Building a Biblical Family Economy: Returning Mothers to the Home
Gods Design for the Family
Today “it is widely accepted that a family can’t make it without both spouses working outside the home. It takes two incomes ‘just to make ends meet”1. Prior to 1940, only about 15% of married women2 worked outside the home. By 1965 that number had spiked to 47% and continued to increase; today 66% of homes with children in the home have both parents working3. Surveys by the Pew Research Center4 indicate the numbers are not drastically different for Christians. This article offers a different approach to family economy that aid in returning to God’s design.
The truth is, how we live has been corrupted. We have been conformed to the world, rather than transformed by the Word of God. Social factors, like feminism, have drawn women away from their homes and children. Economic factors such as inflation and high taxes make it feel impossible to provide for our families on one income. Perhaps due to consumerism and materialism plaguing our judgement, we tend to compare our standard of living to others’, while ignorant of their financial situation, and try keeping up with what we see.
In recent years there has been a growing movement to return to a traditional family with the mother working in the home as the exemplar offered to us in Proverbs 31. This won’t happen overnight and won’t be easy. But it can be done. It will take time, and sacrifice.
While budgeting and cost cutting are valuable, and things like getting a 2nd job or downsizing a home might be necessary, advice like this is not the focus of this article. If you need help or have specific questions about these things, please reach out to a financial professional who shares our Christian values.
However, these methods do not get to the root of the problem. What I intend to address is the obstacles we must overcome to reform our family economies to God’s will—the external factors of the culture and economic environment as well as internal obstacles of the flesh and how we think; our hearts must be addressed. In that, I’m going to challenge your thinking with the goal of aligning it with scripture.
Economic Challenges
First, there are the external factors and environment we currently operate in. The most significant of these are taxes, inflation, and finance charges—the cost of money. Across all forms of taxation in our lifetime, approximately $0.30 of every dollar5, 6we earn is taken through taxes. Of the $0.70 that remains, it is estimated that the average American spends as much as 34% on interest and finance charges7.
If that sounds high, consider that the average American buys a car every 6-8 years8, with average loans of 67 months9. By doing this, more often than not they have a car payment and $0.15 of every dollar of that purchase is lost to finance charges (assuming a 6% auto loan).
Add to that your home purchases; today the average homeowner buys a new home every 8 years10. If each home is purchased with a 5.3% mortgage, $0.74 of every dollar paid to the mortgage is going to interest over that 8 years11, not counting closing costs and other finance charges (costs of using someone elses money). Home and auto interest alone amounts to about 15-20% of monthly take home pay, not counting credit card and other debts.
Over our lifetimes, taxes and interest eat up $0.54 of every dollar the average American earns. No wonder we feel like we need two incomes. And in this environment, it is no wonder the average family saves less than 5%12. With the value of what we are able to save being eroded by inflation, for many it feels like they are barely keeping their head above water.
While we have little control over taxes and inflation, we do have control over the interest and finance charges we pay. These external pressures are significant, but our habits and world view create internal obstacles we need to overcome.
Parkinson’s Law
The first internal obstacle we must overcome is represented by Parkinson’s law, which being reformulated for finances, states that “a luxury, once enjoyed, becomes a necessity”. The first cars sold did not have air conditioners. It was about 30 years after their invention that it was available. When they were added they were a luxury option. Now they are a necessity and a standard feature. Similarly, smartphones, once a luxury, are now seen as essential. Now recall that the average American buys a car every 6-8 years. They don’t need it, cars last on average 12 years. It is not out of need but want. The new car smell is gone, it has some scratches and after riding in a friend’s new car we get the itch to replace the older one.
Lifestyle Creep
When we’re paying attention, we can readily identify Parkinson’s law. But what is more subtle, and perhaps more significant, is lifestyle creep. We are mentally wired to spend by default. Paychecks are deposited into checking accounts from which we make the purchases of life and save out of what remains. When we receive a raise or a bonus, there are more funds available in the spending account waiting to be spent.
We need to change our thinking, and how we manage our money, to saving by default. Increases in lifestyle should be deliberate decisions not default results. We must actively control our finances—not the other way around.
Practical steps for this could be to simply change your paycheck to be deposited in a high-yield savings account instead of a checking account. Then create automatic transfers to the spending account filling it with the funds necessary for a given period. With this simple shift, individuals can see their savings rate increase significantly.
Rethinking Retirement
Even how we think about money and conventional financial advice pushes us towards dual income homes. It is axiomatic that “there are only two sources of income—people at work and money at work”. The modern American family does not have its money at work so we feel we feel the “need” a for a second person working.
We think the money we set aside for long term savings is doing work – we even call it “investing”. But for the retail investor putting money stocks, bonds and mutual fund are not putting it to work–it is speculation. As retail investors, our money is merely purchasing a used share and buying the risk the seller no longer wished to carry. The company does not receive any new capital from our purchase, and it does not improve our cash flow or increase our access to capital, but instead it hurts it.
We need to change how we think about our money and retirement. The modern concept of retirement is not Biblical. In this paradigm, we store up treasures on earth with the express purpose of not working and spending it all, leaving little inheritance.
Conventional advice is to accumulate wealth in a place that is locked up until we decide to cease being a productive member of society. In this we are told we’ll get 10% year-over-year return on the 10% we might set aside. If everything goes to plan, we might have a million or more accumulated, but until the government says it is permissible, we can’t access it. What is the value of a dollar you cant spend?
Yes, saving for our future provision is a wise and Christian thing to do. But hoarding it in order to provide a 10–30-year vacation in our twilight years is not. Our work on this earth is not done until Christ calls us home. Our rest will be in glory, we have work to do here.
We should move away from the mindset of locking our money away solely to secure passive income for retirement. Instead, we should focus on building a family economy: systematically accumulating capital and putting it to work within our family and where we have expertise and control. We should be thinking as a patriarch of our family’s multi-generational financial system.
Family Economy as a Business
In order to reform our family economies, I believe Christians should reject the modern retirement paradigm and, instead, manage our family economies as a business. Businesses accumulate capital to put it to work, growing and providing. They do not accumulate capital so they can cease working.
The most efficient means of doing this is to establish a private banking system, as taught by R. Nelson Nash, that provides access to capital for present and future needs, avoiding the dependency on commercial banks, while simultaneously preparing to leave a legacy. In this paradigm, saving for your child’s car, and saving for his college education, and saving to help him buy his first house all become synonymous with saving for passive income when you can no longer work.
We, as patriarchs of our family economy, could see our great-grandchildren driving and if they finance their cars with the family their payments are captured in the family banking system that benefits them when we pass.
Add to that, financing your children and grandchildren’s college education or financing the downpayment on their house—or even their entire house. Then, when we can no longer work, the family banking system provides passive income needed in our twilight years before the accumulated wealth is transferred to the next generation, and the process continues.
Developing a plan and implementing this into your family economy is highly specific to individual situation and needs. Those interested in applying this should work with a financial professional, specifically those appropriately trained by the Nelson Nash Institute.
Since the 1950s, there has been a shift, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, in how we live. Secular values have greatly influenced our family economies. In order to return to God’s design for the family we must reject these things and reform all aspects of our life to scripture.
Reforming our families to God’s design requires resisting materialism, rethinking retirement, and controlling our finances. It’s not easy, but with God’s help, it can be done.
If you’re ready to build your family economy, or just want to learn more, click to book a free call with an advisor today.
Semper Reformanda
End Notes
[2] https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/employment-women-early-postwar-period-background-prewar-war-data-5482, document page 10
[3] https://www.bls.gov/news. release/famee. nr0. htm
[4] https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2024/
[5] https://www.self.inc/info/life-of-tax/
[6] Nelson Nash, Becoming Your Own Banker (2008), p. 17-18
[7] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of-car-ownership/
[8] https://lanterncredit.com/auto-loans/average-car-loan-length
[9] https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/average-length-of-homeownership/
[10] See amortization table at https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/?q=1k118-6KX; Divide sum of first 8 years of interest by sum of first 8 years principal + interest, 74.6% to interest.
[11] https://fred.stlousfed.org/series/psavert
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