Managing your finances as a married couple may take some getting used to. For instance, when you’re single, the only person you have to answer to is yourself, but when you tie the knot, you have a new responsibility toward your significant other. Fortunately, there’s no right answer to figuring out your finances as a married couple, however there are some things you should consider.
The first thing you should know before deciding on your financial plan as a married couple is your spouse’s spending habits. Obviously, your partner’s fiscal practices weren’t a primary concern when you decided to marry them, but now that you’re with them for life you’ll need to learn the best way to work with their habits.
Related to this last point is your spouse’s credit score. While only living with a person or even being married to them can’t affect your score, opening an account with them certainly can. For this reason, you should both know what the effect on your credit will be before combining your finances.
Another point that may be obvious is that you’ll have to trust each other, treat each other fairly, and communicate often. Hopefully, this will be the easy part since you already learned how to do this before you got married. This involves sticking to your promised contributions and speaking up if something isn’t working or something has changed.
Another important part is making sure both of you are on the same page and have an equal say in your financial planning. This way one of you won’t be left out of the loop if there’s a significant change and you can both have your eyes on the same goals. In order to do this, you’ll need to talk with each other about your finances frequently so that you won’t stray from your prescribed plan.
Marriage Finance Strategies
There are four main strategies to managing your finances as a married couple. You can either (1) keep everything separated, you can (2) share everything, you can (3) share some things and keep other things private, and then (4) the breadwinner can provide the other spouse a certain amount of money (an “allowance”) over a specified time period.
If you plan on sharing everything in one account, you’ll really need to agree about how you’re spending your money, because every little bit that you spend is also your spouse’s money. You’ll need to mutually decide on a limit, and every purchase beyond that limit should be discussed.
If you keep some things private and share other things, you can still enjoy some independence from each other while building toward shared goals. However, you’ll still need to be open about how you spend your money. A popular method here is to open a joint account for your shared bills that you each contribute an agreed-upon amount.
The strategy that involves the breadwinner paying the other spouse an allowance may be a little controversial. It’s important that everyone is on the same page with this plan and that the allowance is not seen as a favor.
Whatever you decide to do, it’s imperative that you come to a decision mutually. If this whole marriage thing is going to work out, you’ll have to communicate with each other and make sure you agree on your financial goals. Good luck.
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https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/should-we-manage-money-jointly-or-separately
