Wedding Blog

We had quite a busy weekend. Birthday celebrations, a karate tournament, apartment chores and errands.. but most importantly, the one thing we did accomplish this weekend was planning our financial future together.

I think I’m a dreamer. I live thinking that as long as I’m making some kind of money, I’ll be fine as long as I designate my husband to handle all the finances. I hate financial talk. I’m seriously not a numbers person and even when my financial friends talk about money, they start losing my focus after about a minute. However, a dreamer still needs to eat and live.

On the flip side, I am also realistic. I worry a lot. I worry that we won’t have enough money left to do what we want (travel, buy a home, eventually have children). I realized this weekend (it only took 8 years) that I can’t just leave it up to my husband, because he can’t do it all. Just like I couldn’t plan our wedding entirely by myself (although I tried really hard to), this is a team effort. I need to get involved and work out a plan.

I’m surprised I’m even writing about it, because it is a pretty sensitive matter, but I figured I can’t be the only one thinking about this. It wasn’t easy coming up with our plan. We spent most of Friday night figuring out how to get rid of our debt and start saving. This is what married couples do… we spend Friday nights not out and about, but at home counting pennies. Get out while you can. Just kidding.

It was one of the most productive things we’ve done as a couple and I felt such a sense of relief once it was all drawn out. We created budgets, an emergency fund and an allowance. We are each getting set allowances to use any way we want. The charge card is not to be used for anything that is not necessary unless we can pay for it out of our own allowances.

At first I thought it might not work and that it’d be too hard. Basically when we go out to eat we’d have to pay our own way and it seemed very un-married like. Then again, the more I thought about it, it may work out to our advantage, because it was like that when we first started dating - he’d tried to pay for me or I’d try to pay for him. We’d have to save up money to buy each other gifts, rather than spend from our joint account and worry later. So, I hope that this is the start to something that really works for us.

Have you had your talk with your significant other yet? How do you deal with money matters?