Don’t Wait to Get Married Until You Can Afford It

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted the “Capstone Model of Marriage,” the belief that you only tie the knot after the big milestones and personal goals of life are met – namely getting your education, buying a house, or landing the lucrative job.

The article quoted Krista Westrick-Payne, assistant director of the National Center for Marriage and Family Research.

“People don’t want to get married until they have an education, have that job that can support them and they can afford a house, and they are also looking for a partner that ticks all those boxes,” she observed.

Delaying marriage to achieve all those things may avoid some of the financial strain that might otherwise be present, but it also invites a litany of other problems.

Waiting to get married often results in marrying someone else down the line – or not getting married at all. It also leads to an increased risk of cohabitation, which then leads to an increased risk of divorce. Cohabitation is also outside of God’s will. Writing to early believers in Greece, the apostle Paul warned,

“It’s God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality, that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God” (1 Thess. 4:3).

Well meaning Christians may feel getting all your “ducks in a row” is the responsible course to take – but it’s not a zero-sum game. Couples who marry on a shoestring can still be responsible, and that means living within their means and even below how they’ve been living prior to getting married.

The late Dr. James Dobson, Focus on the Family’s founder, liked to joke that early in his marriage to Shirley, they never suffered from money problems – because they didn’t have any money. They shared one car, didn’t eat out – and when they ate at all, they were sure to do so frugally.

The opposite of “capstone marriage” is “cornerstone marriage” where you get married young and build your life around the union with your spouse. It doesn’t mean you can’t still go to school, buy a house and have a satisfying and good-paying career. The difference is you do it together.

Couples in cornerstone marriages recognize early what many of those in capstone marriages may recognize too late. Sharing your life with another person and having and raising children are among life’s greatest joys for the vast majority of people.

Rachel Campos Duffy, who is a conservative media personality and who is married to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, has nine children. She’s famously advised, “Fall in love, get married, have more babies than you can afford.”

New York Times’ columnist and professor David Brooks counsels students “to obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about marriage. Please respect the truism that if you have a great career and a crappy marriage you will be unhappy, but if you have a great marriage and a crappy career you will be happy.”

Christian cornerstone marriage, however, puts Christ in the middle of the marital union. Husbands and wives enjoy the greatest chance of success when their faith in the Lord is the foundation of their marriage.

Don’t wait to get married until everything is “just right” – get married when you meet the right person and bathe that relationship in prayer, seeking God’s will and discernment regarding next steps.

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