Prepare Yourselves: Learning To Live Together With Finances!

You’re finally married!! Congratulations!! How exciting for the newly weds. After all that work, money, and time spent, you can finally sit back and relax! Well, maybe… But first you have to adjust to living with each other and as a couple. It is a lot harder than you think… Especially if you didn’t prepare. Yes, we’re talking about that dirty word today. Finances.

Talk About Finances

Although you probably did this when you got engaged, this is something that can be talked about on more than one occasion. After you’ve changed your name (and you have all the documentation to prove it), you can open a joint account together, if you want to.

Debt

Don’t have this conversation in passing. Actually sit down and talk about finances. The deep down dirty details. You may not want your spouse to know that you have thousands of dollars in credit card debt, but you do. Get it out in the open. If you are both on the same page, then you can both conquer the problem.

Map It Out

You may not have debt, you may only have the normal set of bills. But your talk about finances is a time to map out what you make, what you can put toward bills and necessities, and what you can save.

Let this be a time for you and your spouse to really map out how you want to pay and save. Creating an allowance can not only make for a simpler time down the road, but this can also allow you to know what you both can spend a month on all your wants and needs and what you need to save.

Bills

Be sure that you call you billers to let them know that not only did your name change, but your address may have as well. You’ll need to prepare for this one. If you have oil heat in your home and you have a supplier that you like to use, be sure that they can deliver to the new location.Think about your tv and phone provider too, be sure that you check with them that they can deliver service out to your new location.

You’ll also need to call and cancel some of your suppliers. You and your spouse may have had similar suppliers for your necessities. Choose the best one that works for you as a couple. For example, my husband and I had differing car insurances, my insurance gave us a better deal for our home and cars than his did. It was a no brainer, we switched to mine. Do you research!

Talk About The Future

What Do You Each Want?

What do each of you want for the future? Again, this is something that you should have talked about before getting married, but it is always a good refresher to go back and recap what you each want out of life.

You’ve now legally become husband and wife, how will you conquer the future? What do you want from the future? Your answers may have changed (hopefully not too drastically) from when you chatted about it before.

Kids

Are kids something that you want in life and when? No one is ever really ready for kids, but hey! Talking about the subject and deciding on a time is helpful!

Pets

Will you have pets? Are either of you allergic to a certain animal that you can’t have them in your home? Are you able to properly care for and afford a pet?

Talk About What You Want In A Home

After you have talked about finances, you may be ready to jump in and buy a house together now that you’re married. That is great! But again, this is a conversation that you need to have. You need to recognize what each of you want  in a house. Once you’ve both agreed on what you want, go see a realtor; They will get you started on what your price range will be with a pre-approval!

Learning The Unknown

If you’ve never lived together… You’re in for a treat. Really you are… There are things you’re going to find out that you didn’t expect. Like, the living room is the place for his shoe congregation and his socks occasionally join the party there but they never make it back to the hamper or the closet where they belong. You’ll learn that you’re a clean freak and this drives you nuts.

You’ll each have your pet-peeves. You’ll both get annoyed at first when you discover what you didn’t know before about your lovely spouse. But you will learn to adapt to each other. You will learn to communicate to them on how to fix or solve the problem.

Loving Them For Them

You’ll learn to love them for who they are. You will learn to love them when they are shouting at the tv when their favorite sports team is losing or when they are yelling at you to clean the house to make it look like no one lives there.

You will adapt to their quirky habits and they will adapt to yours. You’ll grow to love them for who they are and how they do things. That’s what love is.

Respect Their Privacy

Respecting their privacy isn’t saying that you have secrets. If your spouse has a certain place that they like to keep their wallet, don’t move it. Just like if you need a few hours a week to take a nap and rejuvenate, that should be respected. Respect each others things, time, and personal space and you won’t have any issues.

Divide And Conquer

Divide and conquer. Most of the time you’ll be united in your travels through life, but sometimes it is ok to be divided. Like house work. There are going to be things that you won’t may not be able to do as easy as he does it, like mow the yard or trim the trees. Or maybe there are things he doesn’t do as well as you do, like clean and fold the laundry.

Assign jobs to each other that highlight strong points. The outcome will be great if you work together. This will cause less stress to each of you and you’ll have a happy (clean) home!

 

 

Marriage and living together is easy sometimes… But just like a car, it needs maintenance. What you put into the car is what you get out of it. You’ll need to put work in to it and make sure your tank is always full to keep things moving.

You and your spouse will work out a way of living, even if it may take a few trial and errors on both parts to get the car running smoothly down the road. You’ll have happy times, sad times, and angry times. You’ll have fun adventures and not-so-fun adventures, but that is the fun of living together and learning to live with one another!