The following post is by MPFJ staff writer, Sally, who is the blogger behind TinyApartmentDesign.com, a blog about design, living well, and simple, tiny spaces.
I’ve been married for over a month and it still feels surreal. I’ll be honest; I still don’t know what to think about marriage. I spent my whole life terrified of marriage, never excited about the way long-time married couples treated each other, watching how awful going through a divorce can be, and generally unconvinced of the positive aspects of marriage. Plus, I consider myself self-sufficient and don’t need to rely on anyone’s income but my own. And yet, here I am, excited to be married to my best friend and partner. Now that we have officially combined forces, I expect some of our finances to change and some to remain the same.
New Goals
One of the biggest expenses we ever incurred together was our wedding. I am so glad we are done with spending money on the wedding, but we also now need to focus on saving for our future. My husband has no savings or retirement funds. We have opened a few in his name, but never contributed to it. I was previously saving 26% of my income automatically, but had put that on hold since February to pay for the wedding. Our goal is to start my husband on a weekly savings plan, and to get me back into saving at least 20% of my income. We’ve always been a team, and now that we are in our 30s, we want to make sure we are always moving forward financially. It’s not easy because spending is easy and can easily take up all of your disposable income, but we want to see out total savings grow quickly in the next 5 years.
New Tax Arrangements
We will be filing as a married couple for part of 2014, and we will also hopefully have some tax credits with the purchase of our first place. If you haven’t seen it yet, this Khan Academy video is a great way to figure out if you’re going to pay more taxes as a married couple. The other benefit to increasing our savings in pre-tax accounts will be the subsequent decrease in our taxable income. Someday, I’d like to be like Mitt Romney: $0 in wages, but plenty of money earned from investments and businesses. Since wages are punished by our draconian tax laws that confirm the federal government’s belief that the wage earner deserves to be punished, I will be focused on figuring out how to decrease my wages while increasing our income as a couple. Currently, all of our income is earned from either regular wages or self-employment income, so this is an important priority for us.
New Accounts
Many married couples will eventually get around to joint accounts, especially checking and credit cards. We’ll continue to put savings in our joint savings account, but our checking and credit cards won’t merge any time soon. We’ve had too much of a history of spending recklessly, and spending without consulting each other. This is something we are excited to work on, but we’re still not in any rush to merge accounts. We’ll continue to share all of our housing and living expenses, and I will continue to handle the actual payment of our bills, setting up online and automatic payments, keeping track of what’s due next and what we would like to buy for our house. Even though I have been the more financially aware member of our household, it’s going to be vital to our success as a couple for both of us to know where stand financially.
How about you all? Did you have any big changes to your finances when you got married?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Image: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1393177
