My Wife and I Make a Great Super Bowl Team

Those of you old-time Free Money Finance readers will remember all of my posts on the book The Millionaire Next Door a couple years ago. Well, I was looking through some of those the other day and stumbled upon MND: Great Offense and Great Defense. The premise of this post was that millionaires play good financial offense (they earn a decent income) as well as a good financial defense (they are frugal and spend wisely.)

I then got to thinking about how my wife and I manage playing financial offense and defense. It goes as follows:

1. I play the offense for our family. I'm the only one working a job for which I get paid (my wife stays home with the kids), so by default, the offense resides with me. Our offense is doing pretty well thanks to a small degree I got 20 years ago.

2. We both play defense. I play it well compared to most, but my wife plays it far better than I do. I swear -- she can save $1 off a 50 cent can of beans. She can squeeze a penny so far that it will become a copper wire. If there's any amount of money that can be saved, she'll do it. (FYI, check out MND: Both Spouses Must be Frugal where I tell about how she once saved on toilet paper.) And we all know that saving money is the key to building wealth. As they say, offense wins games, but defense wins championships. That's certainly true with finances as much as it's true in football.

How about you? Who plays offense and defense in your family and how good are they at it?

Comments

[Armel]

Nice post...I'm not married yet, just graduated college 2 years ago, but I've learned a lot of personal finance techniques from my parents, reading books, articles, and of course this site. I guess since I'm single, I do both offense and defense for myself, and overall I do well.

I also play 'special teams' =)
(I guess that can be investing) hehe

[beastlike]

I have a good offense between us both and the defense is ranked probably top 10 as well. However, I think I might have a slightly higher chance at being Probowler, but she is not far off.

Were working our way to having a Devin Hester for special teams. Not quite there yet.

[Minimum Wage]

AHA! Looks like MND agrees with me: It's as much about how much you make (good offense) as about how much you spend (good defense).

So there. I Told You So.