Can Minnesota Public Radio's Budget Balancer lead to marital bliss?

Wade and Lisa Fowler have been married for less than a year. But they've already found a way to work together to set a family budget--one of the knottiest of marital issues--and have made some strides in coming to terms on what may be the next most challenging issue: politics.

Wade leans to the left politically, Lisa to the right. Both find it hard to talk politics because it usually leads to arguments. And Wade admits that he was wary of finding out too much of Lisa's politics, because it could raise some uncomfortable questions: "why would you get along with them if you found out what they believed in?" he says.

But they recently found a tool that has helped them have a civil discussion about politics. They heard about Minnesota Public Radio's Budget Balancer, and decided to sit down and come up with a plan for the state's budget, together. "We have different views on life in general," Wade says, "but we had to come to an agreement for a household budget so we wanted to see if we could do it on the state level."

Wade and Lisa created their own state budget plan by choosing among the nearly 100 options the Balancer offers for raising or cutting spending and taxes. Every time they made a choice, the Balancer provided them with information about the potential consequences of their decision.

They found that it was a great way to explore politics through specific examples, rather than locking horns with sweeping, ideological statements. "It's less intimidating and easier" she says, "if you have a tool and can look at examples and saying you want to spend money on this rather than saying "'I believe in this.'"

They found it hard to balance areas they both value, like health care and law enforcement (Lisa) and education and the environment (Wade), with the rest of the state's priorities--all the while avoiding a deficit. Having to make a series of hard trade-offs spurred some surprising realizations. Wade realized that, as he says, "You can't just throw money at a problem." "You have to have the people and infrastructure in place." Lisa had to restrain her urge to pump state money into law enforcement (she has three generations of state troopers in her family) because it ended up being an "incredible" amount of money. "I had to go back a notch," she says.

In the end, maybe the biggest surprise was how few differences there ended up being between them. "It was interesting to see that while we differ politically, our values are similar" Wade says, "which is why our marriage is successful."

Wade and Lisa Fowler's values added up. Do yours? See for yourself by using Minnesota Public Radio's Budget Balancer. Go to www.mpr.org/budgetbalancer