Frustrated By Simplification

How many "5 Steps to Financial Freedom" books have you read? How many articles have you read promising to "Lose 10 Pounds + Get A Flatter Stomach Now"? These short, simple lists seem like magic fixes until we go through the steps and then don't get the results we expected. Too often, these simple fast fix lists are like McDonald's fast food, tastes good in the short term, but in the long run it is likely to leave you out-of-shape, frustrated, and tired.

Instead of always running towards simplicity, we need to face and embrace the complexity involved with our marriage and our money. While lists are one of the very things that makes life manageable, at the same time there are often other steps that are not included or explained that are necessary for successfully completing the process.

This became glaringly obvious to me while I worked with my 8 year old nephew on a model car. The kit named 8 steps to assemble this car. What the instructions took for granted is that there are "steps between the steps" that will make the official 8 steps easy.  As adults there are many lessons we learn (that we forgot that we learned) which make it easy to put together a model car. This is accumulated knowledge.  Anytime that we have things boiled down into a "simple" formula, it may serve as a basis for understanding. However, it will not be a full foundation to build upon, especially for someone that does not have the same life experience as you.

The real fruit in understanding most subjects is not in the simplicity but rather in the complexity. With complexity, there are often fewer definitive answers and many more questions. Yet, it is with the development of complexity that we are then able to reduce the information into manageable pieces.

Simplicity gives the appearance that complex problems are approachable and achievable. But if you have ever spent any time working on your finances, you know that it is never quite as easy as a 5 step program, or a one time effort. Becoming proficient at managing our finances often takes years of practice, mess ups, reflection and yes successes.

When things are not as simple as they seem, we should not allow that to be a barrier to making progress. Instead it should be a realization that we have a problem in front of us that is going to take more work to solve. We may need additional tools, knowledge, perspective, and experience before we are able to solve the problem.  Referring back to the model car, I have developed skills that my nephew has not. So while the simple steps are easy for me, they are not easy for my nephew. I am not better than my nephew, but rather I have developed the necessary knowledge to read instructions, interpret what they are telling me and render a completed model car. I trust that with practice and experience he will also be able to build a model car on his own. Until then, he is going to naturally experience some frustration with completing model car kits.

As you face financial problems that you wish where solved by easy steps (but are not), consider asking for help. There is a good chance that there is someone who can come alongside you and help make sense of those seemingly simple "5 steps towards Financial Freedom". It is in relationship with others that we can engage in the complexity of a problem, and receive the needed guidance to move forward.

From Simplicity Towards Mastery

We run around frantically looking at our most vexing problems in life for simple solutions. For many people they are either marriage and money. We as a culture are hungry for answers and yet seldom find satisfaction in the answers that we receive. Why is this? I would suggest that we have become accustomed to bland and dull information. Information that is broken down into tiny pieces for us, but with no way of putting it all together. Sure this is the very promise of 12 step programs, 7 habits, etc. Yet the reality is that a journey into deep knowledge can not be summed up in a few simple steps or 5 minutes a day.

The path to mastery is fraught with challenges, set backs, frustrations, and yet for those that choose to journey on the path towards mastery find great joy in the journey. They are not disheartened by setbacks and frustrations, rather they embrace them as they come. At the same time I am not saying pursue them either. This is the place that I have often allowed my own mind to wander. That somehow I have to make the path to mastery difficult or it will not be worth it. This is all wrong, rather it is in the pursuit of mastery that the challenges will come, and with those challenges eventual solutions.  This all of course does not happen in a straight line or on a fixed timeline as much as others would like you to believe.

Think about it, how much would you have appreciated your kindergarten teacher telling you that if you would just learn the alphabet that you would then be able to read. Not the case at all, the alphabet is the simple 26 charters that lead to the development of our language but mastery of the alphabet does not give you mastery of language. Sadly this is what we get with 8 step articles, we get building blocks, but not the whole thing.

Simplicity is important, as it helps us to bunch information together, but at the same time if we don't take the time to dig deeper into the meaning behind the simplicity then we can never fully appreciate the simplicity that is before us. Again with the alphabet. If we were taught that the alphabet was enough to succeed, we would say that is foolish. We all recognize that the alphabet seems simple because we memorized it by the end of kindergarten but we would be missing the significance of how it has deep meaning in our life given the complexity of ways in which it is used in our life. And so the same is true of our marriage and money. We can acknowledge basic patterns about marriage and money from an early age, but if we do not take time to become students of both subjects then we will remain shallow in the way that we go about approaching these relationships.
The reality is that your elementary education teachers are much like your parents in that they lay the foundation for your understanding of a subject, but they can not be an end point of your education. In order to reach the deeper uses of the alphabet you must continue on in school, and the same is true of our marriage and money. If we stop at what our parents taught us then we will be sorely disappointed with life, just as we would if we stopped our education at the 5th grade.


Both Marriage and Money are exceptionally complex topics that can not be reduced to a simple formula. Our understanding and engagement with both subjects and then how they interact with each other are significant and will not be easily mastered. Yet you are not alone on this journey. There are people who are further ahead of you on the journey that can help mentor and grow you as you face the challenges that come with dealing with marriage and money.