January 18, 2012

Premarital Financial Counseling: Family and finances?

By admin in Money Before Marriage Lesson

What happens when you start at the end? Planning a marriage is a fun time for many. Many couples think about premarital counseling but what about premarital financial counseling? Yet, many many years into the marriage you may be placed in an unthinkable situation. Today, I was interviewed by Susan Rich of Love and Lifestyle radio show. This show started different than most because Susan's co-host was dealing with a family issue and finances was part of the stress and strain. Therefore, we jumped right into the conversation - what do you do when you have a family member whose life is coming to an end AND they have not discussed any of the finances with siblings, nor her children or other family members? The member is incapcitated and no one cannot remember anything. I began right away saying to the co-host, that first and foremost someone needs to remain level-headed enough to take care of business. That means they need to begin searching for bank statements, look around to see if there was a journal kept, take steps to retrieve their tax records from the previous year and also find out if there was any type of life insurance policy. Another area that I recommended that the co-host check out is what is the policy for the State when a person does not have a will. There's a lot that can happen in probate court. This was unbelievable. Then Susan came back and introduced me. Then we continued out talking about brides and grooms AND why they do not discuss money and marriage. Lack of money discussions span an entire family. Many people are not prepared when a loved one takes ill. At the beginning when couples are engaged, they are not thinking about down the road. They are only thinking ahead to the wedding. They can be thinking about the wedding AND also to the marriage. So we began discussing how do you start the talk about finances so that you are prepared down the road for different life situations. Host Susan Rich shared how she married a man that had children and how it was his money and she had her money. May have been a little bit stressful; however once they bought a home together and there was an account for the house things worked out better. I shared with her and her co-host, how I advocate couples having a joint account in addition to each person having an account of their own where they can pamper each other or themselves and it doesn't affect the household account. Brides and Grooms take the time and talk about it. Decide what will work best for your relationship.

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