After the Honeymoon
/This summer has been an exciting time for me and my family. We’ve had several family members and close friends get married, culminating with my own daughter’s wedding at the beginning of August! It was a beautiful ceremony and a reception filled with celebration, dancing, and laughter. You can’t beat that!
If you’re like me, you have also been to several weddings this year. It’s wonderful to see the happy couples and spend time celebrating their love. For my financial planner brain, however, it doesn’t take long before I start thinking of all the financial planning issues that the new couple needs to address.
Things like updating beneficiary designations, executing estate documents, reviewing life insurance needs, and setting agreed-upon financial goals and priorities all come to mind. In addition, married life usually results in the couple trying to figure out how to handle their finances – should they combine them or keep them separate?
Settling into married life is a process and the happy couple will, over time, find what works best for them. Maybe combining finances makes the most sense for some, while keeping them separate and dividing the bills is optimal for others. However, some of these things are best addressed in the early days to avoid conflict or turmoil. For example, setting financial goals and priorities up front as a couple can prevent frustration in the early months or years…as some of us older married folks can attest to! Most importantly for a newly married couple is addressing estate planning and insurance needs, since not doing so can have severe consequences. Without this, a medical emergency could bring a legal battle between the new spouse and the sick spouse’s family, and an untimely death can result in financial hardship for the surviving spouse.
If you know a newly married couple, talk to them about tackling these areas sooner rather than later. As you can guess, I’ll be having this conversation with my daughter and son-in-law when they return from their honeymoon.
- Juli Erhart-Graves, CFP®, Worley Erhart-Graves Financial Advisors
