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After graduating from Texas Tech with a degree in accounting, Ruth Ann moved back to her hometown of Wylie, Texas, got a job, and married James, who was managing a carpeting and flooring store. First came a son, Dexter. Then, in 1997, Ruth Ann and James stretched and bought a modest three-bedroom house with a big yard for $84,000. Next, she had a daughter, Ellie, and the family was living the American Dream.

But it all unraveled quickly. A superstore opened a few miles away, and James was laid off after the 1999 Christmas season. Try as he might, James couldn't find a comparable position, and he resorted to a succession of odd jobs. By summer, Ruth Ann and James were two mortgage payments behind despite garage sales and borrowing from family. One night Ruth Ann saw the writing on the wall and told James they had to file for bankruptcy. Without saying a word, he walked outside, got in his pickup truck, and cried.

This true story comes from a sobering book about middle-class families called The Two-Income Trap (Basic Books, 2003). According to surveys cited in the book, parents with children at home are in ill financial health. As a group, these couples are two times more likely to go bankrupt than couples without children, and they carry an unhealthy amount of personal debt.

You would be wrong to suppose that adding a second paycheck automatically makes families financially secure. Granted the average two-income family in inflation-adjusted dollars makes 75 percent more than a one-income family a generation ago. But many of today's double-income families are straining to make ends meet. There is more competition for scarce housing in good school districts as well as tempting offers to take on more debt. Unless husband and wife work to service burdensome debts, they cannot afford that nice house with a great school nearby, not to mention paying for childcare, health care, and saving for retirement.

Nearly 90 percent of those who go bankrupt cite job loss, family breakup, or medical problems as the cause of their financial problems. Many working families are less able to cope with life's emergencies while providing life's essentials. They have lost the financial safety net that a stay-at-home spouse provided. That person could get a job when times were tough or could care for a sick loved one without crippling the family finances.

Having two incomes is not the problem, of course, but how we spend them. To live in sync with biblical priorities, we need to assess and reassess what constitutes the good life. Our consumer society impoverishes our imagination by normalizing luxury.

People who intentionally live on less to do more for others should be our model. A promising example was tragically cut short by a fatal traffic accident in Israel recently. Wheaton College student James Pyles, 21, died in June on a summer missions trip to care for West Bank refugees. College chaplain Stephen Kellough said he and Pyles had hoped to launch this fall a campuswide refocus on "living simply and giving generously." Kellough said, "In the last hours of his life, James was living out his vision, doing God's work among the poor."

There are many other lifestyle snares for Christians beyond the two-income trap. But whether we have a lot or a little in material terms, we do well to take our cue from the apostle Paul, who learned the secret of finding contentment in Christ.

Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Two-Income Trap is available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

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August 2004, Vol. 48, No. 8