Starting Out : Money and Marriage

Before you walk down the aisle, make sure you talk about money. Nearly-weds should check out helpful tips in this short video from Yahoo! Finance.

Getting the state out of marriage

Came across this article from Naomi Woolfe in the Sunday Times.

Let’s also get the state out of the marriage union. In spite of the dress and the flowers, marriage is a business contract. Women, generally, don’t understand this, until it hits them over the head upon divorce. Let’s take a lead from our gay and lesbian friends, who, without state marriage, often create domestic partnerships with financial autonomy and unity spelt out. A heterosexual parallel: celebrate marriage with a religious or emotional ceremony — leave the state out of it — and create a business- or domestic-partner contract aligning the couple legally.

Couples married to happiness

Want a happier spouse? Start by boosting your own happiness. So reports Miranda Hitti on WebMD Health News. The old saying about marriage that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" is getting some scientific support. Cultivating your own happiness could make your spouse happier, too.

"A married man is significantly more satisfied with his life when his wife becomes more satisfied with hers, and vice versa," says British researcher Nick Powdthavee of the economics department at Britain's University of Warwick. In fact, the positive impact of having a happy spouse can offset major problems such as unemployment or hospitalization.

A married man is significantly more satisfied with his life when his wife becomes more satisfied with hers, and vice versa. Unmarried couples living together don't show the same pattern.

Powdthavee took information from the 1996-2000 British Household Panel Survey that included 9,700 married people and a further 3,300 unmarried people living with their partner. All were 16-65 years old. The survey's topics included life satisfaction, education, income, and health. Based on those answers, Powdthavee used a complicated mathematical formula and principles from psychology to parse the nitty-gritty details of happiness.

He found that in married couples, happiness can overflow from one spouse to their partner. When a husband or wife notches up their own happiness level, the positive impact on their spouse is big, says Powdthavee. How big? Here's how Powdthavee puts it:

"It is significantly greater than the effect of owning a house outright; it can completely offset the non-[financial] cost of unemployment; it is equal to not having to spend around two months in the hospital last year.

In other words, happiness can be contagious -- in a good way -- in marriage, even for a partner facing burdens. Of course, some people, by nature, are happier than others, and Powdthavee's research take that into account. Powdthavee concludes:

This paper has shown that married people have become more satisfied with their life over the years merely because their spouses have become happier with theirs.

However, there's a twist. The happiness data hinges on marriage. The same results weren't seen among unmarried couples who lived together, says Powdthavee.
The reasons for that aren't clear. Perhaps unmarried couples are less committed or tend to focus more on themselves, instead of on their partner's well-being over time, says Powdthavee. He says this is consistent with studies showing a higher break-up rate and eventual marriage failure by those cohabiting with a partner compared with a spouse. The findings were presented in Nottingham, UK, at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference.

Happy marriages = lower blood pressure

People who are happily married have lower blood pressure than those who are single or in an unhappy marriage, according to a study conducted by researchers from Brigham Young University.

Read more here.

Oprah features PREPARE/ENRICH

The Couple Checkup, a best-selling book by the creators of the PREPARE/ENRICH marital readiness inventory, is featured on Oprah's TV show.

From AOL Video

The short segment includes an interview with a sample couple and a contribution from PREPARE/ENRICH founder, Dr David Olsen.

Based on an unprecedented national survey of 50,000 marriages, The Couple Checkup presents the principles for creating a successful couple relationship. The free online profile includes fifteen to twenty categories that are customized based on the relationship stage-whether dating, engaged, or married-the age, and whether or not children are involved. The book also includes the SCOPE Personality Profile and the Couple and Family Map of the relationship.

The Couple Checkup is designed to help you and your partner build a more satisfying and intimate relationship. Just answering the questions will stimulate thoughts and attitudes about your relationship. It is designed to activate dialogue, discovery, and increase the overall quality of your relationship.

The Couple Checkup will help you discover your strengths as a couple. Strengths are what enable you to enjoy, and to continue developing a healthy relationship. It will also help you identify issues that are threatening the vitality of your relationship and may need to be addressed.

Whether you are dating, engaged or married, the Couple Checkup is valuable and relevant. After indicating the stage of your relationship, the Couple Checkup will automatically select applicable questions for you and your partner. It is designed for any couple desiring to enrich their relationship.

Single, childless and poor

Single Irish people without children are over three times more likely than the rest of the population to experience persistent poverty, according to new research reported by Mary Minihan in The Irish Times.

Households headed by a single adult, with or without children, are more exposed to poverty risks than people living in couples, but the probability of persistent poverty for singles without children is even higher, according to the report, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries.

According to the report:

Across all OECD countries, single-adult households with and without children were more exposed to poverty risks than people living in couples, especially when considering the risk of having long periods with low income. On average, single adults with children faced a risk of persistent poverty that was twice as high as for the whole population.

You can read the article in full here.

Jennifer and Fi: 160 questions

"A gathering of ideas, rants, reflections leading up to the big day" is how Jennifer describes her She Weds blog. In a recent Pre Marriage Counseling post Jennifer writes about how she and her Fi (fiance) took the PREPARE/ENRICH readiness inventory.

"160 questions about finances, sexual issues, spirituality, family planning, our families, feelings, how we fight, how we make up...".

Jennifer, who is based in Arizona, USA, writes:

One thing I observed while taking the test is that how far Fi and I have come. There were a few 'division of labor' questions regarding household chores and future parenting. Fi and I have been together for over 5 years and have lived together for 4. So we have already divided our labor.

Fi does the kitchen, I clean the bathroom and vacuum and together we keep clutter down and do laundry. We split cooking evenly throughout the week. I coach on Tuesdays and have track on Wednesdays- he makes dinner. When Fi is in school, I pull a heavier load because his educational pursuits are important to me.

You can read Jennifer's thoughts on taking the PREPARE/ENRICH inventory in full here.

Prepare for a wedding - and a marriage

Who could disagree with Lindsay Plumer, licensed family therapist, certified PREPARE/ENRICH counsellor and Live, Laugh and Love blogger, when she writes?

Many couples spend more time planning the wedding or commitment ceremony itself than they do preparing for their future as a married couple.

Continues Lindsay, who is based in Folsom, California: "Marriage is hard work ... it takes a lot of effort and skills that just aren’t typically taught in a classroom. I encourage all couples that are considering making a lifetime commitment to consider a program of preparation such as PREPARE/ENRICH in order to maximize the potential of their relationship."

Celebrant Kim now PREPARE/ENRICH certified

Congratulations to Kim Kirkley of Brooklyn, New York, who has just joined the ranks of the 60,000-plus certified PREPARE/ENRICH counsellors in the US. She has also created a new blog entitled Celebrant Kim.

Kim also runs the Our Elegant Ceremony website and her excellence as a celebrant has been featured in Modern Bride magazine and on TheKnot website. Check out this ‘Thank You’ note from a well-satisfied client.

Writes Kim:

As a Celebrant, interfaith minister, and wedding officiant, I believe that a ceremony is an extraordinary event in our lives. It is one of the few occasions where we have the chance to stand in the power of ceremony and notice that each of our lives has meaning.

I respect every individual and most belief systems – religious, spiritual or secular. In every ceremony my goal is to celebrate who the participants are – their beliefs and values.

We wish Kim every future success.

Marriage-ready? The 10 deal breakers

At the Marriage Forums on about.com, a person will share a pre-marriage issue that is an obvious deal breaker. Their advice?
Don't get married without knowing your future spouse's thoughts on these issues.

Compromise is usually not an option if the two of you have very different answers to The Ten Most Important Questions to Ask Before You Get Married.

Here are just three of the top ten deal breakers:

• Can we talk about money? The mechanics of how the two of you will handle your finances really isn't the issue. The issue is whether or not the two of you can calmly and practically talk about money.
• How much time will we spend with our in-laws?They may be wonderful people who love you both, but your in-laws should not be allowed to interfere in your marriage relationship. If either one of you will not set boundaries with your own parents when it comes to visits, phone calls, finances, children, etc., the problem with your in-laws will only worsen.
• How do you want to spend our days off? Balancing work and fun and family time and personal time is not easy. Living a balanced life together will create the time you both need, individually and together, for vacations, quiet time, and fun time.

Read the full article here.

FOCCUS: 'Those sneaky test creators'

"In all truthfulness, it wasn't that bad. I think my favorite question on the whole FOCCUS Inventory was the last one in the Cohabitating Couples section. It said, basically, 'You know the church disapproves that you’re living together, right?' Bwahahahaha."

In the Life of Martha blogger reports on her experiences with the 180+ questions in the FOCCUS marital readiness inventory.

Martha sets the scene:

We went to the couple's house ... It’s a nice place and they have a cute, friendly black lab named Maggie. We had the small talk for a while, getting to know each other. Then they pulled out the test. (Dah, dah, DUM!!!)

She continues:

Some of the questions were kind of funny ('I think I’ll be uncomfortable being nude in front of my future spouse' – whoops, too late for that! ... but there were some questions I had problems with. Mostly the religion ones. There were others that I wasn’t quite sure how to answer given that my only options were approve, disapprove, or uncertain. Sometimes I wanted to add comments in the margins ... But I think it will be a good experience overall.

But ya gotta watch out ...

These test creators sure were trying to trick you though. Double negatives, a sneaky 'un' which changed the whole question. 'I am uncertain that I don’t not want to marry this person'. Uhm, what? Hopefully they didn’t catch me on any of the questions where I meant yes but filled in the disapprove circle.

You can read the full post here.

FOCCUS: 'You two scored the highest!'

In her wedding blog Sun Moon Stars Girl describes her and her fiance's experiences with the FOCCUS marital readiness test. She was told by her mentor:

"'In the fifteen years I have given the FOCCUS Inventory, you two scored the highest! In fact, in the 'key factors' section, you two matched 100%'."

Sun Moon Stars Girl describes the test-taking experience:

Each person is given the booklet, an answer sheet, and a number 2 pencil - yup, just like standardized tests (SATs, GREs, etc).

Then we were put in separate rooms to fill in our answers. There were about 75 statements that 'everyone' has to answer, and then 3 sections for 'special situations' in our version with about 15 statements each. We had to answer two of them - for remarrying couples, and for couples that co-habitate.

This sounds easy enough, but remember your answers are 'agree', 'disagree', or 'uncertain', and you have to read the statements carefully or you might end up answering in a way you did not intend to.

She continues:

One of the statements both of us were unsure about answering was, 'I can only be happy if I’m married'. Since we aren’t married yet, both of us answered 'disagree', but this and some of the other statements we definately had to think about for a couple minutes.

On learning of their 100%, best-ever score, Sun Moon Stars Girl writes:

I guess this is a really good sign of our life together right now, and to come!

Read the article in full here.

Get real: Marriage is a business

"Marriage is far more than a romantic arrangement; it has legal and financial ramifications as well.". Personal finance expert Liz Pulliam Weston writes not just as someone who has covered issues surrounding couples and money for years. She is also as someone who's been happily married for more than a decade.

"I've learned that you don't have to have the exact same approach to money to succeed (I'm a saver; hubby's more of a spender), but you do have to be willing to listen to each other, compromise and put a plan into action."

Here are some of the business skills that Liz thinks are most important in a successful marriage:

• Do your due diligence: You can't make a plan for your partnership until you understand your starting point, which is where you stand financially right now.
• Determine your goals for your partnership: Successful businesses tend to have business plans, outlines of what they hope to achieve in the coming years. .
• Create a plan to attain those goals: You'll probably discover that you have to prioritize. You'll probably discover that you have to prioritize. To save enough for retirement, for example, you may wind up contributing a bit less to your kids' college funds. Or your desire to get out of debt may mean putting off that cool vacation.
• Work out your conflicts: No one is always right -- not in business, not in marriage, not in life. Partners have to figure out ways to communicate and compromise. When business partners reach an impasse, they may bring in a coach or mediator to help them through the conflict.

Read Liz's article in full on MSN Money. Liz is the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism.

FOCCUS: 'We, like, totally failed!'

From the Dirty Catholic blog: "So you think the church people are nice and they just want to help you 'talk about things' and 'get know yourself better'. You know, all the usual touchy-feely hippie crap. They even go on and on in the instructions about how 'there are no wrong answers.'

"Anyhoo … emboldened by the dizzying freedom of no wrong answers, Mr. Man and I took the test and ... totally failed. Or, to quote our marriage prep counselor, we 'Received the worst scores I have ever seen.'"

Our blogger continues:

Apparently there are wrong answers. For every question there are three choices: 'Yes', 'No', and 'I don’t know'. Guess what? Every time you answer, 'I don’t know', it’s the WRONG ANSWER.

I’m not sure if accusing your partner of 'making us fail' is the kind of open couples communication that the test is trying to engender, but that's certainly what it has done for us. I think we both have pretty good cases ...

You will all be glad to know, however, that despite scoring around 30% percent in most areas (and yes, that is lower than F-) we scored almost 98% (a solid A!) in one area: Marriage Readiness. Apparently we are both very ready to commit ourselves to spending the rest of our lives telling each other 'I don’t know!'

Read the full Out of FOCCUS post.

All that was two yours ago and the latest from Dirty Catholic is that she and Mr. Man are setting up a couples group just for "upkeep and emotional health and stuff."

Sharing credit histories before marriage

In the US a frequently aired TV commercial features a forlorn young husband forced to live with his in-laws because he was clueless about his bride's abysmal credit history. The ad's purpose is to spur (scare?) young lovers into sharing financial histories and credit scores.

Journalist Marilyn Kennedy Melia, writing at the Bankrate website, believes that, if it's true love, credit-scarred individuals have little to fear about revealing their financial status.

Sponsor of the scarey commerical, web site freecreditreport.com, is obviously hoping to boost sales of its credit information reports. Romantic partners are a big, untapped market. The article quotes a spokeswoman as saying:

We have found that people often aren't interested in reviewing their credit report until there is a life event which makes them aware of how important it is.

The article also quotes Peter Larson, clinical psychologist and vice president of LifeInnovations, the organisation that created the PREPARE/ENRICH marital readiness inventory:

If I had any reason to believe my partner had a checkered financial past, I may want to sit down with a financial adviser and look at credit scores before I made the decision to combine finances. For some couples, this is an important move to being able to buy a house or finance a car. They need the credit of the individual most worthy of that type of financing."

But, if it's true love, credit-scarred individuals may have nothing to fear about exchanging their credit histories. The Internet dating service, True.com, conducted a survey earlier this year of some 2,200 online respondents. In response to a question about whether they would stay in a relationship where their partner had substantial credit card debt or had filed for bankruptcy, 87 percent of men and 80 percent of women said they would.

You can read the article in full here.

Resolving finances before marriage

Personal financial topics are often the most difficult for people to discuss. But since financial issues often cause significant problems in marriages, you should try to reach agreement on your finances before your wedding. A helpful article by Roger Wohlner at ManagingMoney.com identifies some items to consider.

• Where do you want to be in five or 10 years?: Dreams for the future often come with price tags. Planning now will allow you to set priorities and start saving for those goals.
• What assets and liabilities are each of you bringing to the marriage?: Preparing a combined net worth statement will give you a starting point for determining how you can help achieve your financial goals.
• How will you handle spending decisions?: The process of defining goals and setting a budget can help resolve differing views about money matters, forcing couples to compromise and make joint decisions about how money will be spent. While that might seem like a painful process, addressing these issues now can help prevent future misunderstandings.

Read Roger's article in full here.

FOCCUS: Not 'glossing over' any issues

Blogger Catholic Newlywed Girl found she was getting a lot of visitors to her post about the FOCCUS marital readiness inventory. So she decided to write some more about how she and her husband found the whole experience and how they both feel they benefited from it.

"All in all, the test is nothing to worry about, and is certainly not anything that you should feel the need to 'cheat' on."

She continues:

First of all, I don't know of any religions that are going to 'fail' you and tell you that you can't get married. I think (based on how our marriage preparation went) that the test is to make sure that the couple isn't 'glossing over' any issues.

If you're ignoring anything that could become a 'big issue', the marriage preparation sessions are a great place to talk about them, because the priest, deacon, or whoever gets to act as a mediator for the session.

You can read the post in full here.

A financial plan you both can live with

When you were just starting out, whatever you earned was all yours. But now there are two of you, and things are a little different. Because, let's face it, you're in this together, and what used to be 'yours' is now 'ours'. US bankers Charles Schwab provide some guidance on how handle the transition to marriage.

Among the bank's financial tips for married couples are:

• DON'T BE AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT MONEY: Even the most compatible couples can have very different opinions about spending and saving. So it's essential to have that conversation and make sure you understand each other before the credit card bills come due.
• DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO MERGE YOUR MONEY: Every couple is different. Some will pool all their resources. Others will create a joint account for shared expenses and retain individual accounts for personal ones. Then, of course, there's the issue of taxes.
• CREATE A FINANCIAL PLAN YOU CAN BOTH LIVE WITH: When you talk about money, you'll want to discuss your financial goals. And if one of you likes to spend while the other prefers to save, find a fair compromise that'll make both of you happy. You'll thank each other later.

Read the Charles Schwab article in full here.

Other interesting articles from the same bank include On the Road to Financial Bliss and Talk Finances Before You Tie the Knot.

FOCCUS: 'Groom and I in great shape'

Wedding blogger Electric Bride and fiance have just got back the results of their FOCCUS invenory. "As it turns out the Groom and I are in great shape for getting married." Her family background is East Indian and Protestant, while his is American (Irish, German, Norwegian, Welsh, English) and Catholic.

In her FOCCUS follow-up post Electric Bride writes:

While we might not agree, we're compatible on big and small stuff- lifestyle, children, religion, finances, intimacy, career.

We're very aware of how we resolve issues that arise between us, accept the other person won't change by walking down an aisle and know one another extremely well.

Marriage finances: 'attack as a team'

Brooke, who blogs at Dollar Frugal, is a newly-married 20-something who got herself out of debt a long time ago. Her excellent post 10 Ways to Use Personal Finance to Strengthen a Marriage offers excellent advice for couples. In particular:

Attack Finances as A Team: This supports your 'one team, one fight' mentality and solidifies your stance against the rest of the world (or at least corporate America!). Agree how much to pay each month and make a budget together.

Other tips from Brooke include:

• Open Lines of Communication: Open lines of communication that are needed with a budget shared between two people also transfer to other parts of your marriage. Should we raise our child(ren) in a certain way? I don’t know, let’s discuss it. It’s the same premise as where to spend budgeted monies.
• Set Financial Goals Together: Setting goals together will cement your relationship and show the other just how much you care about them. You could try brainstorming separately (no peeking!) on what financial goals should be, then come together to discuss each idea.
• Shared Sense of Accomplishment: The sense of accomplishment that came when we paid off our debt (Oct 2002) after a year of scrimping and clawing was an adrenaline rush. This is a shared experience much stronger than any night out on the town with friends or flashy car. It is part of our shared identity that no one can take away from us!

Read Brooke's full list of top 10 tips here.