10 Money Management Tips for New Married Couples

Being a newlywed can be an exciting period in two people’s lives. Young or old, those who have decided to take the plunge and get married will likely find their lives radically changed from when they were single. One aspect of life where this change might be most noticeable is in the area of personal finance.  Love can conquer many things, but when it comes to finances, love and money are like two heavyweights slugging it out during the title fight. This battle can quickly extinguish that care-free, optimistic attitude that often follows marriage.  Finding that you and your spouse don’t quite see eye-to-eye on financial matters can be a rude awakening. To help avoid money missteps as newlyweds, here are some tips, tools, and techniques that can help you and your partner better manage your finances together.

1. Have the ‘Talk’

If you haven’t done it before you got married, it is important to sit down with your spouse and discuss your finances and financial situation. But this conversation should involve more than just comparing checking account balances and leaving it at that. Discuss how you view money, the spending and saving of that money, as well as how your finances should be organized. Having this discussion early on can help avoid issues later in the relationship.

2. Divide and Conquer

During your money conversation, consider discussing the division of finances. Keeping certain finances separate is not necessarily a bad thing when you get married. For example, consider keeping a joint checking account for things like utilities, mortgage, rent, car payments, and similar jointly paid expenses, and then having an individual checking account for each of you to spend upon personal items. This can help keep things fair and avoid arguments about one person overspending or spending too much of the other person’s money.

3. Budget

As a newlywed, a great technique for managing your money is to set a budget early on in the relationship. This a great way to keep expenses down for those who are often still struggling to pay for a wedding, honeymoon, home, car, and similar big ticket items that may be encountered during this period in life. By setting a budget early in your marriage, you also establish a way of watching your expenses to determine spending habits and problem areas upon which you should focus.

4. Goals

You might have personal goals in mind for your finances and financial future, but it is important to inform your significant other of these goals. By talking about and setting goals as a team, you can strive to achieve your expectations together.

5. Track Your Progress, Without Overdoing It

To manage your finances, it is crucial to understand where you are at and where you have been. By watching your finances, you can see if you are on track for achieving your goals or if you are falling short. While tracking your financial progress is indeed important to managing your money, overemphasizing it or making it the focal point of your relationship can be detrimental.

6. Financial Tools

It is important to use tools that make tracking your finances easy for you and your spouse, and that won’t make managing your money a laborious process in which you hate to partake. When using financial tools to help you with money management, it might be as simple as utilizing a paper ledger or a spreadsheet on your computer, or as advanced as using online tools or even a money manager. Whatever you use, it is important that your tools make sense to you and make your financial life easier, not harder.

7. Ask Questions

It can be important to admit that you may not know everything when it comes to your finances. While you might want to look like the sagacious husband, or financially wily wife, making ignorant decisions with your money just to uphold an image can hurt your relationship and hinder your financial progress. If you aren’t sure about the steps you are taking to manage your money, consider seeking advice through your bank, employer, retirement account holder or other financial professional. It is pertinent to consider the sources of the advice you receive  as well as the motives behind it.

8. Work to Your Strengths

You might find that you and your spouse are good at different aspects of money management. She might be good at saving, tracking and budgeting, while you are good at making investment decisions. Try to find a good balance of financial duties that will play to each other’s individual strengths.

9. Plan for the Future

Part of starting a new stage of life together will likely include looking to the future. This might mean creating or adjusting a will to include your spouse, adding him or her as a beneficiary or co-owner on various assets and accounts, and making other decisions that will prepare a secure future for you both.

10. Be Honest With Each Other

It is important to be honest with one another regarding the management of your money. By talking openly and honestly about financial issues, whether they are good or bad, successes or failures, in the near or distant future, being honest about your feelings toward money and financial goals can better ensure a successful financial relationship as newlyweds.

Tom Becker writes about money management for an Australian money comparison website called www.moneycompare.com.au where people can easily find a savings account with higher interest rates for a better ROI.