FAITH & FINANCES - Couples' Steps When Combining Finances

When in love, it’s easy to want to share and do everything with your partner. Sharing your finances can seem different though. If both you and your partner earn an income, it’s easy to feel hesitant to merge finances when you work hard to earn your money and want to do what you please with it.

Merging finances with another person requires lots of compromise and a completely different mindset.

This is why it’s best to consider combining finances after at least a year or two of dating or after marriage. It’s not all sacrifice though. When you put all your money into one pot and work toward the same goal, it becomes easier to reach with the other person’s support. If you are in a serious or stable relationship with your partner or married, there are a few things you should consider before taking that big step and combining finances.

Make Sure You Both Have Similar Financial Goals

Sit down with your partner and ask them to write down their financial goals or their 5–10year plan. As they write, you should write down your goals as well. When you are both done, switch papers and read them aloud to each other.

When you write down your goals at the same time, you will get the most honest answers since one person won’t have the opportunity to feed off the other person’s answers.

Talk about what you want your future to look like and how your finances will come into play. Do you want to buy a house, go on an annual vacation, invest a certain portion of your income? Do you plan on paying for your child’s college education or meeting them halfway? These are all important decisions to discuss and you want to be on the same page with your partner about most of them.

There’s nothing worse than having someone force you to do something with your money that you don’t want to do. That is why these conversations are crucial and you should feel free to compromise and convince your partner to get on board with your financial goal before you decide to combine everything.

Assess How They Are with Money

It’s important to understand your partner’s financial habits early on in the relationship. When you spend a lot of time with someone, it’s easy to tell if they are a spender or saver, if they like to penny pinch overspend, and what their overall relationship with money is like.

Some big red flags would be if you noticed bills weren’t paid on-time, their bank account always went negative or if they mismanaged their income each month. If you have a partner who isn’t financially conscious and doesn’t manage their money well, it’s not impossible to help them change it around and fix it.

The key is for both of you to be open to improving your habits and learning more about how to manage your money properly together. You can rent or buy books from financial experts or speak to a financial advisor together to learn more about how to improve your money management skills.

Be Open about Debt

If you have debt, make sure your partner knows how much and understands that one of your goals is to pay it off. If you both have debt, realize that you will be combining your