Personal Finance Tips for Newlyweds
Planning a wedding takes months, or even years, of work to coordinate all of the details that go into making your special day perfect. But planning for your life after the wedding takes its own efforts to ensure that your new life together goes as smoothly as the main event.
When couples join their lives together in marriage, there are plenty of details to handle and paperwork to coordinate. It’s important that couples talk about the day-to-day aspects of their new life, including how to make things like shared finances work.
While each couple handles their financial union differently, there are a few basic areas where couples should consider how their status as a couple differs from their previous lives as singles. If you’re hearing wedding bells this season, consider the following personal finance tips for newlyweds:
1. Open the Financial Discussion
Discussing finances with other people isn’t always the most comfortable topic, but when you marry someone, you also marry their financial situation: present and future. You should talk about existent financial details, like income and debt, as well as your future finances, including your family budget and savings goals.
Couples who don’t communicate about their combined finances risk disagreement and challenges later on, like when one member wants to make a large expenditure while the other one would prefer to pay down debt. Reduce the risk of money-related arguments by opening the lines of communication early on in your marriage.
2. Build Your Financial Future Together
Now that you’re married and may be planning to start a family, your financial priorities are probably shifting. This is an important time to talk about plans for you and your spouse’s ongoing financial support, even if something unexpected were to occur. Look into your insurance situation and add or adjust policies, like your health insurance, life insurance and disability plans, as necessary.
You’ll also want to discuss how your future goals, like plans for retirement, can work together. While you may not have formally started your retirement planning journey, you probably have some ideas about what your future looks like. Think about lifestyle decisions and investments that you can make now to create a future you can get excited about.
3. Make Plans to Stay On Track
Talking about your finances and future goals at the outset of your marriage is an important way to start off on the right track. But if you visit the topic only once and move forward without a solid plan for your shared finances and goals, you may not end up where you expect.
This is where it’s helpful to have an objective third party who can help you talk through some of the trickier topics and plot a path for the future. A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER TM professional is an invaluable partner for working through your financial plans at the outset of your exciting new life transition.
And your CFP® professional can continue to provide advice and guidance as you need help with your retirement planning, asset management, and future life transitions, like welcoming a new baby or buying a new home.
To learn more about how a CFP® professional can help you and your spouse start off on the right financial foot, contact Puckett & Sturgill Financial Group today to schedule a discovery meeting!
Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. (CFP Board) owns the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, CFP® (with plaque design), and CFP® (with flame design) in the U.S., which it authorizes use of by individuals who successfully complete CFP Board’s initial and ongoing certification requirements.