Personal Finance For Newly Weds

Instructions

• 1

  Understand Your Separate Financial Positions
  
  Be honest to one another financially. Lay out your income, debts, asset and other such on the table. This flies in the face of the popular misguided male –driven view of keeping finances separate. Now when you do this, you know where you stand as a unit and how you can complement each other.
• 2

  Build a Joint Investment Portfolio
  
  When you save money together you are going to have to invest it. You need to do this together. Both of you will not have the same risk appetite but you need to find common ground. Make sure you carry each other on what is going on financially, so if your wife is the financial wizard; make sure she explains what is going on with both of your money.
• 3

  Discuss Your Goals
  
  Whether you want to take annual vacations, finance your personal development, purse a hobby, retire early or start a scholarship fund for your children make sure your spouse is with you on the same page. By now you know marriage requires sacrifice. This means you will have to lay out all your goals and dreams and sort out a way to make sure a win-win situation.
• 4

  Budget Together
  
  One person cannot and should not manage the household budget, to maintain efficiency and trust plan together as a couple. Even if you run a one-income household, both of you need to plan how funds are distributed, debts are managed and expenses are met. The benefit here is that with both of you planning you get to know how your partner thinks financially and advise each other.
• 5

  Assign Financial Responsibility and Monitor
  
  You can even try assigning financial responsibility of certain things between each of you if you run a two-person household. Just ensure that your significant other serves as your control person; ensuring you are keeping up to task.
  
  After all, aren’t two heads better than one?
• 6

  Save Separately
  
  Ensure that a small portion of your money is saved personally for you. We will call this your petty cash account. This is the account you can dip in for the small, mundane things that are essential to you like grooming equipment, underwear and the like.
• 7

  Enjoy Your Money Together
  
  Take vacations; spend time out whatever just make sure you enjoy your hard earned money together.  If you do all that hard work getting the money and then manage the money together only to sit in your various corner and enjoy yourselves, you might as well register your marriage as a business enterprise.  The idea of working together is to ensure that you are both invested in things you both believe in common things that will strength the love and trust you have for each other