Are You Financially Ready To Say “I Do”

We all know that weddings can be costly affairs, but you have to see past your wedding day when it comes to thinking about the cost of marriage. This means understanding the finances involved for both parties when they embark on their lives together.

Every girl knows that when the man of her dreams asks her to be his wife, it is one of the most gor­geous moments of her life. For days she will be walk­ing on air and already plan­ning her future, includ­ing walk­ing down the aisle on the big day. Every girl does it, and it should be this way; after all, it is an excit­ing time when a girl embarks on the adven­ture called ‘Marriage.’

With­out mean­ing to put a damp­ener on these won­der­ful feel­ings, there is one aspect of say­ing “I do” that has to be thought about – and it needs to be thought about seri­ously. Although cou­ples get mar­ried because they’re in love, the sad truth is that many get divorced over money issues. Finan­cial prob­lems within a mar­riage is respon­si­ble for more divorces than any other rea­son for cou­ples to split up.

(Related: Wedding Expense Etiquette — Who Traditionally Pays For What?).

Make Sure You Real­ize the Cost of Get­ting Hitched

We all know that wed­dings can be costly affairs, but you have to see past your wed­ding day when it comes to think­ing about the cost of mar­riage. This means under­stand­ing the finances involved for both par­ties when they embark on their lives together. Here are a few things you need to think about:

• There is what is known as ‘oppor­tu­nity cost’, which in brief means what you are miss­ing out on finan­cially by get­ting mar­ried. Mar­riage is a huge respon­si­bil­ity because it means two peo­ple have to take care of each other, and this includes their finances. If your loved one has some debts, are you pre­pared, and more impor­tantly, are you in a posi­tion to help them out? If they fall ill, can you stay at home and look after them? Can you afford to?
• Make sure you are aware of any tax impli­ca­tions of get­ting mar­ried so that you don’t get any unwanted sur­prises. Make sure you can afford to pay any extra tax if get­ting mar­ried means you have to.
• Have you got health insur­ance? Has your part­ner got it too? What about life insur­ance, home insur­ance, and all the other insur­ances you need to have in place? Have you thought about mak­ing a sin­gle insur­ance out to cover two people?
• If you are buy­ing a house together, which is one of the biggest invest­ments you will make as a cou­ple, then make sure you both have good credit rat­ings, but you also need to see if as a cou­ple, you don’t get penalized with higher rates of inter­est. These might be only slightly higher, but when you con­sider the amount of money bor­rowed to buy a house, then you soon realize this could trans­late to thou­sands of dol­lars extra you will have to pay back.

Money issues within a mar­riage can be a real prob­lem, so know­ing exactly where you both stand finan­cially is the key to whether or not things will run smoothly for you both. Make sure the cost of the wed­ding is also some­thing you can really afford, espe­cially if it is being paid for on credit. The last thing any cou­ple needs is to start their mar­ried lives out together know­ing they will spend awhile pay­ing for the big day, so if you can avoid this then I strongly rec­om­mend that you do.

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