Planning To Tie The Knot? Read These Financial Tips First

Advisor February 1, 2018

You finally found the love of your life and you or your partner already proposed, so you can’t wait to tie the knot with him/her? You can’t wait to live your life together and spend the remaining years of your lives building more unforgettable memories together, or start building your family and raising your future children.

While it’s obviously OK to be anxious to become parents and see your children bloom and embark their journey as you grow old together, as a promising life and future newlyweds hope to have, the road to tying the knot can also be rough and narrow.

One significant thing you should consider is your financial stability. If you’re not financially stable, then it’ll be difficult for you to reach your goals together as a couple and as a parent of a family. Sometimes it can even lead to arguments and quarrels that may end up in a broken marriage. If you want to protect your upcoming family from this hurdle, here’s what you can do about it.

Make Sure to Talk About Your Financial Goals In The Future

Talk about Your Financial Goals Together

As a couple, you should know by now that you need to work in tandem in order to succeed. But before you plan your financial goals together, you should be honest and transparent with your individual financial goals. Not only that, but you should discuss your history with money and money habits as well. We encourage you to discuss this in a heart-to-heart talk without passing any judgment or ill-feelings. Do your parents quarrel over money? Was money an issue in your family before? What about your spending habits? Are you an impulsive buyer?

It’s important that you know each other’s habits and history so that you can plan effectively on how to handle your combined income. If your partner is an impulsive buyer, it’s best that the other one takes care of your finances. Aside from that, you also need to lay out your plans together for your future. For example, are you planning to buy a house together? A car? An educational insurance for your children? Take these goals into consideration as you budget your finances effectively.

Tally Up All Your Finances

Now that you’re able to plan out all your financial goals, the next step is to budget all your finances accordingly. List down all your assets, this includes your:

Savings
Checking account
Debit cards
Insurances
Investments
Retirement plans
Real Estates

After you’re done listing your assets, you also need to list down your liabilities like:

Create a Budget For Your Living Expenses Together

Debts
Credit card debts
Mortgages
Rental fees
Utility Bills (water, rent, electricity)
Food and Expenses
Transportation, among others.

This will give you an estimate and an idea of how your cash will flow. Moreover, you’ll be able to identify the blockage in your money flow. You can locate which items drain your money and you can reassess whether or not you really need that item. This will help you in creating an effective budget where you and your partner will be able to provide and support your needs while still saving up a portion of your money for the future.

Decide on How to Setup Your Account

Make Sure to Setup Your Financial Account

Since you’re now a couple, you need to decide how you will set up your accounts and we’re not only talking about your bank accounts. You also need to take into consideration your insurances, investments, among your other properties. Do you want to open up a separate joint account? Aside from the joint account, do you also want to keep your individual, separate accounts? If you already have insurance or an investment, it’s about time that you change your beneficiaries since your spouse and your future children will become your dependents too. Or if you want to separate all your properties before you get married and your conjugal properties, you might want to prepare a prenuptial agreement (for a worst-case-scenario), in a case your marriage fails, but we sure hope it won’t.

Entering marriage and living your lives together can be pretty challenging, but if you’ve already set up your financial goals, we’re confident that you’ll be able to overcome any hurdles and challenges in the future!