The lead-up to a wedding, the day itself, and the first few months of married life is an extremely exciting time in anyone’s life, and you should absolutely enjoy every step of the way. But once the dust has settled, it’ll be time to get on with the more practical side of married life, such as figuring out and securing your finances.
The benefits of tackling your finances early on in your marriage are many. For one thing, they’ll help prevent problems down the line — money, after all, is the number one cause of arguments between couples. Second, the earlier you get started, the more likely it is that you’ll have a rosy and happy financial future. Even small positive steps can have a big impact when multiplied by many decades.
In this post, we’ll run through some top tips for working together to secure your financial future. Let’s dive in.
Find Your Ideal Bank Account Situation
There are multiple ways to tackle the bank account situation. Will you go for a joint account, in which all of your money is equally accessible to both partners? Will you opt for individual accounts? Or will we have a shared account, but also retain your individual accounts too?
There’s no perfect answer to this question; it’s all about whatever works best for you. Most couples find that having a joint account for shared expenses while also keeping their own accounts works best.
Pay Down Any Wedding Debt
The goal is to work towards having a healthy financial future. But before that can happen, you’ll need to work on getting rid of any debt — and given that you’ve just had a big wedding, that’ll probably mean wedding debt. Put together a solid plan for paying off all the debt as soon as you can. Once you’ve done that, you can begin putting your money towards finance-boosting areas.
Get The Right Insurance
We’re not talking about home insurance (though you should have that, too). We’re talking about life insurance. You’ll have plans to live a long and happy life together, but you never know what might happen. Taking the time to update your insurance and ensure that it fully protects all parties will give you peace of mind that, whatever happens, your loved ones will be taken care of.
Set Goals
Setting financial goals might not sound like a fun way to spend your first few months as a married couple, but it’s those goals that’ll allow you to buy a home, have an awesome retirement, or take a once-in-a-lifetime joint trip. Coming up with a few goals and a solid outline of how you’ll get there will also help to give some direction for the next couple of years. If you’re planning for the long term, using a compound calculator can help you visualize how consistent investments over time can accumulate and boost your savings for goals like retirement or buying a home.
Build Your Financial Future
It’s important for everyone, regardless of marital status, to invest in their financial future. But it’s arguably more important for married couples since it’s more likely that there’ll be heavy financial costs to grapple with in the future (such as paying for a child’s college education).
There are multiple ways to build your financial future. At the bare minimum, you should have a savings account that offers high interest rates. If you have extra money to play with, then consider investing in stocks or the real estate market; the latter in particular can be an excellent way to boost your financial future. If you and your partner don’t have the capital (or time/energy) to take on real estate investing yourselves, then take a look at becoming real estate syndicators. It offers an efficient way to invest in property without many of the headaches of individual investing.
Be Aware of Your Individual Weak Points
It’s all good and well to take proactive, positive steps towards building a financial future. However, in addition to doing all those things, it’s also important to recognize that no one is perfect, and that includes when it comes to finances. Most people are good at managing their weak points when they’re on their own, but it can be problematic when the finances are intertwined with someone else and you’re working towards a shared goal. For example, some people are impulse spenders, or they’ll commit small fortunes to their hobbies. Understanding how those weak points will impact your long-term financial goals is key. While you’re a team working in pursuit of the same things, you might also need to work on saying goodbye to your own negative spending habits.
Work On Your Financial Communication
As we mentioned above, money is the number one cause of arguments among couples. While you might be great at communicating about most aspects of your lives, it’s worth taking extra steps to ensure that you’re able to openly and honestly talk about money matters. If you don’t, then conversations about money could quickly veer into argument territory, or, even more damaging, it might mean that one of the couple has to hide their spending. Most long-term financial problems can be tackled head-on if they’re out in the open and discussed together.
Plan Routine Check-ins
It would be nice if money was one of those things that you could just leave to its own devices. Alas, that’s not the case. With financial goals more difficult than ever to reach, your money situation requires careful planning. Set aside some time to sit down together and review how you’re progressing towards your financial ambitions, and then make any adjustments. It’s also recommended to identify a good financial planner to work with at the earliest opportunity; if you find the right one, then they’ll be working with you for the rest of your life.
Money is important, and there’s no other way to say it. After the highs of the wedding, it’s imperative to get together and figure out your financial future. If you can do that, then you’ll find that it’s much more achievable to make your marriage goals come true, be it buying a house, having a child, or simply having a happy life.
