How To Save More Than $20,000!

• May 9, 2008
• Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D.
• 2 comments

You may be thinking: “what is this guy doing? He is all about staying married, and suddenly he is all about how to save money!” Well, bear with me for a minute. And remember what Ben Franklin said, “a penny saved is a penny earned.” So, if you follow this advice, you can basically write yourself a check for $20K. If that doesn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what would!

OK, to be honest, you may actually save less, but you MAY save WAY MORE! Are you interested? If I could tell you how to save $20K, therefore adding $20K to your worth, would you do it? I would!

Are you ready for the secret? Because I am giving it away for free.

Two sentences will reveal the secret: Stay married. Don’t get divorced.

The average cost of a divorce in the U.S. is now $20,000. That is the average legal expense and related costs, court fees, and loss of assets. It does not include the lost future earnings potentials, does not take into account the added expense of two households, does not get near the emotional costs to the spouses, children, or families. It does not address any of the collateral losses.

So, if you stay married, you have just saved at least $20,000.

I don’t really expect that too many people will opt to stay married purely on financial reasons. But this is one factor that tends to be completely overlooked. And no wonder! Attorneys would rather you not know this! An attorney’s job is based on that cost.

Now before you label me another person digging at attorneys, I do know many attorneys that try to get the couple to reconcile. But I also hear the stories where the client says “can we stop the process?” and the attorney pushes the client to keep going. I recognize that, just as I (a marriage therapist and preservationist) have a vested interest in helping to keep marriages together, attorneys have a vested interest in helping to take them apart.

So if your marriage is in trouble, write yourself a check for $20K, then figure out if your marriage can be saved. Ask yourself: “Have I done everything I can to get us back together? Have I done what I can to improve the relationship? Have I really worked to get back together?”

You see, I think our culture just takes divorce too lightly. We pretend that it solves problems. In reality, it creates many more problems than it solves. It increases human impact on the environment, impacts the children of divorce for a lifetime, creates painful emotional conflicts for the couple, destroys finances, divides the social circle of a family, and happens to almost 1 in 2 marriages.

I always reflect on the beginning of a marriage, the marriage vows. Usually, they amount to love, honoring, and respecting someone in good times or bad, sickness and health, poverty and wealth. There isn’t much left over after that! We have full control over the love, honoring and respecting as ways of relating when the things we can’t control (good, bad, sick, healthy, poor, wealthy) come our way.

By building a healthy marriage, you have just improved your finances by $20,000 or more. That may be enough rationale to give it a try!

********************
More marriage saving information can be found in my ebook, available by CLICKING HERE.