Money & Relationships: 5 Tips to Financial Success for Couples

hey everybody welcome back to whiteboard finance my name is Marco and I'm here to help you master your money and build your wealth in today's video we're going to be talking about your finances your money and your marriage uh substitute marriage for you know relationships couples whatever you want to substitute it for uh but this is when you're in a serious relationship with a significant other or someone else and you want to be able to manage your finances uh we're gonna go through five things and then at the end of the video I'm obviously going to give you my candid thoughts as always but these five things are kind of the core tenets that my wife and I have used and knock on wood has been pretty successful thus far so stay tuned okay so number one is pretty obvious you should probably have this established before you even get into marriage or you know get serious with your significant other this probably comes in the serious dating like late phase dating uh engagement phase in my opinion um because you don't want to go into a marriage especially planning a wedding which you know is pretty costly for a lot of people out there you don't want to go into in there with anything hidden so that's why number one is be honest and transparent your build building a relationship hopefully you know once in your life you know a lot of people do get divorced and things like that but when you're building a foundation you want to build a strong Foundation you know skyscrapers are built on strong foundations they dig deep that way they can build high so if you go into your you know relationship or marriage or whatever you want to call it you know with hidden hidden liabilities for example which I'll name here it automatically kind of takes a hit to that trust column uh so this is why honesty really is the best policy so I have two columns here I have a l assets and liabilities this is just to illustrate a very uh simple point so I'll start with assets so you want to lay everything all your cards on the table so you want to disclose hey I have a 401k this is the balance hey I have a Roth IRA this is the balance hey I have a paid off car I have a paid off home I have a paid off whatever anything that you have equity in that's a positive on your net worth you know your balance sheet if you will your income statement you want to actually tell your spouse about these things I'm not talking about the ultra wealthy you know in that case you're talking about prenups and things like that which obviously my wife and I don't have you know her parents are immigrants my parents are immigrants but my point is is that you know we weren't well off enough to even discuss there's no point of even having a prenup so what I'm trying to talk to is I'm trying to talk to the 90 95 percent of people watching this Channel It's always important to disclose assets because we're going to get into later reasons why in this video but also the more the most important one especially in an early relationship are your liabilities so this is when you come into a relationship with like let's say uh student loans you have a car loan uh you have credit card debt because you just graduated from college for example you're still paying off certain things these are the ones that you don't want to spring on your partner right it's like hey we're about to get married oh I have a maxed out you know American Express or I have you know 500 000 in medical you know uh pre-med you know student loans for example so what I'm trying to say is honestly Steve really is the best policy because this is how you build a strong foundation and a strong level of trust with your significant other okay number two is important because it's going to lead to number three so pay attention so number two are goals these aren't individual goals everyone has individual goals individual Hobbies individual things that make them tick but this one is going to be shared goals so what are some things when you get married or you have a significant other or you want to start a family or whatever these goals may be you need to get in line with your partner and figure out hey what are some shared goals of ours that way we know you know how to contribute there's a reason for this which will actually go into number three so what my wife and I have personally done is we've always had uh categories or different buckets for our savings so you if you've been watching my channel for any extended period of time you probably already know what I'm going to say here but for the people that are new this is very important so what we like to do is we like to have um joint savings accounts with different things that we contribute to that way we know that we can afford it okay so for example sample we have uh Savings in emergency okay number two is we have a travel fund so this is how we know if we can afford to go to Southern Ohio or Southern France okay just depends on how much money is in that account number three is taxes uh putting money away for taxes I run a business it's a little bit different if you run a business rather than if you're a W-2 employee but taxes are important especially when married filing jointly you get a lot of benefits with that number four is the house fund so this could be maintenance repair or improvements uh for your house you know it could be remodeling a bathroom or you know the HVAC goes bad or the plumbing goes bad whatever these are for those little hiccups here and then number five we have a car fund so this could be saving for a new car it could be for car repairs it could be a down payment on a car it just depends on what falls into that car category and number six we have investing okay so this will go into anything that's outside of um like our 401K Roth ra whatever you guys are doing at work that is uh tax advantaged uh this is typically going into Investments such as real estate um you know private Equity private deals things like that and then also our taxable brokerage accounts so with with these goals you need to figure out what's important to you as a shared couple right so savings is important to us you know we have a we have a daughter another daughter on the way here in about a week travel is important you know our house is important investing is important all that good stuff okay so the reason for talking about number two was to bring us into number three which is uh age-old debate uh I know Dave Ramsey loves to have you know one roof you know One bank account one marriage that kind of a thing which makes sense there's been a lot of studies that show that uh typically couples that have um joint bank accounts or One bank account if you will uh they're typically I don't know they say happier they say you know the marriage last longer all those good things it's kind of like a correlation or causation kind of thing but basically you don't have to do one or the other so I'll actually tell you what my wife and I do so my wife works she's a nurse practitioner she worked very hard to get her master's degree I earn an income from you know being a finance professional and also this YouTube channel we both make our own money right but the way we treat it is that I have a checking account she has a checking account and then we have also all those combined shared goals which we all contribute to so whether I make a dollar and she makes a million dollars a year or vice versa it doesn't matter because we just invest kind of a percentage of our account into each one of those categories so you never really feel like oh this has to be 50 50 it's set in stone you know we need one bank account or we need to be completely separated and I'll take care of my cell phone bill and we'll split the Heat and all that stuff I actually like the hybrid model so the hybrid model is basically what my wife and I do so if you can get on the same page with your spouse um you know what this does is in my opinion is that it creates you know trust and transparency it gives you you know a clear Financial picture and it's easy to plan and pay for expenses um because all those things are just coming out of the house fund for example if you want to look at bills some of the other things that come with that is kind of like a sense of autonomy and Independence so it's like you know I make money she makes money we're both adults you know she doesn't have you know crazy spending problem I don't have a crazy spending problem it works for us so you can spend according to your personality but we do have a rule that says anything over you know 500 we need to talk about it so if I want to buy a grill that costs 600 bucks I'll say hey I want to get a grill is that cool usually the answer is yes right you know if she wants to do something with her friends or whatever I don't know I'm just giving you an example but you know it's usually never a problem uh because every week we both have money getting deducted into those six categories that I told you about so we're never really worried about that you know uh heaven forbid if one of us were to lose our income then we'd have to recalibrate but for the most part it gives her a sense of Independence and autonomy gives me autonomy we're never really nagging you know a lot of people they you know they put their finances under a microscope which is fine but you know as the juice the nagging really worth the squeeze right now if one of the partners has a spending problem that's obviously different but it all boils down to uh trust and discipline and if you can check those two boxes for me or for us you know hybrid is the best answer so the other thing we share ever since we had our first daughter two years ago is our life insurance policy which we got from today's sponsor policy genius if you have a family you know how much your loved ones depend on you in a worst case scenario you wouldn't want them to worry about money a good life insurance plan can give you 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your recurring expenses that affect both of you okay this isn't necessarily um hey she likes to get coffee I like to get a burrito right not stuff like that that's why we have that hybrid model of being able to take care of stuff like that on our own it just simplifies our lives you don't need to split everything 50 50. so again going back to my analogy is you know if she's a billionaire and I'm some you know starving artist it doesn't matter because we both contribute what we can so we don't necessarily have to split everything 50 50. it makes it easier for us so say uh she makes significantly more than me or I make significantly more than her you know maybe you can the high income earner can take on a bigger obligation such as like the monthly mortgage payment for example and then the other spouse can take on you know groceries you know maybe two grand versus 200 bucks a month or whatever I'm just giving you a simple example so you don't necessarily have to split everything 50 50 if you don't want to if you make relatively the same income maybe you can maybe you do the One bank account split everything down the middle you know maybe that's even simpler but typically you know spouses don't necessarily make the same income all the time so uh the most important thing is however Mac X Out make sure you're paying yourself first I've always talked about this on this channel so try to maximize your 401k and your Roth IRA savings first then go from there so instead of one spouse having to worry about oh you know do I pay the mortgage or do I pay the bills or what do we do you know try and maximize paying yourself first with tax advantaged accounts that's what this says max out tax advantage first and then get to the stuff that you know hey I Gotta Buy X Y and Z which is mandatory then I Gotta Buy x y z which is a want so figure out your wants and needs after paying yourself first and again you don't necessarily have to split everything 50 50 unless your incomes are very similar okay number five to finish things off is regular reviews so obviously we have here monthly quarterly and annually so what what it entails in each one of these things okay what are we doing here so monthly net worth review my wife and I do this uh literally on the first of every month it takes literally five minutes so uh we use some software uh you can actually link all of your bank accounts and all the relative things or the information that you want to put in there it literally tracks your net worth in a graph or a line chart if you will so we can see hey you know this month we gained or lost x amount of net worth where do we gain or lose what can we improve everything look okay great you know it takes literally five ten minutes the quarterly review this is something that you should review your goals so your shared goals that you talked about or you established earlier in the year or earlier in the relationship you know once every three four months you know go check this out see if you're still in line see if you're saving or spending more or less than needed and that way you can recalibrate and readjust and then finally with the annual stuff you should always do a goal setting or a planning dinner with your significant other so if you have kids or whatever give them to the grandparents leave them with the babysitter do what you got to do this is literally just for you two it should be fun it should be intimate and your goals should be aligned again this is not talking about your personal Hobbies or you know things like that this is what you want to establish as a family and as a team and you should revisit you know the shared goals that we talked about in slide two and then also you should maybe think of like new goals so my wife and I we typically have a travel goal we have a physical goal like a health goal um I don't want to tell you what mine where I should I shared them earlier in the year but I'm not doing too well actually I'm doing fine I did 75 hard I don't want to talk about it because it's like someone that's vegan you know hey hey bro I'm vegan like yeah I don't care dude so um a lot of the physical goals I do meet and you kind of subconsciously reach other goals just when you write them down and put it out into the universe it's kind of crazy how it works but make sure it gets written down uh her and I we do it in a shared Google Word document and again we have like travel we have Finance we have health we have other things like that that are private and we try and meet those every year so again monthly net worth quarterly goals uh just revisiting their shared goals and then annual is either coming up with new goals for the following year uh typically you want to do this like sometime in quarter four maybe around Christmas or New Year's time okay uh my thoughts as always conclusion here uh we got taxes in the state marriages work and then kids obviously it gets more real with kids you know it's just another complication another uh blessing in my opinion kids are the greatest wealth that you can have other than you know time and health but I didn't talk about taxes or estate because this is super specific to your situation I didn't even want to put it in the video but obviously there's benefits with married filing jointly there's benefits with having a will and Trust getting your state in order all that good stuff so definitely if you start to get to a higher net worth I would definitely start to look into that marriage AKA relationships their work okay this is not a Disney movie this is not some you know Hallmark Classics you know where the dog comes over the hill and you know it's like the end of the Gladiator if you ever seen that movie um this this is real life you guys marriages work you kind of get what you put in it's always a scale remember that always try and keep your scale balanced and then finally kids you know you add them into the mix all this stuff gets a little bit more complicated but if you've already prepared with steps one through five you should be able to handle this one as well thank you so much for watching this video as always uh click the like button you know subscribe hit the Bell notification guys I have a million subscribers uh my last video I had like 20 000 views so just make sure you're sharing these videos I really appreciate it and I'm also very excited to announce that whiteboard Finance University will be live in about a week okay I know I've been talking about it for a super long time but we have three professors in there they all have three really really full depth courses uh the one is on real estate the one is other the other ones on personal finance and budgeting the other one is on stock market and building your wealth pyramid uh one guy is a CFA he's a chartered financial analyst the other person has 350 multi-family units he's a real estate developer an investor and the last person is a personal finance expert he's written for money.com Forbes all that stuff so I'm super proud of what we put together it's been a long journey but I highly recommend that you check out whiteboard Finance University it's essentially going to be a gym membership for continuing Financial education with those professors AKA personal trainers whichever way you want to look at them and then you have live streams with me and continuing education with them uh unbelievable value something I'm very proud of thank you so much and have a prosperous day okay so number four is actually budgeting Leia stop it so number four is actually budgeting together so thank you

Channel: Marko - WhiteBoard Finance

Views: 30,529

Keywords: marriage and money, money and marriage, money management, money and relationships, Financial Success, Money Management, Relationship Tips, Couples Finance, Personal Finance, Financial Planning, Relationship Goals, Money Matters, Building Wealth Together, Financial Harmony, Couple's Budgeting, Love and Money, Financial Communication, Joint Finances, Money Strategies, Couple's Goals, Financial Stability, Partnership Finance, Money and Love, Financial Advice

Id: y4_CdtkcCxM

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023