As brides quickly discover, new husbands must be housebroken.
We guys must be trained not to leave empty beer cans in the living room or our dirty undershirts on the bedroom floor.
Commands, delivered in a firm but friendly voice, will generally do the trick. But if that fails, a loving wife will roll up a newspaper and give us mutts a couple of whacks to help the message sink in.
This instruction extends to money as well. Before I was married, 35 years ago, I never balanced a checkbook. I just kept a rough running tally of my checking balance in my head.
Properly appalled by this, my wife decided that she would be the one to pay the bills.
After many whacks delivered over many years, Suzie decided I had progressed enough to manage our investments. Still, she keeps me on a short leash.
"I'd like to make a small investment," I'll say, gazing at the stock pages.
"Oh, no! Not again," she'll reply.
"Have faith in me. I'm the personal finance columnist for a great metropolitan newspaper."
"Ha! That's a hoot. Take out the garbage."
Yes, dear. She pokes holes in my male overconfidence and my penchant for risk-taking, which tend to get me in trouble.
I was thinking of this while jogging past the fountain lake in Forest Park the other day. Being June, there were so many bridal parties that they had to take turns posing for pictures.
Marry a spouse and you're marrying the spouse's money habits as well. Too often, it's a terrible match.
Jeffrey Dew of Utah State University has studied the statistical relationship between financial compatibility and divorce. It's huge, he discovered.
For husbands, financial disagreements are the strongest predictor of divorce. For wives, both financial and sexual disputes predict divorce, but financial arguments were a much better predictor, he found.
His formula for a happy marriage: Keep a fat bank account, and avoid big debt.
So, if you're young and in love, stop gazing deeply into one another's eyes and gaze into each other's bank account.
"Opposites do attract," says Bridget Brennan, mournfully. "Very often, a spender will be attracted to a saver. They think, 'I see something in you that I don't have.'"
Brennan runs the Healthy Marriage Coalition in the Central West End, which runs counseling classes for engaged couples and newlyweds.
Some people see money as security — they sock it away. Others see it as their ticket to a new Mustang. If you've got that kind of split in your relationship, better reach a firm understanding before tying the knot.
You'll only get hints about this while dating. "Is one person always spending — taking the other to lavish restaurants? Is that to cover up a deeper issue, such as mismanaging money?" asks Taffy Wagner, a minister and personal finance counselor in Colorado who also runs a website moneytalkmatters.com.
"Most people go into marriage in the infatuation stage," says Brennan. "He'll think, 'She looks so cute in those new outfits she bought.' She'll think, 'Oh, he'll come around after we're married.'"
Don't bet on it.
So, cozy up on the couch one night and whisper sweetly in your fiancé's or fiancée's ear, "Honey, may I see your credit report?" It will be an eye-opener about how your lover deals with money. (You can get your report for free at annualcreditreport.com.)
"The biggest thing is to talk, not judge. And don't be afraid the other person will walk away if you tell them your mistakes," said Wagner.
Talk about budgeting. Define some goals — reducing debt, a new house, that Mustang if you must. Then work out a savings plan to get there. Working toward a common purpose will keep both partners on track.
If one spouse has more debt than the other, how will you handle that? Decide how much each partner can spend per month without checking with the other.
"My husband was a shopper," says Wagner. "I ended up being the one to manage the money. I told him, 'This amount of your paycheck comes to me, and the rest you can have.'"
Dew's statistics tell him that consumer debt is deadly for marriage. It is an "equal-opportunity marriage destroyer," he wrote in an article for the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project.
"Assets, on the other hand, sweeten and solidify the ties between spouses," he writes. "Couples who are wise enough to steer clear of materialism and consumer debt are much more likely to enjoy connubial bliss."
Amen to that. I was lucky enough to marry a fellow tightwad; she bought her wedding dress used, then sold it for a profit. We always saved money, and I learned to pick up my dirty shirts. The result: connubial bliss.
