I recently sat down with Chuck Bentley, CEO of Crown Financial, to chat and he shared some great advice on marriage and finances.
You can watch the video or read the full transcription below.
Bob Lotich: Hey everybody, I am excited today because I have Chuck Bentley here, the CEO of Crown Financial, which is just one of my favorite organizations. They’re just the biggest Christian financial ministry out there and they’re doing some awesome things for the Kingdom.
Bob Lotich: Chuck is just an awesome guy who I’ve looked up to for years, so I’m just so honored just to be able to speak with him today and to bring him on the podcast and to do a video with him.
Bob Lotich: We’re going to be talking a little bit about marriage and money. Chuck wrote a book kind of tackling some of the issues with this, so we’re going to talk a little bit about that. But chuck, that you so much for taking some time out of your schedule to come hang and to help our readers and listeners.
Chuck Bentley: Well, thank you Bob. I want to just return the compliment. We’ve been big fans of yours for a long time from the day you started. I remember the buzz around our office, “There’s some guy doing Christian personal finance and he’s reaching a lot of people online.” And so, we really loved it and we were fired up for you.
Chuck Bentley: My wife follows you on Instagram to this very day. She knew about Oliver. She was up to speed when I told her I was going to be on with you today. She was like, “Oh, tell him I said hello. I love his work.” And so, we really are grateful to be here today, Bob. And it’s my opportunity to thank you for the good work that you’re doing.
Bob Lotich: Well, that means more than you know. I really appreciate that. And yeah, I mean, I’m excited that we both get to kind of run arm in arm pushing forward this cause that is both near and dear I think both of our hearts.
Chuck Bentley: Yeah.
Bob Lotich: Anyway, all right. Chuck wrote this book which is called Money Problems and Marriage Solutions. I wanted to talk to him a little bit about this because I get a lot of questions from readers about how to handle some of these challenges that inevitably pop up, even in some of the best marriages, when it comes to money, and Chuck has a really interesting story here. So I want to talk a little bit about this.
Bob Lotich: Chuck, can you tell me a little bit … because you and your wife Anne … Anne, right?
Chuck Bentley: That’s correct, yeah.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, you guys, I mean, you hit some bumps in the road with your finances in your marriage at some point. Can you talk a little bit about that and a little bit how you worked through some of those things?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah, we don’t come from a position of strength. In fact, my wife would not agree to have her name on the book with me unless I had a disclaimer that we’re still a work in progress. She was fearful that I was going to say we were like the poster child for how to do this right, and we’re far from it. We struggled, Bob. I mean, really, really struggled.
Chuck Bentley: We would say we loved each other. We got married and had high hopes and aspirations. We got along well in most areas except for our finances.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: What we found out is that, that’s kind of the most critical area. So where we thought it was sort of a tangent to our marriage, it turned out to be a central issue, and a real key problem. We admit that we didn’t get along in this area, we didn’t agree in this area for 21 years.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: That’s a long time.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: It’s a testament to my stupidity and my stubbornness and my arrogance. I thought I was right about it, she thought she was right about it, so we missed the opportunity to work together. We just missed it. And we look back on those years and we thought, “What if we could help couples not miss those early years?” We could help them get in sync and enjoy the benefits of what I think marriage offers, which is a real solution to your financial problems.
Chuck Bentley: You know Bob, a lot of young people think that marriage is a financial constraint in and of itself, that we should just live together, or we should figure out some way to not put our finances together. But all the research indicates that that’s absolutely backwards, it’s upside down. Marriage actually is a financial premium. It is not a liability.
Chuck Bentley: So we studied it. Not only did we … Anne and I got on the same page, but we studied the issue and realized that one of the best things you can do for your finances is to be married, be faithful in your marriage, and be on the same page financially in your marriage.
Bob Lotich: Yeah. It’s interesting you brought up that point. I remember reading that. You mentioned it right at the beginning of the book, and I … yeah, you said, “Marriage is not the cause of our financial problems. In fact, it’s the very best solution to our financial problems.”
Bob Lotich: And like, that’s something that, I mean, I was taken back. I’m like, “Really?” I’ve never thought of that. And we hear the contrary from talking heads and from random people making comments, but that’s really exciting and it makes sense that God designed it this way. You know what I mean?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah. Well, certainly Bob. Think about this, the Bible says two are better than one, so we tend to do that math like this: well if two are better than one, then maybe our finances will be kind of a double improvement. But the numbers actually show that it’s better than that.
Chuck Bentley: One of the … i think it was Vanguard or Fidelity did a study of the amount of money in savings by couples versus singles. So just to … not whether they’re Christian or not Christian, but just looking at how much money they have in their account. What do you think the premium was if you were married versus single?
Bob Lotich: I have no idea, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.
Chuck Bentley: Okay. Yeah, good idea. Don’t fall for my trigger question. It’s not double, it was 10X.
Bob Lotich: Really?
Chuck Bentley: Married couples had 10 times more savings than single people at these trading houses. And they looked at that and thought, “Now something’s going on here.” And I looked at it and I thought, “Yeah, I know what’s going on. Two are better than one. You help each other.”
Bob Lotich: Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Bentley: But you’re missing the premium in your marriage if you’re not … if that’s not how it’s kind of working out for you. If you’re stuck like we were, and we think that people can accelerate their financial health and the ability to flourish if they can get on the same page, and that’s why we wrote the book.
Bob Lotich: That’s amazing. 10X, like that’s so cool. That’s really exciting.
Bob Lotich: All right, let me ask you this, and like I mentioned originally earlier, I get asked … like I’m sure you get this question a lot, but a question from readers generally goes something like this: I am working really hard on getting our finances in order, but my spouse doesn’t care, they’re not on the same page, and what do I do?
Bob Lotich: That’s always been a question where it’s been challenging to me because as you know, there’s so many variables, there isn’t a one-size fits all solution to this question. But, I know that you have met with hundreds or thousands of couples, I know that you have gone really deep in this, you’ve written a book, how can you shed some light on some answers that you found for questions like these?
Chuck Bentley: Well, I’m happy to be specific without sort of going all the way through the process that I wrote the book about. But, what we found is that most people give an answer to the question that you just got. Like my spouse doesn’t care, we can’t work together on this, they give an answer that assumes that the mechanics of finances will solve the problem.
Bob Lotich: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep.
Chuck Bentley: That’s their first mistake. A budget doesn’t solve the problems of a marriage. It helps. I’m pro-budget, you’re pro-budget, we like budgets, but to make the assumption that the budget is going to fix the marriage issue is wrong. And I realized that there were so much more to it that Anne and I had never captured in our conversation, or in our teaching.
Chuck Bentley: But a friend of mine actually in Brazil called and said, “I want you to come and teach couples on money and marriage, but I don’t want you to talk about budgeting and saving and debt. I don’t want you to talk about the mechanics.” And I thought to myself at first, “What should I talk about? What am I going to say?”
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: Then I realized, “Wait, there’s a whole lot more to it than just the mechanics.” Especially in that case that you just mentioned. And it is not that uncommon where one person is sort of passive about it and another person is maybe aggressive, or too aggressive trying to compensate for the passive one.
Chuck Bentley: What I’ve found is there’s usually somebody hurt in the marriage, Bob. Just from speaking in general about the experiences we’ve had. The person that’s passive has usually been hurt. And they just the hit the eject button, or they hit the capitulation button. I’m just not going to engage because I’m going to get hurt. Because it’s a super sensitive topic.
Chuck Bentley: I really thought a lot about why is it so sensitive? Why is it such a super charged area where there’s a trigger if it’s brought up. I think for two reasons. One is that a man feels completely disrespected if his spouse is complaining about the finances. It’s painful in a deep way of our, sort of our identity.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: I’ve been there. I made so many financial mistakes that I was silently fearful that my wife would leave me for my mistakes. I didn’t say it to her, and if I had of she would have probably said no, but I knew that it was bugging her. And I knew that it attacks her need for security.
Chuck Bentley: So, if she’s got a need for a security and things aren’t going well, and she brings it up to you and you feel threatened or disrespected, all of a sudden there’s a wedge, and there’s a wall, and there’s a relational barrier. And you just stop working together. You kind of say, “Okay, you do that. You take that part.”
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: That’s where I think the enemy starts to win the battle. That’s where the 10X factor gets destroyed, and where couples actually start to go backwards financially, and they can’t figure out why it’s not working for them, and the issue is they’re not working together. I think God designed us to be mutually helpful.
Chuck Bentley: So I would say to the that couple … I’m sorry I’m giving you too long an answer on that.
Bob Lotich: No, it’s a great answer.
Chuck Bentley: But I would say to that couple, “The first thing you need to do is not a budget. The first thing you need to do is to get reconciled with each other and ask for both to be engaged. Appeal to your spouse. I want you engaged.” That’s really where we come up with our first step in the book was learn to be a peacemaker. Because if you’re not a peacemaker, you’re going to have that opposites repelling and not get there.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, I mean, I feel like in our case, Linda and I … Out of the chute when we first got married, I was kind of … like that was when I was really starting to get into personal finance and realized I’m a mess, I’m trying to get out. She hadn’t quite come to that realization yet, so I was trying to string her along a little bit. We were making some progress, but once we got in unity, like you’re talking about … so we had a budget before that. We were making some smarter financial moves, but we didn’t really see progress until we were in unity, and that was a game changer.
Bob Lotich: Honestly, when you say the 10X thing, it makes so much sense to me because we just saw that thing that once we were in unity and in agreement, it just catapulted us forward financially. So yeah, that’s really good.
Chuck Bentley: Bob, I did not realize that I was married to my greatest financial advisor. I did not realize it. In fact, I didn’t treat her that way at all. And it was through the pain of our mistakes that God helped me to see, “She’s right there.” My wife is phenomenal with this stuff. I was not engaged in her and her wisdom, her sense of accuracy, her precision, her intuitiveness, her skill at keeping the books and records straight, all of that I was missing. I was trying to do it myself thinking that I was going to somehow impress her with it and it wasn’t the …
Bob Lotich: Yep, that’s so funny. All right. So let me ask you this, kind of coming back to some of the couples that you’ve counseled over the years, and you might have already answered this, but if not, what like one decision, or change of belief have you seen in certain couples that has set them apart? And maybe it is this unity thing, but if there’s something else, like just a really big key thing that many couples are missing out on that a lot of them got ahold of and it just changed everything.
Chuck Bentley: I think if I was just sort of put it into a little handle for people, is that when you are about to enter into a financial find, stop and recognize that the enemy has already won the battle when that find starts. Because you’ve destroyed your ability to work together, and you have terminated the 10X benefit. And it’s always God. He’s got you exactly where he wants you.
Chuck Bentley: So when that starts to happen, when you know it’s happening, you know, you get that, “It’s uh-oh.”
Bob Lotich: Yeah, you can feel it.
Chuck Bentley: Yeah, yeah, it’s coming. Somebody’s offended, somebody’s going to not … that’s not going to work out very well.
Chuck Bentley: Make this decision, God wants us to fight the financial problems together, he doesn’t want us to fight each other. God doesn’t want us to fight each other. Satan wants you to fight each other. He’s loving that.
Chuck Bentley: So, if you’ll just back up and like, “Wait a minute. I don’t want to go down that road. I wanna embrace her, turn and face our problem together, and fight together.” You know?
Bob Lotich: Yep.
Chuck Bentley: That simple little paradigm shift helps stop the cycle of just perpetually being frustrated and angry with each other and unable to make progress.
Bob Lotich: So, kind of flipping things in the other direction here, I was reading some of the stats you had in here, and I had read some of them before about the top predictors of divorce. I forgot where that section was, but what … Of the couples you’ve worked with, the ones that have gotten divorced … I mean, I know you don’t have all this information, but the ones that you’ve seen who have gotten divorced primarily because of financial reasons, what were some of those things there, those red flags, those things that cautionary tales, the things that we can be aware of to try to avoid?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah. That’s pretty broad. You know people get divorced for a lot of different core reasons, but when it comes to the financial issue, all the studies show that it is the leading predictor of a divorce. So financial arguments, regardless of income, regardless of wealth, those are the leading predictors of divorce.
Chuck Bentley: I think the reason that it’s so central, and I’ll get to some of the symptoms, but the reason I think it’s so central is because people feel unloved if finances aren’t taken care of. Your spouse spells love security, S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Bentley: And if money is insecure, then she’s going to feel like you don’t love her, and she’s more prone to speak in disrespectful ways and cause you to feel unloved as well. So it drives a wedge in our hearts because it’s just so personal.
Chuck Bentley: I think just some of the extremes that I’ve seen. I’ve had a couple come in for counseling that she discovered that he had hidden all of his debt accumulation from her before the marriage and after the marriage. When they came to see me, they had $250,000 in consumer debt. They were both working on straight commission.
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: And he had missed a couple months of hitting his quota and getting his normal paycheck. So, he made up some sales and got fired. So, he came to her and said, “I’ve got some bad news. I’ve lost my job. I haven’t made my quota for the last two months. I lied about it. And there’s about $250,000 in debt you didn’t know that we had. I bought your wedding ring on credit. I didn’t tell you about my student loan debts. I paid for our honeymoon on credit. And those two cars in the driveway, I really didn’t pay for, I borrowed money for.”
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: Now, it was a tough one. And somebody, somewhere referred them to me. Thank you Pastor. Some pastor at a church, and I really hurt for them. So I call that financial infidelity.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: Where you’re lying to each other, you’re covering, you’re not transparent. And honestly, that’s so destructive to trust in a marriage. It’s almost akin to sexual infidelity. You know where you cheat. He cheated his wife. So she left.
Chuck Bentley: I had a couple come just recently that she came home from work, they were both employed, both professional, and their furniture was sitting out in front of their yard to her shock. They had been foreclosed upon, and he didn’t tell her that he was behind on the mortgage.
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: And for them, they decided that … I mean there was a complete meltdown, there was a complete disaster relationally. They had three children. Can you imagine Linda coming home tomorrow afternoon, and your furniture is out on the front lawn? Divorce is not far away, right? You, know? It was knocking at their door. But that couple turned … they fought each other fiercely, and then when they came to me, we walked them through this process, and they quit fighting each other.
Bob Lotich: That’s great.
Chuck Bentley: Because that wasn’t going to keep the … that wasn’t going to stop the foreclosure. What was going to stop the foreclosure, stop the losing everything they had, is if they would work together. And it was so interesting, I said to him, “You know there’s one way to solve this problem.” And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “Let her manage your finances.” Because he was doing it all, like I had been, and he had never thought of it. Once she got ahold of the checkbook and the budget, and all those things, I can assure you no foreclosure. She’s going to get the bills paid. You know?
Bob Lotich: Yeah. That’s crazy. Wow.
Bob Lotich: All right, so yeah. One of the kind of groups of people who I want to talk to a little bit are the people who might be listening or watching who can maybe … are starting to see some of the benefits and the potential of what can happen when you both get on the same page, husband and wife get on the same page, but I’m sure there are some people watching and listening who feel like it’s not going to work for them, who feel like their spouse is a unique special case, and they’re … yeah, that it’s just not going to work for them, it’s not worth the effort, or the potential battles that will come because whenever you mention money this one spouse shuts down. What would you say to somebody like that?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah. I would say that there’s always hope. I do not believe there’s any case that doesn’t have hope to be restored or recovered. And I’ve seen it over, and over, and over, and over, and over Bob. I’ve seen what I believe are miracles in this area.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: Where people would … by the time they get to me sometimes, they’ve been through everything else. I’m the last stop on the train, and it’s always bad. I feel like I get the bowl of spaghetti and somebody says, “Make it into a nice uniform grid and do it fast.”
Chuck Bentley: So I’ve had those experiences. I had one where a couple couldn’t look at each other, couldn’t talk to each other. There was such a damage and a wound in their lives that it was almost like if either one of them said something, there was going to be an explosive type of reaction. People had said there was no hope. In fact, when they got to me, the wife handed me a note that she had written, didn’t show her husband, and I read it as we started counseling together. And it said, “I cannot go on any longer like this. If today doesn’t help us, I’m taking my own life.”
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: And I thought, “Lord, how did I get into this situation?”
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: It felt overwhelmingly dire. This was a couple that, we were sitting outdoors at like a Starbucks, and she was on one side of the table, he was on the other, I was between them, and they could not even kind of face each other, Bob. So they were ready to give up, and what I discovered in talking with them is that neither one of them ever apologized to the other.
Chuck Bentley: So what happens when you don’t apologize is sort of de frag all the baggage, all the wounds, and all the hurts, is that it’s just one brick on top of the other. It builds a wall. It’s a relational barrier. Neither one could get around that wall. So I don’t know why I said it, but I just looked at them, and I said, “We can’t go forward until one of you apologizes the other for something. Somebody’s got to apologize.”
Chuck Bentley: I remember sitting there with my arms folded thinking, “I wish hadn’t of kind of come up that.” That wasn’t … I could hear my watch ticking, Bob. It was dead silent. And I thought, “How long are we going to sit here?” But I was just waiting, waiting, waiting, and to my complete shock, the man, who was very stoic, very objective, and difficult, he was difficult, he fell out of his chair out there in this outdoor setting with other people around, hit the concrete with his knees, crawled around me to her, put is head in her lap and wailed, “Will you please forgive me?”
Bob Lotich: Wow.
Chuck Bentley: In this public setting. And she immediately said, “Yes. I forgive you and I love you.” And they both cried, and it was sort of this mental picture for me was this wall just crumbled into dust.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: Then we started, “Okay now, let’s work together.” You can do this. So, I have hope for every couple to answer your question. Everybody has hope.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, I mean in seeing something like that, and I’m sure you have tons and tons of stories like that, or really of amazing things happening. Yeah, I mean, that’s just got to really inspire you to continue doing what you’re doing and that this stuff works. You know what I mean?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah, yeah. And it is inspiring Bob. And I take it from the standpoint … I mean, as I said, people come to me when it’s usually pretty serious and people come to me thinking that the divorce is inevitable. Sometimes they both have a lawyer and they just kind of meet with me to see if they need to go through with it.
Chuck Bentley: I’ve seen it over and over get sorted out. So yeah, I really do believe that marriage is the solution to the financial problems people are having, and that if we can help them to get it right, they’ll go from being in deficit financially to being able to flourish, but their relationship will just become en thrilling.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: And you are Linda are experiencing that. Anne and I are experiencing that. It’s one of the benefits of being on the same page that I think is somewhat underestimated.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, you know, like I was mentioning a little bit, but that’s one of my favorite things in life, is just being in unity with my wife. You know what I mean? Because it’s one of those things, before you get married, I feel like maybe, I don’t know, you have a skewed view of what marriage is, but we spend so much time together, our lives are so intertwined together that when we’re not in unity, it’s terrible, and when we are, we feel unstoppable.
Bob Lotich: It’s just a really important thing. I think another point to consider here, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this too, but it’s bigger than just us. It’s bigger than you and I, or our spouses. This affects the rest of the world. This affects the people that we are going to reach or impact with our lives because when you’re in the middle of a battle with your spouse, like normally you’re not at your best to go do whatever God has called you to do.
Bob Lotich: Normally, I mean at least for me, those are the moments where I struggle to obey the Lord and the small things that he asked me to do because I’m frustrated about this or that or the other thing. Not to mention, like you talking about that 10X factor, what does that mean for the giving that we can accomplish in our lives when we’re together?
Bob Lotich: So anyway, any other thoughts along those lines?
Chuck Bentley: Well I think it’s an important point because for me personally, I want you to think about this, I’ve been married now for more than 40 years.
Bob Lotich: Congratulations.
Chuck Bentley: But to this day, my wife’s support and encouragement, and affirmation, and knowing we’re in unity is one of the greatest sources of courage and strength that I have, apart from the Lord.
Chuck Bentley: When we’re together, I feel emboldened, I feel like I can run up the tallest mountain. I am my fullest … I’m more fully alive. But the opposite is true. When we’re in conflict, when there’s kind of I call it … I grew up with this term sand in the sheets, you know where it’s uncomfortable, you’re not close to each other and it’s just … you kind of go to bed angry, and you wake up angry and it just kind of grinding it out.
Chuck Bentley: I’m my weakest, and I’ve had to explain that to my wife. Even a little tension now, we’re sensitive to because it does impact everything, Bob. It impacts your ability to perform. It impacts your ability to fulfill your purpose, to give as much as I think God intends for us to.
Chuck Bentley: We weren’t on the same page giving. I don’t mind revealing that after 21 years, Anne asked me to analyze our giving, what I had been in charge of, and it was 2.6% of our gross income after 21 years. I was super happy about that. I thought, “Man, I’m the national average. I’ve got it going on here.” And she looked at me and thought, “That’s not what I want to do.”
Chuck Bentley: That was one of the areas where she was super disappointed in me. And I thought you know it’s feels pretty good to me. We’re making it happen, and why would you be unhappy with that? And what I found out is my wife really, really did want giving to be our top priority with money.
Bob Lotich: Yep.
Chuck Bentley: And we unified around that, but it was a process to get there. I would say that was a really, really big shift for both … in our marriage. It required my change, but it also brought a lot of joy to us as we’ve started to work together in that area.
Bob Lotich: Yeah. That’s so good.
Bob Lotich: All right, so I don’t want to take up much more time here, but tell me … Yeah, I’d love to hear just any final thoughts you might have of encouragement to people who are just struggling with all this. Maybe where you or I have been, at some of our more challenging times, or maybe far worse with kind of battling it out with our spouse, so any other final words of encouragement you’d have for them?
Chuck Bentley: Yeah. There are what I call the soft issues. The issues that have nothing to do with the mechanics. It’s not whether you’re good with math, or whether you know how to fill out a budget form, it’s not whether you’re the spender or the saver, all those issues that people tend to get into, I think miss the mark.
Chuck Bentley: What really needs to happen is people need to analyze what’s inside, what’s in your own heart and are you willing to change in order to come together and experience the benefit that God intended for your marriage to have, to truly, truly flourish?
Chuck Bentley: For me, it took a lot of pain to get me to that point. I was stubborn. If Anne were on the interview with you Bob, I try to keep her out of the interviews because she tells the truth on every question. She’s a fully unfiltered truth teller, and she would laugh about that watching even now, but that’s the truth. She would just say, “You know, Chuck was difficult personality to live with.” And there were times she wasn’t sure she could make it to endure my personality and some of the decisions I made.
Chuck Bentley: She prayed for me for 21 years. Silently prayed for me. She’s very quiet and a very deep thinker. So just between her and the Lord, she kept asking the Lord to get ahold of me. And of course if she would have told that I would have been offended like, “Why are you praying for me? What’s wrong with me?”
Bob Lotich: I don’t need any prayer.
Chuck Bentley: You got a great deal here.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: But she was praying for me and God answered her prayer. That’s what changed. Then we worked on the non-mechanical issues. Were we peacemakers? I think it takes two in a marriage to really thrive, not just one. You can survive in a marriage if one of you is willing to apologize and make it right, but if both of you are, in fact, we try to be first. When we’re offended, when we’re not getting along, we sort of … it’s unspoken now, but it’s like who’s going to go first. And usually we’re in a little bit of a competition to be the first to apologize. That’s helpful.
Bob Lotich: Yeah, that’s great.
Chuck Bentley: We apologize, we admit we were wrong, we admit we need to learn, and then, what we’ve done is we’ve worked on defining what is prosperity to us? For Anne, it was inside our home, for me, it was outside our home. That’s the reason that we were going different directions. The more successful I became, the more miserable Anne became.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: I honestly could not understand that, Bob. And she had to explain it to me that my heart was outside the house, it was my next promotion, it was my next … the next wrung on the net worth’s calendar, on the ladder, and she didn’t feel a part of that.
Chuck Bentley: So we had to define prosperity. What does it really mean? And bring it back into our home instead of out. We worked on our joint purpose as a couple. What are we here for? Why did we get married? What are we supposed to do together? Not just Anne supporting my purpose, but us having a joint purpose.
Chuck Bentley: Then we worked through our philosophy. What do we believe about finances? She brought a belief in the marriage, I brought one. Neither one of us had a biblical belief about money, a biblical philosophy, and so we adjusted there.
Chuck Bentley: Then we had to learn to accept our personalities and that was the big step that brought us together. So instead of offending me, or getting on my nerves, or making me feel like a failure, if she needed to correct something or input to the issues, I embraced her. And she is as detail oriented as they come, Bob. And I’m not.
Chuck Bentley: The detailed person is usually right, but the big picture person doesn’t want to admit it. So, you know that tension existed when she would bring up a detail. And when I discovered that I needed her, I didn’t just tolerate her, I actually needed her, and I went to her and apologized for treating her personality, her particular-ness, her detailed, small, minutia questions with disdain. I apologized for that. And I welcomed her in to say, “Okay, speak into this. What do you think we ought to do here? What bills should we pay first? Which debt should be prioritize? What should we stop doing with our finances? Where do you want to give? What should we invest in?”
Chuck Bentley: When I opened up about those things, two really become one. We had been like this and God made us like that. And like you just gave encouragement to, we became a solid unit, inseparable in many ways. And that last bit of area of our life where we didn’t feel compatible because we’re total opposites, God made us compatible. It was like the gears synced. We started making huge progress emotionally, relationally, spiritually and financially.
Bob Lotich: Yeah. That’s so good.
Bob Lotich: All right. Well, this is the book, Money Problems, Marriage Solutions. Yeah, I mean, if you’re listening, watching us right now go get this. If you need it, go buy it for somebody who does because … yeah, I really feel like this is a big, big deal. Yeah, and I know as well as you do that this is a really common problem, and it just affects way too many marriages and there’s a lot at stake, and it’s a really important thing.
Bob Lotich: So, yeah, if you are struggling with that definitely check out the book. Chuck, thank you so much for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. I know you have a lot going on, and yeah, where can people find out more about you if they need to?
Chuck Bentley: Crown.org, crown.O-R-G. We have a very, very simple web address. You can find us there. And I wanted to mention a couple of things before we wrap up.
Bob Lotich: Sure.
Chuck Bentley: Congratulations on Oliver.
Bob Lotich: Thank you.
Chuck Bentley: I don’t remember if I congratulated you up front.
Bob Lotich: Thank you.
Chuck Bentley: But my wife wanted to be sure that I got to say that today, and congratulate you. Your family is expanding. That’s great news.
Bob Lotich: Thank you.
Chuck Bentley: And truly thank you for what you’re doing Bob. I hope we can be more collaborative in the future and help more people.
Bob Lotich: Yeah.
Chuck Bentley: I’m really honored. Honestly, we’ve been around a long, long time, and we’re a global organization, but we sincerely appreciate what you’ve accomplished and how many people you’ve been able to help.
Bob Lotich: Oh … yeah, it means way more than you know, so thank you.
Chuck Bentley: Well thank you Bob. It’s great being with you today.
Bob Lotich: All right. Well thanks Chuck, it’s been a pleasure, and we’ll do it again sometime.
Chuck Bentley: Yeah. God bless you friend.
Bob Lotich: And if you a haven’t already, head over to SeedTime.com so you can get your free email course from us on how to master your money using biblical principles. So, that’s all for today. Have a great rest of your day. Adios!
