend to be a little bit odd—in binary code women would have I believe a zero,
and men a one depending on how it’s coded. So it kind of makes sense. But don’t think too
deep into that. The reality is, I pray, or the men would typically pray on the odd days. We do
that just naturally. So regardless of who’s at fault, a lot of times people—you know this issue
of pride, remember in Class 1 that pride brings separation with couples, and kind of brings
people down. That can be one of the issues of saying I'm sorry. Some people may not want
to say this specific phrase, because they think if they say they’re sorry, then that’s then
giving the spouse reason to say “Yeah you should be, and this is why you should be sorry.”
And opening them up to more and more contemptuous type of interaction. So if someone
does say that they’re sorry, that doesn’t mean that they’re at fault for everything. It’s always
that phrase, it takes two to tango. There’s always three sides to every story. And there’s
your side, and your spouse's side, and then the Lord’s side, what he sees. And I personally
think it’s okay to say sorry. In fact, make it a competition who can say sorry first. Who can
realize that, oh, we’re flushing or we’re going down hill or we're being negative, whatever
you want to call it, and say sorry first. Use the code word, or turn to each other and say “You
know what, it’s an even day, it’s your turn to say the prayer.” And hold hands and pray
together. There is something to be said about involving God when you know it’s above and
beyond you; you need help in your relationship. And a celestial marriage—couples who are
able to bring the Lord into their relationship yes, even when they’re having a hard time
communicating—see great benefit. And I say that personally, I know that helps a lot, saying
I’m sorry, having a code word, really helps to diffuse the negativity.

[Changes to a slide with a picture of a chocolate cake that says “Let’s Bake a Cake”.]
 33

Ok, so now you’ve diffused the negativity. I actually had a client, they came up with the
saying “Let’s bake a cake”. Their bishop, when they were in a newly married ward, had
actually given the couple the idea to say, whenever they had an argument, “Let’s bake a
cake”. Meaning let’s not argue about this too much. Who can be upset and not happy
thinking about baking a cake, or at least eating the cake. I think we can all agree on that.
Well, we want to avoid as much as we can negative communication. And I promise as you,
as you start to you won’t just focus on the negative communication just avoiding it, because
you’re going to see it, and that’s natural because you’ll see it more. Some of you may be like
“Wow, I didn’t realize how much we actually communicate negatively.” It’s okay to
recognize it. Don’t let it beat you down, don’t let that get you down or beat yourself up
about it. But just learn to diffuse it. And you’ll find you’re going to improve because you’re
going to recognize it faster, and you’ll start to diffuse it faster. As a couple, you’ll see this
improvement of recognizing and defusing to the point where hopefully you rid negativity
out of your communication completely. It is possible. Doesn’t mean you’re perfect at
communicating. It just means that you’re really good at getting rid of that negativity.

So what do you do instead? Well again, very much of the idea, and this works behaviorally
with psychology study, a lot of psychologists who are behavioral psychologists, if you want
to improve a behavior, well, replace it! So what do you need to do then next? Well, focus on
the positive. John Gottman found that those couples who he followed for 20 years, if they
had a five to one—this is the magic ration—he calls them the masters. Masters versus
disasters. The masters, or the successful couples, had a ration of 5 to 1 positive to negative
interactions. He found that when couples just in normal day to day conversation, if there
was something that they needed to talk about, or it was negative, not that they would make
up with those five, but in general, he would record their conversations, their interactions,
and found that they had five times as many positive things to say. The other thing is, when
there is argument, when there is disagreement, it doesn’t have to be negative. We can
argue. I’ve done a lot of arguing and a lot of disagreeing with people, and I’ve learned a
great deal by disagreeing with others, because they’re able to give me their side of the fence
or the argument here of what they might be trying to express. But the point is to turn
toward each other. You can disagree, but if you turn toward physically, spiritually, mentally,
toward that person, even just holding hands and saying a prayer is an act of turning toward.
Gottman found this idea of turning toward each other when there's an issue that they need
to fix or solve. Those couples lasted. The ones that turned away, even just turning their
head, or turning their back or walking away, the more that they did that, the easier it was
over time to then leave the relationship, think about it! You’re just creating a habit that
becomes a cycle that becomes the next step. If instead, it’s hey, we’re having this problem
about communicating about this family vacation, or whatever it is that you’re arguing about,
or buying Jimmy supplies for school or whatever. If you turn toward each other and discuss
it together as a team, you’re going to do just fine.
 34

In fact this goes right along with the next point that I mentioned previously about Fowers.
It’s important to have these skills, but without these virtues, Gottman also found that it’s
teaching couples to argue better. So between Fowers and Gottman, they’re on the same
page. So those virtues are patience, longsuffering, love, charity, kindness. Again, Fowers
says that that’s a foundation to communication. Things like courage, strength, self restraint,
compassion, empathy. It’s interesting. I don’t know if you guys have ever done this with
your spouse, or maybe to do this with your future spouse as I mentioned before. But how
amazing it can be to go and study gospel principles and virtues and values together. And
then as a couple be able to identify those and work together to improve those as a couple.
Self restraint, what a wonderful virtue or value to share. And compassion or empathy, or in
essence, charity in Moroni 7, it’s a great exercise. You’re having issues with maybe
communication? Well, you can study the communication pattern the cycle of
communication as we discussed previously. Right?

[Goes back to Figure 9.1 The Communication Process slide.]

But it might be that you guys are understanding the message completely, but it’s once you
decode it that you’re not being patient with the other person, who sent it. Or vise versa. So
regardless of how you understand this cycle, as Fowers and Gottman concluded, if you don’t
have these positive moral virtues, it may not serve you at all to even avoid negative
communications and learn how to better listen, if all you’re trying to do is be selfish about it.
So you might want to read Moroni 7 together, and look at the virtues. What is charity? Find
out together the definition of that, and how you can work that into your relationship.
Moroni 7 versus 44 through 47. We’re going to focus a little bit on this. [A slide shows these
versus.] “And charity suffereth long, and is kind, envieth not, is not puffed up, seeketh not
her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the
truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

I don’t want to go into this too deeply, but I find it interesting that when the Lord give us
counsel, again to be a little gendered in the words that are chosen here and this is not
gospel doctrine, this is just interesting from Doctor Perry—Brother Perry here—that often
times he talks about the natural man. Now the natural man can show up in women, but I
find it interesting that charity is a she. That charity seeketh not her own. In the section on
gender for this course, focus a lot at the end of understanding gender, how masculine traits
and feminine traits, that the Lord and Savior himself had a perfect set of masculine and
feminine traits. And that as a couple, if we can learn from each other, how to overcome
some of the issues that we each have, not saying that all men are natural men and they’re
fallen and evil and you know, the gender of male, the male gender is fallen and females are
all good every single one - no, that’ not what I’m trying to say here, we know that’s not
completely true. Just mostly true. [Laughs.] But the reality is that I think it’s interesting that
here the word charity has a feminine attribute. And that if a lot of time males, we do have
 35

the tendency to quickly become defensive, we do have the tendency to lose our tempers, to
lash out. It’s not women who the General Authorities are speaking to in conference about
holding their tempers and being more temperate and compassionate people. It comes
naturally, more so for women. God engendered in us a natural capability for women—we’re
talking about women here—to be the nurturers in the family. But that doesn’t mean that
men are exempt. Because in the Family Proclamation, it does specifically say that we are
supposed to share in these responsibilities. But it’s primarily the woman’s role. But that
doesn’t mean that you can’t help each other and learn from each other and ultimately be
able to become one, through celestial marriage, whether in this life or the next, by learning
of these attributes from each other. I just find that interesting, and I think that as we talk
about communication, it’s okay to learn from each other, it’s okay to grow and depend on
each other.

So focus on the positive. The last key and incredibly important, as these build upon each
other, is really to set time to go over and talk about money. Instead of sweeping these
issues proverbially under the rug, where a lot of money issues end up. And I think a lot of
times the reason why the original research talked about money starting those arguments by
Stanley and Company there, I think one of the biggest issues is that money is so related to
all of life. If you’re talking about, you know, in-laws, it might be that they gave your brother
money and sister-in-law money, but not you. Or it’s Christmas time, and I’ve got to buy
presents for your children, and you argue about who should get what. Money is always
involved somehow in our life, because it is a necessity. And yet it’s ones of those necessities
that touches just about everything. Unfortunately, it is an easy one to sweep under the rug,
because then you can focus on “Well it’s the in-laws that’s the problem”, or “It’s Christmas”.
You know, ”It’s how we celebrated”, or “Let’s just not go on vacation at all”. Whatever the
topic is, money tends to get swept underneath.

[Slide changes to chow three arrows going around in a circle and a caption that says
“Cyclical”.]

If we’re not careful we create these cyclical patterns that continue to repeat itself. You have
that same argument over and over and over again as a couple. It keeps coming up, and you
try to deal with it and you can’t so boom, it goes right under the rug again. Comes up again,
under the rug. So what you want to do in order to break this cycle, it’s almost an abusive
cycle, that we as couple, if we’re not careful allow to happen to our relationship, our
celestial marriage. What I suggest we do is find some time once a week to talk about money.
Talk about it with your spouse. Whatever is coming up, there may be things that we need to
talk about, who’s to pay this bill or whatnot. I’ll talk specifically about that in the next class.
But as far as communicating, so you can have a platform, a place, you need to have some
time. Call this money time.
 36

For many of my clients and my wife and I, we have decided that Monday nights are a great
time. We put kids to bed after family night, and it’s Monday money nights. Ok? So it’s after
the kids go to bed, there are no distractions, there’s no iPads that are on Pinterest or
Facebook, but if you have anything electronic it’s because you’re working on the spending
plan that we’re going to talk about, and how you’re tracking that together, and working on
reaching your financial goals. Some people might say “well that’s a little much Brother
Perry, an hour a week, one time a week, that’s a little much”. I will tell you this. When my
wife and I first got married, it was on a Monday night. We had our own little family night. I
don’t remember what we did. I just remember afterwards, I pulled out a green pad, a
financial green pad. Your parents know, if you’re my age, your parents know what those are.
And we sat down with a green pad and just walked through our spending plan, our first
budget. And this is what I, you know, I did this for a living, I was the insurance and financial
planning guy, and so this is exciting for me. My wife said “What are we doing? Why?” You
know, and she just really didn’t get it at first. Well what’s fantastic is now she’s the one
that’s like “Sit down, we’re doing this now.” She understands the importance. If we don’t
talk about these things at least once a week, they’re going to get continually swept under
the rug, and they’re going to come up at inopportune times. Because you didn’t spend the
time to talk about it initially. They’re going to come up in the car when you’re on the trip, or
they’re going to come up on the way to Grandma and Grandpa’s and you realize “how much
money was spent on that present?” And they can become issues that continue to cycle. So if
you want to stop the cycle, then schedule time to talk about it. What I would suggest in that
money time is to not have any distractions, as I’ve mentioned. If you're going to have tools
out to help you. Don’t get on your phones, don’t get on your iPads and laptops and pretend
you’re there. Be all in.

But this is what I want you to specifically talk about, and this ties in with the first part of the
class. I want you to talk about creating a spending plan. Well how are we going to do this?
The first things is we want to analyze our progress towards our financial goals. And try to
project our future, our future expenses. Well how do we do this? Again no distractions. You
have and discuss your different money histories. And as I’ve kind of brought this up, you
want to sit there and discuss, if you haven’t already, and you identify that in the
psychological section what your own individual money history scripts or future might look
like. At this point, in this time of the money time, you want to talk about that together. Then
create and review a spending plan. Analyze last months. So look at your progress towards
these goals and what you’re doing in the future, as we’ve just mentioned. But analyze what
you’ve done last month and look at future projections and upcoming expenses. Well if you
can set this money time, then the rest—I can teach you how to do these other things if
you’re not doing it already. And a lot of people my hat off to you, you’re already doing some
of these things. This is old hat. Somebody must have taught you, or you read a good book or
you figured it out. And so this is fantastic for you. Most people don’t do this. But if you can
change just this one thing, keep money time. Avoid all the negative interactions. What you
 37

will see is that in this next course, we’ll be able to create these spending plans. And I’ll tell
you, when I was an early, you know, early on young financial advisor and planner, I started
with creating financial plans with couples. And I started, as I mentioned in some of these
case studies, trying to help these people. But because their situations a lot of times they
weren't able to communicate very well, they didn’t have the same goals. I was backing up,
and I had to keep going back and back to try and take one step forward, and go two steps
back. So if you can do it in this order of creating shared goals, understanding your money
history and differences, and try to replace those with good money scripts for a better
money future, and then talk about your shared financial futures and create tracking, I can
teach you in this next part and you can learn how to then track it appropriately. Most of the
financial software out there is really about the tracking. It’s about setting up the budget. But
it’s everything beforehand that is so imperative and important, that that’s why I talk about it
first. That’s why I do it in this order, once shared values are discussed. So I look forward to
helping you in this next class in this mini course of how to create and effective spending
plan.

[End of Video]
 38

BYU-Idaho Online Learning

Video Transcript

Class 3 Marriage and Family

[One speaker.]
[Screen opens with the title Marriage and Money: How to create an effective spending plan
that you both can agree on—External.]

Narrator: Welcome to Class 3 of the family finance minicourse. This is focused on the
external area and how to basically create an effective spending plan that both spouses can
really agree on.

Now, in Class 1 we were able to look at the psychological aspect—what really are we
thinking about with our money scripts, our money psychology and how that history and
future can help us if it’s shaped correctly as a couple. In Class 2, we were able to talk about
the four rules of money communication, how money time is important to discuss these
differences and help to shape a better future as a couple. In Class 3, we’re going to be
focusing on the seven family financial rules. It’ll include discussing a ten-ten-eighty spending
plan approach, looking at money tracking, and how to find a good financial advisor.

[The following appears on the screen: The 7 Family-Financial Rules (Parry, 2017):

1. Create shared values and goals.

2. Create a spending plan based on your shared values and goals.

3. Save for emergencies-prevents unnecessary debt and welfare, prepares for financial
planning process.

4. Create a financial plan based on your shared future goals.

 39

5. Purchase adequate amounts of the appropriate kinds of insurance for your situation.

6. Reduce debt and invest according to your shared future goals.

7. Protect and/or give wealth depending upon your achieved shared goals.]

This seven family financial rules that, essentially I created, comes from research, comes
from experience, a little bit of both put together. Everybody has their different, you know,
Dave Ramsey has his baby steps, everybody has their different sort of idea how to set up
budgeting, that kind of thing. This isn’t really that. This isn’t me telling you what kinds of
things to purchase or how much of anything, but these are principles. And looking at these
as a principle will help you whenever or whatever situation or station in your life, or clients
of yours in the future, or people that you teach or work with in the future. Number one, as
we’ve already talked about, is creating these shared values and goals. The research that
we’ve looked at with shared values and goals from the very first as that center of the Venn
diagram, where you have the relationships, psychological, and external areas all combined
into one—that’s where the shared values and goals really begin. Most other financial gurus
won’t talk about shared values and goals, it’s a pretty new concept that we’ve discussed in
Class 1.

With that done, creating a spending plan is really step two. Having understood that those
shared values and goals include the psychological, include the relational, aspects of the
past—steps two through seven are essentially this aspect—this external what we see, what
we can, you know, write down, and touch and feel as far as the financial money
management goes. So we’re going to focus on these next rules, not getting to all of them,
but touching really on two. Let’s talk about two. Two is creating a spending plan based on
your shared values and goals. Now, unlike many other gurus that are out there, they’re
going to say that you should adopt my values, you should adopt my goals, this is how I
invest, and this has worked for me and so this is good for you. And they take, a lot of times,
too much liberty to share with the world what made them rich, or wealthy, or well-off by
giving blanket statement advice, and that’s not what we’re doing here. You should always
consult financial professionals to help you in steps, really, two through seven. But a lot of
this you can do on your own and step two, you have your shared values and goals. You
know what those are as a couple and so you can begin to do that. We’re going to focus on
that today—and just quickly to kind of point this out—what we’re going to discuss today is
the creating this spending plan based on your shared values and goals will then help you to
save for emergencies, prevent unnecessary debt and welfare, and prepares you for a
financial planning process—which I will speak of at the latter. And then steps four through
seven can be done with these financial professionals as helpers to your financial plan. We’ll
talk about that at the very end of today's class.
 40

Now, again as I’ve mentioned we need to be really careful—and there’s lots of gurus out
there: Dave Ramsey, Susan Orman, Robert Kiyosaki. I’ve followed them, I’ve read their
books, I’ve watched them on TV, I bought their programs, and although there’s kernels or
nuggets of information in each one, we have to really be careful that we don’t simply blindly
follow a financial professional or guru because of their own individual experience. Ramsey
was a financial coach and became a talk show host; Susan Orman is now a TV host and
Kiyosaki is a public speaker and is going around giving conferences and talks all over the
world. Each has their own individual experiences, none of them talk about shared values
and goals. So, be very careful that you don’t simply latch on to them or simply latch on to
what we’re talking about today before you do your own homework and research and really
develop your own values or your own goals.

I know a lot of LDS people really like Ramsey and some of you even used his programs in
church settings to help people to get out of debt because that’s a value that Presidents of
the Church, and Prophets, have warned us for years. So, there’s somebody out there in the
mainstream that’s given that kind of advice and so you know, we sort of agree with or share
that value, and that’s fine, I’m not discouraging you to buy their books or to go to their
conferences. I’m simply saying be careful that we don’t just subscribe to any one of these
individual’s mantras or baby steps or whatever they are without first understanding what
are our shared values, what are our goals as a couple, as a family.

Now let’s understand first, this ten-ten-eighty plan. This is really important to know what
this plan is that you can create a spending plan which is step two, but you need to
understand what this method is. This is a tried and true method, research-based and has
incredible utility because it is a principle-based plan. Well, let’s talk about this because I do
believe that this plan also reinforces our belief system as members of the Church. The
number one thing to do, the first principle of the ten-ten-eighty is learning to pay tithing
first.

Whenever we talk about managing money, tithing is always an aspect and fast offerings are
always an aspect, but specifically tithing. No matter what income that we have, regardless
of our situation, if we can put forth the faith to pay that ten percent of our income as
tithing, the Lord will give us blessings. Now the interesting thing about this though is that
once we are able to pay our tithes, there actually is several research articles that show what
the effect is on us as individuals, our psychological well-being is actually a lot higher when
we give money or time to a charitable organization and so a lot of financial gurus have
acknowledged that and do suggest that, and tithing really isn’t anything new but let’s look at
these blessings.
 41

[Malachi chapter 3, verse 10 appears on screen.]

There are blessings that come from following this specific commandment. We know in
Malachi three, eight through twelve, specifically, “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse,
that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of
hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there
shall not be room enough to receive it.” Now, this is an interesting verse because out of all
of the commandments—and tithing is a command—out of all the commandments this is the
only one that I’m aware of that is a challenge to prove me. Essentially, the Lord is saying, “if
you try this, this is what will happen.” The Word of Wisdom has blessings. Other specific
commandments have specific blessings, but this one is an interesting one because the Lord
is essentially saying, “if you don’t believe me, try it.” Now I would be careful because some
people have stated that, you know, we’re blessed, financially, by giving financially. That’s
not always the case. You know, Brother Parry, I’ve paid my tithing my whole life and I’m not
rich, or I’m not wealthy, or well-off. That’s not what the Lord is saying here, he’s saying that
he will bless you and he’s saying there will not be room enough to receive those blessings.
What kind of blessings might those be? Well let’s talk about that.

[The next slide is titled Temporal Blessings with the quote that he reads underneath. The
reference is Marion G. Romney, “The Blessings of an Honest Tithe,” New Era, Jan.-Feb. 1982,
45).]

J. Reuben Clark said this, a modern prophet, sorry, Marion G. Romney said, “President J.
Reuben Clark Jr., a modern prophet, said over and over again that the Lord would never let
one of his Saints who had been faithful in the payment of tithes and offerings go without
the necessities of life.” So we need to also remember that the Lord understands our needs,
he understands our wants, he understands that we need temporal blessings. It doesn’t
necessarily mean that we’re going to get a return on investment and if we don’t get a return
on investment in our tithing dollars that the church isn’t true. We need to be really careful
of that sort of mentality, but there are spiritual blessings. Spiritual blessings come from
paying our tithing.

[The next slide is titled Spiritual Blessings with the quote he reads underneath. The
references is (A. Theodore Tuttle, Conference Report, Apr. 1970, p. 86).]

In conference of 1970 Theodore Tuttle said, “I think it is not well known in the church that
payment of tithing has very little to do with money. Tithing has to do with faith.”
 42

And as we exercise faith, that is when other blessings do come: spiritual blessings, temporal
blessings, once we put forward that foot in the darkness of faith, the Lord will bless us, but
he blesses us according to our needs, and occasionally to our wants. That said, let’s be very
clear, tithing is a commandment. There will not be room enough to receive the blessing the
Lord gives us, but we need to be careful not to limit or not to set that these are the
parameters on which the Lord will bless us because we are paying our tithing.

[The slide is titled 10-10-80 Plan. The screen shows:

1. Ten percent Tithing:

1. Blessings of tithing and faith/works.

2. Positively related to higher individual/marital happiness.]

As I mentioned before, not only are there spiritual and temporal blessings by paying tithing,
but there is positive—or there’s research that shows that there’s a positive relationship to
higher individual and marital happiness when one pays tithing or a couple pays tithing. I
know some people argue about this—this is a point of argument. Do we pay net or gross or
on gifts, or whatever it might be, but it is really up to you as a couple to decide what is a full
tithe, and pay that ten percent to the Lord.

[The slide is titled 10-10-80 Plan. The screen shows:

1. Ten percent Tithing.

2. Ten percent Savings:

Use it for steps 2 and 5:

1. Save for emergencies.

2. Reduce debt.
 43

3. Invest for future.]

The second of this ten-ten-eighty is ten percent paid to you. There are several other gurus
who talk about this, one specifically, David Bach. He wrote the book The Automatic
Millionaire, and he says that if you can just become automatic with paying yourself; pay
yourself first becomes his mantra. Now, if we understand that the ten-ten-eighty we pay
tithing first and we pay ourselves second. Tithing, really, if we look at the history behind that
too, it didn’t always mean that you had to pay with money. A lot of times where money was
scarce, a depression-era and early parts of Church history, the early Saints were paying with
what their increase was, which is essentially their livestock or their produce and many Saints
wouldn’t just give ten percent, they would give the first or they would give the best of that
produce, of their livestock and feed. So I think that we need to understand that in the sense
of, we don’t just pay ten percent as, hey here’s this ten percent Lord, I managed to save it
over the year. We really ought to be thinking how can I give the best. And oftentimes we
pay again with faith because we pay it first. If we pay it first and then we pay ourselves
second, something happens and it clicks in our mind, and like the rich man who dealt with
this issue of loving money more than God, we will never be in that situation. This will help us
through our habits, through our actions, through our works to change our thought process.
Savings become second and it is used for the remaining steps. Here it says use it for steps
two and five.

But really for the remaining steps as well, but specifically two and five, saving for
emergencies, reducing debt, and investing for the future.

So many people, when I first was working as a financial planner and insurance agent and
things, would come and say I’d like to invest, I know you’re a financial advisor, tell me what
your advice is, where should I be in the market, blah, blah, blah. They were so ill-prepared
for the market. They didn’t have an emergency fund, they had a lot of debt. They just
wanted to take some and throw it at the market because they were told in a finance class,
or a book that they read that they should be investing now or they’ll never have enough
retirement, kind of a type of scarcity mentality of fear-based retirement planning, which I
don’t ascribe. And most did not have the necessary savings; they weren’t in the habit of
saving. So, some will justify and say, no we’re going to give them habit of investing—which
is a form of savings—and I’ll say, wait a minute, investing is not saving. Saving is something
that you can pull out if there are emergencies, something that you can do without fees or
fines, and investing becomes more long-term. Yes, there’s midterm investments that you
can purchase and things, but the longer you hold up your money, the greater the return
typically is in the market, and there are several markets but it is so important to have
established this habit of ten percent savings. That way, you can use it for these future steps,
or steps two and five or others.
 44

[Next slide shows:

1. Ten percent Tithing.

2. Ten percent Savings.

3. Eighty percent Live on the rest.]

Now what you do is when you have this twenty percent, this ten percent tithing that’s paid
first, ten percent savings, and eighty percent—you’re now living on the rest, or this eighty
percent. If you follow this plan, this ten-ten-eighty plan, and these principles, you, no matter
what you make, you will always pay your tithing first. Because of that the Lord will always
bless you, you may not have everything that you want or desire but you will have what you
need. You will also be able to save, no matter how much you make, because the eighty
percent that you live on after that, that’s what needs to be managed. So let’s go to what
that eighty percent might look like.

[Next slide shows:

1. Ten percent Tithing.

2. Ten percent Savings.

3. Eighty percent Live on the rest:

A. Needs- Prioritize according to survival.

a. Food.

b. Clothing.
 45

c. Shelter.

d. Utilities.

e. Minimum Debt Payments.

f. Insurance.]

I have people imagine in their mind that they are stranded on a deserted island. Now this is
a beautiful island, [The background of the slide is a picture of an island with very clear blue
water and a very nice looking beach with pretty palm trees and different plants.] who
wouldn’t want to be stranded here? Well, it depends, but for the sake of argument here,
let's just focus on survival. You were dropped off on this beautiful island, you might play a
little bit in the water, but then you start to think, “Gee, I’m hungry. I need some food.”
Clothing is nice to protect you from the elements so you don’t sunburn and chap and all
those other issues that come to protect your body, and shelter. Those are the first three,
food, clothing, and shelter, that you need for short to long term survival. The clock is ticking,
so if you land on an island and you’re searching for food, and shelter, and clothing, that’s
really what you need to be doing first; that’s the top priority. And the next few are
somewhat to be discussed but, obviously, if you had—we’re kind of going beyond the island
now—but if you had to apply this to your own home you want to make sure you’re
providing food, clothing, and shelter for you and your family and the home that you live in.
You want to make sure that the utilities are being paid, so that you can cook the food or
keep the food, or keep people protected and warm inside that shelter, utilities almost go as
a subset of shelter. The next two minimum debt payments. You don’t want to get behind in
paying your credit card bills and then try to pay up later, things just compound and you
could get sent to collections and other things that are kind of nasty. So, make sure you’re up
on the minimum debt payments. And this last one there is to pay insurance. Insurance, car
insurance, home insurance, those necessities you have life insurance and things, helps so in
case there is an emergency so that families don’t go into further chaos or debt, or both.

Now, these are the priorities that I suggest, but you and your family need to come up with
your own priorities. This is research-based and brought from several courses that I teach on,
debt management and credit improvement, and family finances.

Now, once you have your needs taken care of, then as a couple I kind of look at the boat.
Hey you’ve got this little place built on your hypothetical island and you’re doing okay, now
maybe you want to go explore another island.
 46

[Next slide shows:

1. Ten percent Tithing.

2. Ten percent Savings.

3. Eighty percent Live on the rest:

A. Needs- Prioritize according to survival.

a. Food.

b. Clothing.

c. Shelter.

d. Utilities.

e. Minimum Debt Payments.

f. Insurance.

B. Wants-Prioritize based on your Shared Money Future:

a. Regular.

b. Flexible.
 47

c. Periodic.]

And so I have couples think about what their wants might be. What are their future goals?
Your needs should be prioritized according to your survival but they should also be based on
your values. What do you share, what are your shared values as a couple? Your wants
should be based on those future money goals—your money future. They may be regular,
you know, monthly sort of things, maybe flexible vacation, periodic expenses that might
come up on a quarterly basis, or once in a while not sure when that might happen, a quick
getaway or maybe even Christmas. So if you look at these two lists, you have your needs
and your wants. So, then how do you divide your eighty percent for the rest. Well once you
have it all prioritized, you essentially list out every single category, every single expense, and
as a couple, you decide together what’s the most important, and what’s the second most,
what’s the third most, and you list it down in priority. If you have a list of forty different
expenses or fifty different expenses, you’re probably not too far off. Most people are
between twenty to forty, that might give you an idea. What’s important is that you take the
eighty percent that you have to live on and with that dollar figure you place starting with
your top priority here—maybe it’s food like I suggested— and go straight down the list until
you are finished, until there are no dollars left. Once you have portioned out this eighty
percent then you can really convince yourself, tell yourself, show yourself, that you are
living and working on your financial values and goals. Your money is going toward those
things that you value the most, tithing, savings, then your needs, and your wants.

The issue that the world has today is they want everything and there's a lot of interesting
ideas about how we should spread wealth throughout, and we’re not getting into that
sociological economic talk today too much, but the advertising of our time is really focused
on those things that we want. Insomuch that they call them our needs. They get these two
mixed up: what do we need for survival versus what do we really want. And my idea that
goes along with this very research-based as far as financial management, is that often times
we get confused between survival and recreation. There are a lot of things that if push came
to shove, if you lost your job, if you were in a situation where somebody was disabled for a
period of time, if somebody passed away and they were the breadwinner, imagine what you
actually absolutely needed, again this is being on that island. Those things that we suggest
are a need, a lot of times it might just be really high prioritized wants, and this is a very hard
lesson for people to learn.

I learned this at an early age, and early on in our marriage, my wife and I thought we had
certain things that were needs, and with a job change, an income that dropped significantly,
and some other issues there with a business that went sour and belly up, we had to re-
prioritize to the point where we knew exactly what we needed and we knew exactly what
we thought we needed and move those to the wants pile. We put off wants for a long time
until we were able to recalibrate and get back into having both needs and wants that were
 48

in our eighty percent range. I think a lot of people have a hard time with budgeting because
they see it so constrictive, but if you do it this way and you actually prioritize together, then
you can satisfy needs and hopefully some of the wants that you have. Now what might
happen is something at the very bottom, maybe one of these expenses down at the very
bottom that you have, you feel is really needed, your spouse might not think of it as much
so, and so you might have some contention there about, well I think this is a higher-up
priority, and the important part is that you decide those things together. The important is
that you’re not funding those things at the very bottom, that you are funding those things at
the top. And as your income increases, there may be additional funds to go towards those
eighty percent. Some will choose to try and limit those needs, and those expenses of those
needs, and instead as income increases, we’ll put more into savings or might even pay more
to tithing or fast offerings, or charitable giving. So how that works with helping other people
and being charitable, the Lord wants us to help out the less fortunate. And Elder Patrick
Kearon in April 2016 conference said, “If you are asking ‘What can I do?’ let us first
remember that we should not serve at the expense of our families and other
responsibilities.” He is thinking and talking to us about what’s going on in the world with
helping less fortunate, helping those who are at a difficult crossroads with potential wars
and rumors of wars throughout the world. So we need to remember that our family really
should be number one. We should help those as we can. He says in Mosiah chapter four,
verse twenty-seven he quotes this and says, “And see that all these things are done in
wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength …
all things must be done in order.” This priority list of the ten-ten-eighty allows us to put our
needs up there. If one of your needs is to help those less fortunate than you, and as a
couple decide that needs to be at the top of the list or at the top of the wants list or
wherever that is, that’s up to you, but remember this caution that your needs should be
taken care of and to take care of your own family means that someone else doesn't have to.
I think that’s a really important principle.

In fact I was at BYU, close to graduating, my wife and I went to a hunger dinner, that’s what
they used to call them at that point, I’m not sure if it is now. We showed up and they
divided us out into separate groups. One group got a three course meal, sitting at nice
tables and chairs, randomly chosen. The other group had pizza and soda and things, and
they got to sit in these little futons. And then there were us, we got chosen to be in this
lower echelon group, we had to sit on the floor and share rice with other people in the
group. It was a really interesting perspective because, here we are thinking most of us are
eating at the table, or at least in the middle group, but there's a large portion of the world
who are living in third world countries, who are eating the rice together and that’s what
they subside on. And that was an eye-opening experience for me, but the lady that gave this
presentation said, you know a lot of us want to quickly go and help because we’re
charitable, we’re kind, we want to do this, we want to help out. But if we’re not careful and
we’re spending too much of our resources and time and energy on helping others before we
are helping ourselves, we could end up being the ones on the street. So it’s important that
we do take care of ourselves and do those things in order.
 49

So how do we do that? How do we keep things in order? Welcome to money tracking. Most
people hate this. This is what they think is budgeting. Okay, let’s come up with a financial
diet, and we’ll stick to it, we’ll never binge spend, we’ll never diet so much that it hurts.
Well, I kind of relate this budgeting topic to dieting because a lot of the time dieting is only
effective short term. Budgeting, a lot of times, has that same effect. It is very short term
effectiveness. But we want to be able to track your expenses long term by having it based
on this ten-ten-eighty spending plan. Your plan, it’s you and your spouse or you and your
family that have come up with it. Well, there is a principle plan called envelopes based
money tracking, and what you do, and this was a long time ago when we principally
operated with cash as our currency. Now it’s cards, right, debit cards, and others, credit
cards, and things, but nowadays we don’t use these envelopes. What they used to do is take
out the cash that you needed for that month and have like this person does, kind of an
expense, itemized expense sheet there taped to the envelope, and you might have an
envelope for groceries, one for car payment, one for mortgage, one for utilities, etc. Well
the great thing about it was you’d pull the cash from the envelope and when it was gone, it
was gone. You’re not breaking any piggy banks open, you’re not going to take a loan out or
go into your overdraft account, or your credit card, it was it. It was cash only. What this did,
this envelopes based type of tracking allowed people to learn how to change their
behaviors. Nowadays I’ll give you a twenty-first-century update to this and we’ll talk about
how this might work for you. But the principle that really works really well is that you learn
to set money aside in advance and this helps you so that when you’re essentially envelopes
budgeting or tracking, that you’re able to know what you have left. You can look at that
envelope and say, “Gee, we only have fifty dollars left in groceries, we better make this last
for one more week,” or whatever you’re trying to figure out. So that gives you an idea of
what you have left. Most people look at their bank account and go, “Gee I have X amount of
dollars, certainly I can afford this.” At the same time, forgetting that they had two or three
other transactions that have already cleared or they’re coming out automatically, they really
don’t know where they’re at in their account. Most couples I worked with that I’ve set them
up on this type of tracking all of a sudden found great stress relief. It was wonderful to be
able to say, this is where we’re at, and they would be able to track that each day. Now, what
I do recommend and string space research backs this up, and there are several courses with
the church level, at the ward level where family and financial courses that have also picked
up on this and recommend this, that one person, doesn’t matter who, husband or wife,
tracks this. They’re the one who inputs the transactions and knows what’s coming out of
each envelope. It’s even better if both of you are involved but at least one person tracks it.
At your money time what I recommend is that’s when you both look and see where you’re
at, at least, and talk about, hey, what is left in this category? Can we afford to do this now
that this has happened? And have that communication, so you’re not arguing about it when
it becomes an issue or if it becomes an issue.
 50

Now the next part of this is really allowing you then to have more freedom. When you have
more decisions, or when you have more information you can make better decisions. So, if
you look at it this way, you can make informed decisions by putting off a purchase, and you
can say, you know what, it would be really nice to have a new washer and dryer, but we’re
going to make this work for a little bit longer and buy this part for it instead of buying a
brand new dryer. Maybe you’d purchase something less expensive—maybe a used dryer if it
goes out. Or you might transfer from another envelope that has a little bit of excess. Maybe
you didn’t need to do a whole bunch of car maintenance, and your home needed some
maintenance there for the washer and dryer, so you switch that over for that month. It gives
you some freedom, and it allows you to experience this patience by putting things off. It
forces you to maybe look at other options, instead of going to the movies every date that
you go on maybe you stream something online or borrow a friend's movie from someone in
the neighborhood or whatever. These give you options and it may actually be that once in a
while you take money from one envelope to the other. Some people are purists of this
envelopes based budgeting would frown on that third option, but I think it’s an option that
is very doable.

Now, what’s great about this, if you get so good at tracking that you know where every
dollar might be going and every cent is going, that whatever is leftover I think that at the
end of the month, if you’re good at it, you can carry over, right—it’s like those carry over
minutes. They get rolled over to the next month, or you might just take what’s left in those
envelopes and shift it to a savings account, starting fresh. Well, if you were using cash, this
would simply be what’s left in those envelopes in the end of the month, you take all that
cash and put it back into your bank account or put it in a savings account, or if it’s still cash
maybe you put that in a secure place at home that’s locked up.

Well, in the twenty-first century, you know, it’s great. We’ve got the envelopes, you can use
cash, there’s some major issues with that. One is that it could get stolen, you could lose your
cash and it’s not coming back, I know I’ve lost money and I’ve found money, and I know it
happens to other people too. Well, what several companies have done is created envelopes
based type of budgeting. I know Ramsey has a tool, I know there’s a BYU graduate who’s an
accounting grad through BYU that created YNAB, or You Need A Budget. Similar principles
and actually one that I’ve used, envelopes is another software tool that allows for an app on
your phone and on your tablet and things and it’s envelopes or mobile envelopes app so
that you can track and keep track of your spending in every different category. Try them
out, see which one might work the best for you. For years, my wife and I created our own
and we’ve used a tracking tool, just straight out of excel, so whatever works best for you
that you’re going to continue to do, something that you’re going to continue to use with no
excuses, do that one and my challenge is that you start tracking your money. Now what
happens is you might have done the ten-ten-eighty set up here and you have it all organized
and this great in theory but when you started tracking it for this first month, you might
realize, gee we don’t spend ten dollars a week eating out, we spend seventy-five. And then
 51

you can look at those areas or trouble spots, look at those areas you’re doing really well at,
and decided to make any changes as necessary. I always have people do this kind of in
reverse, I have them start tracking everything they do for a month and then I have couples
build up their priorities so then they know exactly what they’ve been spending. Either way is
fine, you might just say forget it I’m going to skip that step of tracking and to find out we’re
just going to guess and get started. The fact that you can start tracking your money is the
crucial part and the fact that you can be working on that ten-ten-eighty, tithing, savings, and
then focus on the rest, that eighty percent is crucial for your survival.

In a book that I’ll mention later on, it’s called The Millionaire Next Door, Stanley and Donco
researched millionaires and they found that the millionaires were really millionaires because
they were frugal and they also made a good income. If you make a great income but you’re
spending it all and still going into debt, well you have nothing to show for it and you don’t
have the savings, this retirement and funds that are available so that you can go on missions
or do other things you want to the rest of your life, the end of your life, that kind of thing.
They found that the majority of Americans actually are living paycheck to paycheck because
they don’t know how to do ten-ten-eighty, what’s also interesting though is back to this
discussion of needs and wants, unfortunately some people have the needs and wants mixed
up, that they’ve got the big screen TV at home but they may actually be looking for
handouts. Unfortunately, a lot of people on welfare do have cable TV and they see that as a
need. So it’s something that I think regardless of which way you start with, either tracking
your money or starting off with the ten-ten-eighty plan, I think if you can do them both and
work with those together, it’ll be a really solid way to be and it’ll help you.

In the research that I’ve done with the case studies just recently, most couples mention
when they were finally able to get to this third class, this part where they learned how to
really work together and track their money and they can communicate about it and they
kept their Monday money nights, they felt like this was really all worth it; when they finally
got to this point and they were finally able to be on that same team. There is something
called financial intimacy. Financial intimacy is real, people that have good financial intimacy,
couples that have good financial intimacy, can honestly say that they trust each other in this
area. There are those who commit financial infidelity. Couples experience this when a
spouse goes off, like I mentioned in an earlier example, maybe buys a car without them
knowing or a house even. I’ve heard it plenty of times, unfortunately, to make that a joke,
but it does happen to people and you will even find as you start tracking your money
together, you become more honest with each other. Now that doesn’t mean you become
militant and you have handcuffs on each other. I would avoid that, in fact in one of you
wants categories you may want to make sure each of you have a little bit to spend on your
own that is just a set amount that you each can spend so you don’t feel so constricted,
because I know a lot of people worry about that, he’s always wondering what I’m spending,
or she’s always wondering what I’m spending. If that becomes the fight, I’d say be careful.
Make sure that you’re doing this together, one person is at least doing it, is doing the
 52

tracking, or the other person is checking in. Or if you’re both doing it make sure that you’re
not being militant about it and have charity and patience with each other while you’re
learning. And then that last tip there is to have your own savings, and maybe decide what
kind of priority that is in your wants, that you each can spend out of those, your own
accounts. When I was first started as a financial advisor I had a manager who said this was
their mad money, and mad money was, well if you don’t want to make your spouse mad
make sure that she has an account that she can spend out of, I think that’s good advice, but
I’ll be silent on that now.

We’re going to go to these next few steps. The steps four through seven [The slide with the
7 Family-Financial Rules is shown with the steps four through seven that are being read in
order.], creating a financial plan based on your shared future goals, purchasing the right
kinds of insurance—basically having a review of what those insurances are as part of your
financial plan. And then six, reducing debt and investing according to your shared future
goals and then number seven, protect and give wealth depending upon your achieved
shared goals. So, having experiences as a financial advisor and planner, this is where a lot of
the times I would enter the picture, at four through seven; this was my job to help people
do these steps. Some people do this on their own, there’s software out there, there’s books
you can read, again you can follow various guru’s and things and kind of learn on your own.
In the experience that I’ve had though, most couples starting off, younger couples, even
couples who you think are doing well, in their forty or fifties, have a lot of work to do on
steps one through three, and I spend a great deal of time working on step one, trying to
help them to establish the shared goals, what’s their vision, because if they have a shared
goal or vision then creating a plan, then that’s really simple, but if they didn’t have the
shared goals and vision I presented a plan, a financial plan to them, there was not a whole
lot of buy in to carrying out the recommendations and all the experience that I learned on
the job but then in the classroom of understanding motivation. If people don’t have these
clear set goals there isn’t a whole lot of motivation to achieve that, they partially think they
know what they are, that might help but once it’s clearly set in stone, they can go for it after
that. But how do you do this?

Well, again, you can do this on your own, there’s software, there’s place where you can go, I
don’t have the time to explain that all to you today, there’s plenty of resources online to
look at, but what I am going to give you some advice on, if you’re going to hire somebody or
several somebodies, to help you to achieve steps four through seven, here’s what I
recommend: There are certified professionals and these certified professionals you might
not have even heard of them before, but they both have what’s called a fiduciary standard,
meaning their set to work for you before they’re set to do what’s right for them. Therefore,
they should be doing the right thing for your situation.
 53

The first one is a financial counselor. A financial counselor is someone that really should be
helping you with steps one through three, helping you do some budgeting, helping you to
understand your goals and achieve those goals. A financial planner, as I’ve mentioned in the
past, a financial planner helps you really with steps four through seven. A financial
counselor and planner, I could spend a whole lot of time talking about each of them, I’m just
going to give some basic bullet points on each one. A counselor uses counseling techniques.
They’re not a therapist but they use counseling techniques, active listening, motivational
interviewing, those kinds of techniques to help you. They’re not going to diagnose you,
they’re not going to shrink you, it’s not that kind of counselor. They’re simply going to talk
with you and walk you through, help you to change your behavior so that you could reach
your financial goals. They may be remedial, preventative, or productive. Remedial simply
refers to maybe helping you to get out of debt because you’re in such a bad situation, it may
be preventative, helping you to prepare for maybe going back to school, starting a business,
whatever, knowing what might be coming, here’s what you might potentially look at, or
productive. Productive is on maybe the savings side, not so much investing, you don’t have
license to give advice on investment advice, but they are trained in financial practices.
They’ve taken the courses that I actually teach at another university full-time. I do this to
help train financial counselors so that they can go out and help people who might need a
little bit of help short term. Financial counseling is not a long term process, it really is a short
term process. They often will act as a coach and watch you and help train you to have better
financial habits. The title is Accredited Financial Counselor, and I am a member of the
AFCPE, which is the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education, and the
actual certification is the accredited financial counselor certification. So if someone has an
AFC, they can definitely help you with steps one through three, and what’s great about
them is their fiduciary standard. Fiduciary means that, once again, they are, by law, held up
the ethical standards, where they must help you with steps one, two, and three, according
to what's best for you, not what’s best for them. Well, why would someone go to one?
That’s a great question that a lot of people ask me. Often times you meet with a financial
counselor when you’re getting help for a reverse mortgage, or first-time home-buying
program, or someone might go to them after filing for bankruptcy. A lot of times, it is on
their remedial side—it’s getting out of debt. Dave Ramsey might be considered a financial
counselor but he’s not accredited but he kind of acts in that capacity a lot of the time.

Now, the other side of this, in steps four through seven, is having a financial planner. A
financial planner creates financial plans for clients and typically a financial planner will get
paid to create the plan. The financial counselor on the other hand, oftentimes you’ll be
paying that person per visit or per hour. Sometimes a financial planner will charge you an
hourly rate to meet with them and create a plan. Now, don’t get confused between financial
planner and financial advisor, we’ll talk about an advisor in a second. Financial planner helps
to analyze the difference between the clients’ goals and the current financial situation. So in
step four, we’ll go back to step four, let’s go back here to this slide, they’re going to create
that plan but their job is to help create that plan based on your shared future goals, not
their shared future goals. If you meet with a planner who’s pushing their agenda or their
 54

desire for you, they’re not the right planner and you should see someone else. But back to
this idea, financial planning is actually a process. It is not licensed, a financial counselor
doesn’t have a license and sometimes will sometimes carry the AFC designation. I have been
acting as a financial counselor for many years, have not even known about the AFCPE and
have not even sat for the AFC myself, but those who do sit for that know these practices
we’re talking about and you can be certain that they do. But some financial planners, similar
to financial counselors, don’t have a designation as a financial planner. There’s no license to
be a financial counselor or financial planner. So by law, people can call themselves a
financial planner, financial counselor, without any ramification, so be careful who you’re
talking to. It’s wise to meet with someone who is an AFC or in this case a CFP, for a Certified
Financial Planner. Now, a certified financial planner creates a team—and this is really
important—of financial advisors and product specialists. Sometimes the financial planner,
and actually most times, a financial planner is also a financial advisor, or they may be an
insurance agent. The plan is separate from their recommendations or advice as a financial
advisor.
(certified professional – Financial Counselor)
So for example, if you went to a financial planner, they built a plan for you and they charged
you to do the financial plan, well then they may or may not have license to give the
recommendations, and they may come back and say you should do this type of investment,
this type of investment. If they’re going to give you advice on investing then they really
should be registered as a series six, sixty-three, sixty-five, or series seven, to be able to do
that to discuss mutual funds, annuities, stocks, oil and gas, that kind of a thing, depending
on their license. And they would give you recommendations based on that. As a financial
planner, although you can create a plan and give that plan to a client, you do not have
license to give financial recommendations. This is where the government steps in and says,
no there needs to be a license for financial advisors, also for insurance agents, or product
specialists.

Now let’s look at what those people are, as we know this is also, a financial planner is also as
a fiduciary standard and they help with steps four through seven. Now different advisors,
we just talked about investment advisor or financial advisor gives investment advice. An
accountant or a CPA gives tax advice. An attorney gives legal advice. And so a financial
planner might again create a team of these financial advisors to help with carrying out those
recommendations. The planner may just say, okay now it’s time for me to turn you over to
this investment advisor, financial advisor, or you should take this and go to your tax
accountant and see what he says, or he may actually involve all three of those people and
provide that service for you. That really depends on the type of service your financial
planner gives, and you would want to know that at your free consultation typically financial
planners give.
 55

Now a product specialist is a broker, for example, might sell an investment product. Or an
insurance agent that sells insurance product. A banker sells a loan product. A mortgage
officer sells mortgage product. Real estate agent sells real estate as a form of investment. So
these different product specialists may also be working as a financial planner, some of which
may create a plan for you and then they have in their best interest, to sell you a product. I’d
be very wary of those who are insurance agents or real estate agents or just a broker who’s
selling investment products who is creating a free plan for you. The reason being, if they’re
creating a free financial plan, they may not have the actual education or experience to
create a comprehensive financial plan. A CFP has been through the necessary courses, has
taken the test, and does at least have a certification. There are other certifications, there’s
CHFC, CLU, I just don’t want to bore you with the dozens of them that are out there. You can
go to FINRA and look up the different designations and what they mean, but most people
just don’t have a clue.

CFP is the most recognized for financial planner. An investment product advisor, or product
salesperson, a lot of times wants to be seen as a financial planner, my issue—and this is
Brother Parry’s personal issue with the industry is, unfortunately, they’ll give you a free
financial plan but then they have an interest in selling you their product. The problem with
that is it may not be the right fit, so they might switch or edit, or manipulate the numbers in
the financial plan to show that you need to buy more of their product. I say may because
there are ethical people out there as well, and some, I think the most ethical ones who are
selling insurance, who are selling bank loans simply come out and say listen, I’m not
financial planner, that’s not what we do, we can give you a little analysis of what’s going on
and then this is definitely the product that we sell and we want to help because we think it’s
the best option. And that’s fine, but be wary of those who masquerade as financial planners
and who are product specialists. In my experience these financial planners will help on steps
four through seven by creating this team of advisors, investment, accountant, attorneys,
and even having as part of the plan, these product specialists who they can turn to then say
as a third party, being uninterested, I’m going to refer you to these couple of people, or
bring them in to tell you about what products they have that can actually help you with your
situation. Unfortunately, not everybody does that. I understand that’s a little unique for this
industry. Some of you listening may even be licensed to do some of this or know someone in
your family who is, hopefully this helps to explain the difference here between these
professionals down to the specialists themselves.

Now what we’ve talked about in this class is how to really achieve steps one, two, and three.
One, two, and three, again, a financial counselor is set and ready to help you to do that and
sometimes even part of step six, to help reduce debt. But really four through seven for the
majority should be where a financial planner helps you out, or if you want to act as your
own and hire product specialist or hire someone to help you out with purchasing insurance
and you find an agent that does that, that’s great, or if you’re the project specialist yourself,
that’s great, just know number four through seven should be done in this order. You really
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should have the correct type of insurance so that you’re not going in to further debt and so
if there’s a major catastrophe in step five here that in step six that you’re able to invest with
confidence and then step seven be able to protect that that you've built.

Well, so far what we’ve talked about and all of these courses or this minicourse and all these
classes is ways to help you psychologically, relationally, and now externally. These are all
built on the idea of creating shared values and goals for your marriage and for your family
and how you can become successful to obtain all of these goals. I teach this, again, in private
practice and for another university and so this is what I do every day. This is how I reach out
to help families and what I felt my calling is to do, but I want to kind of bring us up to a three
thousand foot level and look at not only—and obviously it’s an American flag here, and
others who don’t live in America, it’s still understandably a good principle to understand
here, that the promised land was given to us from God as a place of prosperity.

As saints, as Latter-day Saints, wherever we live can be like Zion, and wherever we live we
can be prosperous if we follow the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to show you that in fourth
Nephi, as most of us know (I’m going to share these last few thoughts and I’ll be done with
this course) that the greatest prosperity that existed and the greatest peace that existed
was in America. In fourth Nephi chapter one, verse fifteen to twenty-three, there’s snippets
here but there’s [Verse 15] “...no contention in the land because of the love of God that did
dwell in the hearts of the people.” This was after Christ came to visit the Nephites and the
Lamanites in America. Verse sixteen, “surely there could not be a happier people who had
been created by the hand of God.” Not a happier people, amazing peaceful time. [Verse 17]
“Nor any manner of -ites; but they were one the children of Christ.” So there were no
Nephites or Lamanites, they were all one, they called themselves the children on Christ. This
was the first generation after Christ had come to visit them.

Now in verse twenty-two, we skip ahead. “The second generation had all passed away save
it were a few.” By second generation we see that they had all become exceedingly rich. So,
first came great peace and second came great prosperity because of the prosperity of
Christ. And we see that the prosperity of Christ became because of their obedience because
they were one, because they were unified in this society and together as children of Christ,
not necessarily because it doesn’t say much about the type of government of their leaders, I
really want to focus in on because they were righteous. As we are righteous, the Lord will
bless us. Again, with tithing to what our needs are, but we see in the Book of Mormon that
we typically call the pride cycle, and I want to pose an interesting thought here at the very
end.

So what do we do, Brother Parry, as we become prosperous? We know what happens to

these people. We know that they become a fallen people because of their pride. In verse
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twenty-four it continues, “and there began to be those who are lifted up in pride, wearing of
costly apparel and of the fine things of the world.” Now this is the second and into the third
generation, and verse twenty-five, “and they began to be divided into classes, and they
build up churches unto themselves to get gain, and began to deny the true church of Christ.”
So they set up churches to essentially be anti-christian and anti the peace and prosperity
that was given. They started to think that they did it themselves, and if we go further down
to verse forty, now we’re into the fourth generation, “and the more wicked part of the
people did wax strong and became exceedingly more numerous than were the people of
God.” This is the turning point here. There was more wicked than there were children of
Christ, and verse forty-two, “the people began again to build up the secret oaths and
combination of Gadianton.” This kind of seals the deal here, as soon as they turn towards
these secret oaths their society began to just disintegrate. And we know what happens, we
know the Nephites were utterly destroyed on the face of the earth with Mormon even dying
and Moroni taking the plates and seeking refuge. And verse forty-six, “and there were none
that were righteous,” none. Not just a few, none, “save it were the disciples of Jesus.” It is
an interesting point and it actually should be, see fourth Nephi chapter one verse twenty-
four through forty-six, you get the picture. The point is, these people were the greatest,
they had the most peace, but within three generations because of their pride, they become
a fallen people. Here, that’s the spiritual aspect. This book I speak of, the millionaire next
door, by Stanley and Danko, they write about how people can become prosperous and the
secrets behind America’s wealthy is what they advertise it to be. Essentially, there really is
no secret, it’s working hard, being frugal, having a good job, and not spending all of your
money. Learning how to be a saver and learning how to spend less than what you make,
staying out of debt, being frugal, a lot of what we’re taught as members of the church.

What’s interesting to me is it’s because it’s the first generation, they found that a lot of
millionaires were actually second-generation immigrants. Their first-generation parents had
come over from, you name the country, to America, the melting pot of the world, and
because of American exceptionalism and opportunity, were able to work really hard, give up
a lot of things and even though they may have been really well-read or had exceptional
wealth in whatever country that they left, a lot of them had nothing when they started in
America and were working two or three jobs to put their kids through school. Well, it’s that
second-generation that prospered. It’s that second-generation that we find out in this book
that learned from their parents and saw how blessed they were, but knew that they needed
to be frugal like their parents. So when they were able to go to good schools and get good
jobs, they were then able to avoid overspending and keep things within their eighty-
percent, as we talked about in the ten-ten-eighty, and not overspend, and not live like the
rest of America, and frankly a lot of the western world that’s on the edge of their income,
not having anything saved up prepared for an emergency, and like typical Americans they
overspend, go into debt, and wonder what they’re doing, and end up having financial
mismanagement. Well just like this second generation, they were blessed and they had the
prosperity of Christ, they were definitely blessed. But interestingly in this text, the
Millionaire Next Door, by the third generation, the third generation had actually realized
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that, hey, mom and dad, they saw mom and dad in their growing up years. The second
generation, they saw them as being wealthy, having their needs and wants. That third
generation didn’t work nearly as hard as the second or the first, and so we find, in a
millionaire next door research, that the third generation oftentimes become either trust
fund babies, meaning they live off, or try to live off that second generation, their parents
because they become wealthy, or they never become wealthy themselves because they
overspend, they’re not frugal. So we need to be able to teach this next generation and not
end up like the Nephites did and even some of the Lamanites who started to obey
Gadianton and follow that path there and to even slay their own people because after the
Lamanites and Nephites, the nephites were destroyed then the lamanites began a war
among themselves. So, what we do understand, bible scripture and research, is there’s a
caution. The caution is: yes! Let’s understand something psychologically, and relationally,
and externally our finances and put them in order and achieve our goals, but if we’re not
careful and we are being blessed for because of our righteousness, and we can end up like
our third generation in both books.

President Kim B. Clark, in February 2007, he came up with this idea of stopping the cycle of
pride. [A graph titled Stopping the Cycle of Pride appears on the screen. This is a circular
flowchart. He goes on to list the contents of the flowchart in succession.] This is from a
presentation that he gave at BYU-Idaho, where he looked at this cycle and just as we know,
the pride cycle. Righteousness brings blessings, which unfortunately brings pride, which
causes wickedness and destruction, and then people become humble again, and it’s
righteous, blessings, and we do this all over, and over, and over, and over again. Well, this is
what he referenced in that talk of how to stop it. In D&C thirty-eight, eighteen and thirty-
nine, “and I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a
land flowing with milk and honey. And if ye seek the riches which it is the will of the Father
to give unto you, ye shall be the richest of all people,” this is a revelation to the Saints, “for
ye shall have the riches of eternity, and it must needs be that the riches of the earth are
mine to give, but beware of pride, lest ye become as the Nephites of old.” The Lord wants to
bless us, he wants to bless us with temporal and spiritual aspects of our lives. So what if,
instead of going through this cycle, we were able to cut the pride out? What if we were
able, instead of the pride cycle it became the prosperity cycle? [An edited version of the
previous circular flowchart appears. There is a red line separating Pride, Wickedness, and
Destruction from Righteousness, Blessings, and Humility and Repentance. A new arrow was
inserted, connecting Blessings to Humility and Repentance.] What if we were righteous, we
were blessed, but then we were humble? Righteous, blessed, and we were humble. How
can we as a people, how do we exemplify that? How do we do that? How do we do that
even as an individual? What can we do? Well I personally believe, and I know that Elder
Clark agrees with me on this one because I looked at his presentation, and frankly find
Moroni seven holds the answer. Moroni seven, verse forty-seven, “Charity is the pure love
of Christ.” Charity is equal to humility. So no matter where we are, no matter how righteous
we are, or how blessed we are because of the prosperity of Christ, if we can always give that
ten percent and more based on what we’re blessed with, that we can continue to give back,
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that we can continue to help other people, we can take our time and those things that we’re
blessed with financially to help the kingdom of God, to move forward the Lord will continue
to bless us. Unfortunately there are those who follow these principles at first and they
definitely go through the steps, the process, and they forget the Lord, they become proud,
and some leave the church, and hence we have both spiritual destruction and maybe they
still are prosperous, maybe they still are rich, but Brother Parry I know so and so who’s rich,
and he’s left the church and etc, so do I. We all know these people.

I’ve studied the gospels, I’ve studied the Book of Mormon, I've studied the old testament for
the word prosperity and I've been focusing on their prosperity cycle a lot lately, and
understand that the Lord allows people to be prospered, even in their wickedness. But
because of that, because of their pride and wickedness, until they are basically forced
through destruction to be humble and it may be too late for that, they miss out on the
spiritual blessing that come. So be careful as we compare ourselves, to really look at our
own lives and say, how am I doing here? Where is my charity? But remember the previous
warning about not doing more than first providing for your family. I’m talking about once
you’re being blessed, once you are prospering, you’re achieving these goals, definitely
definitely remember the Lord by being charitable, serve in the church, help other people, be
kind with the resources you’ve been given, and really it’s this idea of thinking that we can do
everything on our own, it is not conducive with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the grace of
Christ. Yes, the scripture talks about after all that we can do, however, that all that we can
do is really just a tiny tiny little thing compared to what the Lord has already done for each
and every one of us, and I want to end this minicourse with my testimony of Christ. I know it
is through the grace of Christ that we are saved. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his
poverty might be rich.” Second Corinthians, chapter eight, verse nine. I find this to be a
wonderful, poetic, and fantastic description of what I feel about how the Lord blesses us. I
hope this has been helpful. I hope that you’ve learned a few things about the specialty that
I've studied and really come to understand and help other people with and that is through
this class and family relations one sixty, this could be something that you carry on and apply
and learn from and teach other people. Especially since every principle of the gospel will
always come back to Jesus Christ as that’s where it’s truly started from. He was rich, he was
the king of the universe, the son of God himself, sat on the right hand of God and was given
the task and accepted the mission to come here, volunteered to come here for our sakes, to
go beneath everything, and experience everything so that he can lift us up and that we
might become spiritually rich and spiritually able to be with God again. I promise you if you
follow these principles, these are research-based, these are gospel-based, and principles will
bless your life. It will bless other people, and I leave you my testimony that these things are
true and they’ve been tried and tested, and verified researched, and they work, and I’ll
leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.