Getting Married: A Financial To-Do List

Do we have to say it? Getting married is a big deal, and it comes with a big to-do list. Compared with the joy of sharing the news, the stress of planning a wedding and the adventure of dreaming up the honeymoon, more prosaic priorities—like figuring out how you’ll handle your finances together—can easily get neglected.

We believe the following five items are vital for couples to complete before tying the knot:

1. Discuss Your Relationship with Money. People’s upbringing and experiences can leave them with very different approaches to handling money. It’s important to understand how your relationship with money is similar to or different from your partner’s before merging your finances. Be sure to discuss your beliefs about saving, how closely to track spending, your approach to making big purchases and how you feel about taking on debt.
2. Explore Your Financial Goals. Once you feel you understand your partner’s financial beliefs, start to discuss your financial goals. Where do you and your partner see yourself in the future? What are your short- and long-term financial goals? Make sure you are both on the same page so that each of you feel financially ready for what the future holds, whether that’s going back to school, starting a company or a family, or retiring early.
3. Develop a Budget. Creating a joint budget helps you understand and hopefully control where your money is being spent. Start by adding up combined monthly income and then subtract joint monthly expenses. Finally, decide how you will allocate your surplus toward your short-, medium- and long-term savings or investing goals.
4. Create or Update Your Estate Plan. Now that you’ve found a partner in life, you’ll want to make sure they’re cared for after you’re gone. You will need to update wills, health care documents and durable powers of attorney, as well as designate new beneficiaries on key financial accounts. If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to creating or updating an estate plan, give us a call. We can advise you on how to find an attorney and provide advice about more complex situations.
5. Decide How Your Finances Will Merge. Some couples completely merge assets, some keep them separate and some strike a balance between the two (each contributing to a joint account from which bills are paid, for example). Whatever approach you take, open communication is key. Any of these arrangements can work—what’s important is that you both feel heard and understood.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you have questions about your specific situation, please contact your portfolio team. We’re happy to help.

About Adviser Investments

Adviser is a full-service wealth management firm, offering investment management, financial and tax planning, managed individual bond portfolios, and 401(k) advisory services. We’ve been helping individuals, trustsA legal document that functions as an instruction manual to how you want your money managed and spent in your later years as well as how your assets should be distributed after your death. Assets placed in a trust are generally safe from creditors and can be sold by the trustee in short order, avoiding the lengthy and costly probate process., institutions and foundations since 1994. Adviser Investments and its subsidiaries have over 5,000 clients across the country and over $8 billion in assets under management. Our portfolios encompass actively managed funds, ETFsA type of security which allows investors to indirectly invest in an underlying basket of financial instruments (these may include stocks, bonds, commodities or other types of instruments). Shares in an ETF are publicly traded on an exchange, and the price of an ETF’s shares will fluctuate throughout the trading day (traditional mutual funds trade only once a day). For example, one popular ETF tracks the companies in the S&P 500, so buying a share of the ETF gets an investor exposure to all 500 companies in the index., socially responsible investments and tactical asset allocation strategies, and we’re experts on Fidelity and Vanguard mutual funds. We take pride in being The Adviser You Can Talk To. To see a full list of our awards and recognitions, click here, and for more information, please visit www.adviserinvestments.com or call 800-492-6868.