A correction, because the earlier version of this review got it badly wrong. This is not a biblical stewardship book. It contains no Scripture study, no chapter on tithing, and no biblical money principles. The previous review claimed all three. Those claims were false and they have been removed.
First Comes Love, Then Comes Money: A Couple’s Guide to Financial Communication is a general-market book from HarperOne, published March 2009. Scott and Bethany Palmer wrote it. They are financial advisers who work under the name The Money Couple.
It is still worth reviewing here, because what it actually does is useful and most Christian finance books do not do it.
The actual idea
The Palmers argue that most money fights in a marriage are not really about math. Two people can agree on a budget and still end up furious with each other, because they process money differently at a level neither has ever put into words.
They sort those differences into what they call Money Personalities. There are five: Saver, Spender, Risk Taker, Security Seeker, and Flyer. The premise is that each of you leads with a primary and a secondary type, often two that pull against each other, and that most of your conflict traces back to that collision rather than to the numbers.
They also give you two practices. The Money Huddle is a short scheduled conversation about money before there is a crisis. The Money Dump is what happens when you skip those for a year and then unload everything at once at eleven at night.
What is good about it
The diagnosis is right, and it is the piece almost every budgeting book skips. You can hand a couple a spreadsheet and a debt plan and it will not survive contact with the fact that one of them feels physically unsafe with less than a certain amount in savings and has never said so.
The Money Huddle is a genuinely good habit. Short, scheduled, before there is a fire. That one practice is worth the price of the book if you actually do it.
It also names financial infidelity clearly. Hidden accounts, hidden purchases, hidden debt. That is a real problem in real marriages and it usually goes unnamed until it detonates.
What you have to supply yourself
Everything theological. The book will help you and your wife stop fighting about money. It will not tell you what money is for, what you owe God with it, or how generosity fits in. If you want that, this needs a companion volume. Randy Alcorn or a straightforward book on biblical stewardship would fill the gap.
The Money Personality framework is also a personality-typing system, with the usual limits. It is a conversation tool, not science. Use it to start the discussion, not to explain away your wife.
And the book is from 2009. The relational material has aged fine. Anything touching specific tools or products has not.
Note on the link
The listing this post originally pointed to is the Kindle edition. If you want the paperback, use the print link below. For a book two people are supposed to work through together, print is probably the better call.
Who should buy it
A couple who keeps having the same money argument and cannot work out why. Newly married or about to be. A husband who has figured out that the budget is not the actual problem.
Skip it if you want biblical teaching on money. That is a different book, and this one does not pretend otherwise. Only the review did.
First Comes Love, Then Comes Money, paperback