Money tips for couples
The New York Times journalist, Tara Siegel Bernard, has a great article on marriage and money. Yes, we all naively want to believe that somehow marriage is about God, religion, love, and everything else that makes it romantic, but the reality is that marriage is a legal arrangement about money. As unromantic as it sounds, most problems in all relationships, including marriage, are about money. We also know that couples who are merely in a committed relationship without marriage are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to taxes, inheritance, and other benefits like insurance.
So let me just share how my wife and I deal with personal finance issues as a couple and how we do compared to what Tara suggest.
We talk about money. There is no defined time for it, but we talk about it whenever needed.
We have a budget. No it is nothing fancy. Just rough estimates of what we should be spending on what based on our incomes.
Have a good life but only if you can afford it. Getting into a debt trap is unacceptable. We still drive cars bought in the 90s. We don’t stay in 5-star resorts when we go on vacation and we only buy things when they are on sale. We eat organic but only the most polluted food categories.
Have an emergency fund. As you can see, we do have a cash reserve, but our goal of a quarter million dollars in liquid assets is to make sure that if something goes terribly wrong, our family is protected and have nothing to worry about.
Use independent advice. We have differences on how to invest our money and we often do research on the web and ask others in forums. We are yet to hire a financial adviser to help us sort our differences but it is best to do so if you cannot come to an agreement. For instance, you may want to buy real estate in a downturn while your partner may want to invest in stocks.
Have pocket money. We both have $200 to spend money on anything that we want without even sharing that information with each other. That pays for my nights out with friends or if I end up buying something that I like: music, for example. For everything else for us or the household, we have a rule that if it something that we have not talked about at all and it is over $50, it is best to call the other partner and confirm.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.