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Money as a couple, weddings, prenups, divorce, and money with friends and relatives. Keep money from coming between you and the people you love.
On a joint credit card, each of you owes the entire balance, not half, and a breakup or divorce doesn’t change that. Open one only with someone whose spending you’d be willing to pay off alone. Otherwise, keep each card in one person’s name, so only its owner owes the bill.
If you’re married, file jointly, and one of you isn’t earning, a spousal IRA lets the working spouse’s income fund an IRA in the other spouse’s name. Open the account and fund it every year you’re down to one paycheck, because a year you skip can’t be made up once its tax deadline passes.
If you’re bringing debt, a home, a business, retirement savings, or kids from a past relationship into a marriage, start the prenup conversation months before the wedding. Writing one begins with each of you disclosing everything you own and owe. Even if you never sign, you’ll both know exactly what the other brings to the marriage.
Stealth wealth means letting your spending stay quieter than your income. Every visible sign of money, from a new car to news of a windfall, invites loan requests, higher quotes, and scam pitches. Keep balances and big purchases to yourself, and put what you’d have spent on appearances into savings.
Before you lend a relative or friend money, ask yourself whether you could live with never getting it back. If not, lend only the part you could afford to lose, help another way, or say no kindly. A loan that goes unpaid can cost you the relationship as well as the money.
Run your shared bills and goals through one joint account with your partner, and keep a personal account each for spending neither of you has to explain. Fund the joint account with the same percentage of each paycheck, so the split stays fair when one of you earns more.
Keeping a secret card, loan, or account from your partner breaks trust, and in a shared financial life the cost lands on both of you. Swap credit reports and a full list of accounts and debts with your partner, then agree on a spending limit above which either of you checks in first.
Money is a touchy subject, and our attitudes about it and our relationships with it harken back to things we learned as children. As such, far too many soon-to-be-married couples avoid specifically discussing it. Maybe they’re embarrassed by their lack…
Getting engaged and married is an exciting time in anyone’s life. It can also be a time of intense stress as you try to plan a wedding and adapt to living with your significant other. Adding money to the equation only makes…
You drive a beat up ’95 Honda Civic and your spouse drives a shiny new BMW. You go to the mall and buy what you intended to buy, but your spouse comes home with a few of the latest gadgets…
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