Truth #4 about dating and marriage for YM

Better check your Kelly Blue Book Value

Sometime in your adult life time you will own and car and want to sell it or trade it in for something else. You'll begin by searching out the car that you want. Maybe you're going to move up in the world--4 doors! Finally, you think that you might be able to afford a new car, or at least one that came off the assembly line within the last 5 years. The sticker price seems to be something within your price range--you don't have much for a down payment, but with the right interest rate and trade-in value on your current wheels you'll be in business.

So you go and get the Kelley Blue Book to find out what the value of your current car--just to make sure before you go to the dealer; you want to know what to expect. You think that it’s probably worth about $10,000 because that’s just a little bit less than what you paid for it 2 years ago (and that’s what you still owe on it). You open the pages and discover that your prized 1999 Honda Accord is only worth $3,000. Ouch!

You see, it’s hard to see what we really are sometimes. This is especially true when we try to evaluate ourselves and our readiness for marriage. You, my young, naive friend, are the automobile in question (and your bride-to-be, too). You think that you’re ready to get married, start a family and provide for children, etc--but I would like to offer a highly likely truth for your consideration: No, you are probably not ready.

Let’s review your resume. You highly likely to be a recently returned missionary who 1) has never had to provide shelter and food for himself (on his own dime! not Daddy's); 2) lives with several roommates now to pay the rent (maybe up to 5); 3) lived with a companion on your mission because you couldn't be trusted to behave on your own (hell, they didn't even trust you to own an emergency frequency radio for heaven's sake!); 4) oh, you probably haven’t had a real job yet (a real job is one that didn’t get from your dad or uncle, provides real benefits, and you wouldn’t be embarrassed to announce at sacrament Meeting at a normal ward--not at a singles ward or BYU married ward). Being a waiter at Olive Garden is an ok job if you’re single. Most kids don’t say, “I want to be a grocery bagger when I grow up.” 5) and you probably aren’t ready to get a real job in the next week or two.

Important note: I am all about making the best of your situation. If you are out of work or between jobs or just down on your luck, being a waiter at Olive Garden or being a grocery bagger is something you should do. There is absolutely no shame in that. The only shame in life is giving up in your role as breadwinner and doing nothing. I'm just saying that if your plans in life include supporting a family of more than 1, you had better make efforts and plans to be able to secure a regular income that will fulfill that goal. One more thing: there are lots of jobs that are just fine as second income sources (including being a waiter) that maybe don't pay a whole lot. Those are good, honorable jobs. But I am figuring that most of you YM are hoping to do the traditional breadwinning route where you can have the wife stay at home with the kids.

So, we've established that your economic Blue Book Value is less than optimal. That's ok. We can fix that and now that you know that we can help you make good choices before you make a mistake. Know is half the battle.

Before you're girlfriend/fiance gets all bent out of shape and drags out some quotes from some GA, let me clarify some things. I’m not saying that you have to be financially secure, have a career going yet, etc. to get married or have children. Church leaders have said otherwise and I agree with them. But you do need to be aware of your real worth as a husband and father. You have to have a plan of how you’re going to become financially secure. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because you served a mission you can now take on the obligations of a wife and children. RM doesn't just stand for Returned Missionary, it also stands for Really imMature economically (ok, so I couldn't come up with anything).

Sadly, many of your friends and peers are struggling because they were unaware or ignored the highly likely truth we're covering in this chapter. Also, many of them became a bit delusional as a result of Mission Related Ego Inflation Disorder (MREID for short). MREID causes RMs to have a sense of self that is unreal and disconnected from reality. They think that there isn't anything that they can't do and that there isn't anything they aren't entitled to because they served an honorable mission and their mission president told them that they had all sorts of blessings coming their way. There are other causes but let's move on. RMs suffering from MREID will challenge this chapter by proclaiming that they have lots of skills to offer and people who want to hire them. Unfortunately they don't get it--The CIA and States Department aren’t going to hire them and if a mission is all you got, just hope the employer doesn’t think Mormonism is a cult (highly likely outside of Utah, Idaho, California, and Arizona). Because you lived in a foreign country and speak a foreign language (Spanish most likely), you're now well qualified to be the assistant part-time shift manager at McDonalds helping to translate orders to the mexicans working the fryers. Or if you speak something like Korean, you can be the parts clerk at the regional KIA dealership who calls in special orders to the home factory in Seoul, South Korea. Wow! What career prospects! Serving a mission is a good thing (and very good for learning skills that will help you be a breadwinner one day) but it is not an internship at Microsoft or General Electric.

What can you do to remedy the situation? I'll share a couple of tips. If you are in college, pick a major and get going on it. Don't study something like art history or marine biology. Pick something that actually has a career track (moving from "Seal Pool Cleaner" to "Seal Feeder" to "Seal Trainer" to "Seal Show Performer" at Sea World is not a career track). A degree in Art History will only help you to appreciate the artistic elements of your struggle with poverty in a market economy that produces great wealth. Studying Forest Managment is great preparation for living in a van by the river...

Establish contacts and relationships with people who can actually help you. Your roommate who is great finding out about parties should no longer be the most important person you keep tight with. Brother Samuels, who is a regional manager for Johnson & Johnson should be the person you speak with on a regular basis.

Get a timeline going. Have a plan that has some security coming in the near future (meaning in the next 18-24 months). If you are a recent RM who still has 3 years of college left to go and your bride-to-be is 18 going on 19, you have no near term security in your future. Date for a while and milk your parents for a while longer. While you want to get married right now (see truth #2), you don't have to; you have some time to prepare yourself properly. The same is true for having kids. To be honest, I'm not sure why we let anyone under the age of 21 do anything important--vote, drink, marry, procreate (outside of Mormon-dom the last three usually go: drink, procreate, marry...). You're just too dumb until you get a wee bit older.

And last but not least (always the controversial point at the end!)--don't make "the Lord will provide" a part of your wedding and economic plan. Yes, you'll get some help and blessings for righteous living, but that doesn't mean that He will make a rich chocolate souffle from ramen noodles. He will help you improve what you create and supply. Remember on your mission the story about the missionary who couldn't speak the language but suddenly could for some occasion? What's common in all the stories? That the missionary studied his butt off trying to learn the language. He got divine help recalling his study--he didn't get new information magically planted in his head. The same goes for your welfare as a breadwinner--you'll get help if you prepare and put forth effort. I know that somewhere in the Old Testament is says something like, "For behold, prepare a full feast and harvest by the sweat of thy brow, but a warning to my people for when thou givest crap for an offering, crap shall be thy blessing and heritage..." (that's the New English Translation version)

You may be asking, well when will I know that my Blue Book Value is high enough? That's a difficult answer to quantify, but let's look at some likely factors: You should be able to pay for a place to live, transport yourself from place to place, eat, meet your other bill obligations, pay tithing, and have a little in savings--without getting any financial help from your parents, bishop, or the government (and you shouldn't have to use student loans to meet any of these expenses). If you have a car that's paid for (either by you or Dad), you need to factor in a car payment because one day you'll need to buy a new one (or make repairs to the current wheels). You also need to factor in car insurance since you'll be kicked off Dad's policy when you get married. The same goes for health insurance. Now, you can factor in income from both you and the wife-to-be but if you think that $1,300 a month is plenty, then you have another thing coming. If you can do the things listed above and are on the verge of having some good prospects near term, then you're much more highly likely to be ready to say "I do."