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Get gifting ideas for this merry season! Your happy hour guide by location. Gifts for the one who has it all. Fashion podcasts for work commute. Cheryl Wee on body image struggles. So you want to take things to the next level. But experts say many couples don't address crucial matters like how to split the bills, whether kids are a deal-breaker, and who the in-laws will live with - until they're staring the problem in the face. Don't put it off. How does he spend his money? Is he sufficiently covered for medical emergencies? What kind of relationship does he have with his family? Hair trends according to celeb stylists.
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Questions to Ask Before Saying 'I Do'
Learn more about prenups. Some couples relish the unity and trust that joint accounts foster, while others prefer more freedom and autonomy by maintaining separate accounts. Or you can have both — some couples set up a joint account for household expenses, to which both people contribute based on their income while keeping separate accounts for personal spending. The key is to find a system that works for you. Make sure you consider your individual money styles. If you are a saver and your partner is a spender, for example, you might find managing an all-purpose joint account too nerve wracking and opt for a combo approach or separate accounts entirely.
Whether or not you choose to combine your investment accounts is, again, entirely up to you. You cannot open joint IRAs or k s, though you can change beneficiary information. Nevertheless, it's important to view your portfolios as a whole to make sure you aren't overlapping. If you both hold shares of the same stock, for example, you could be placing yourselves at risk should anything happen to the company. Check for overlap in your mutual funds using Morningstar's free Instant X-Ray. One of the first tasks newlyweds should tackle is creating a budget.
Sit down together and plot out how much you expect to spend on groceries, clothes, eating out and other household expenses. You should also take this time to discuss other spending issues, such as how much each of you can spend without consulting the other. In my house, I'm the chief financial officer. My husband and I both contribute to cover the bills, but I'm the one who physically writes the checks, rebalances the portfolios and hashes out the taxes. I'm more organized than him, so the task naturally fell to me, though you might find splitting the duties works well in your relationship.
Our arrangement doesn't mean I leave my husband in the dark, though. We have a date every month to go over the budget, review our saving strategies and progress, and discuss upcoming expenses, such as vacations and big-ticket purchases. Paying your bills electronically is a great way to reduce the burden of this task.
Or, you might consider using software, such as Quicken, or Web sites, such as Mint , to organize and track your finances. No matter who ends up handling the bills in your marriage, make sure each partner knows where to find all the different account information, including Web sites, passwords and bill due dates in case anything should happen and the other person needs to take over the responsibilities.
One of the biggest culprits in marital money fights is a mismatch of risk tolerance, says Jonathan Rich, author of The Couple's Guide to Love and Money. While we were dating she got pregnant, so I did the right thing and married her. Fast forward 10 years and while drunk she tells me she stopped taking her birth control without telling me and got pregnant on purpose. I am now happily divorced.
And based on the relationship advice questions I see posted in pregnancy and new baby forums: Like really want them? Even the parts that involve waking up multiple times in the middle of the night and getting thrown up on? Don't have kids with someone who isn't willing to take on the middle of the night wake ups and getting puked on bits. This is important, but can be compromised on. You can't compromise on wanting a kid and not wanting one without someone losing. You can compromise on say, grounding or not grounding as punishment a lot easier. I've seen couples where they find out they can't conceive, one of them wants to adopt, but the other one doesn't want kids that aren't their flesh and bone.
Keep in mind some people may not know this answer or be on the fence about it. If that is the case then there needs to be even more discussion on it. Will we be content with each other only? My sister's minister also asked her and her now-husband this as part of their pre-marriage counseling. I also have a friend who left his partner when they found out she couldn't have children and he realised that he didn't want a partner he just wanted kids.
This could have been worked out before marriage. My wife of 15 yrs and I had no idea whether we wanted kids. All we knew is that we were both reasonable people who wanted to share our lives with each other. Turns out we wanted kids, but if we didn't it would have been fine. You are not going to be the same person in twenty years as you are today.
It's best to realize that and focus finding someone you can work through changes with rather than trying to agree to every life choice before you get married. Goals - What do they want out of life? What do they want out of the relationship? What would be a satisfactory existence in a year?
What is the expected existence in those timeframes? Recreation - How much time to spend together, doing what? How much time to spend apart? Can be important to set expectations if one person is extroverted and the other introverted. Are there hobbies that will demand time, attention, or money? Is one person a traveler? Or someone who will have a work-in-project car to take apart and put together in the garage from now until the time they're too old to hobble to the garage?
Employment - Who works? Who stays home, if anyone? What are the career expectations? Why is each person working? Is there a bit of personal satisfaction and status in it, or is it just to get by? How important is the job or role to one's personal identity? What does work take in terms of time and energy? What happens when one person gets off work? Is there an expectation or need to unwind? How do they unwind, and how does the other partner play into that? Spending - When income is disparate, who pays what portion of bills?
How might that change? Family - What does 'family' mean to each person in the relationship? Both in the small the nuclear unit and broader extended family sense? What obligations are in play when it comes to extended family? Where are the lines drawn, when one person feels the other's family is a problem and it's worth discussing who the problem elements are?
What are the expectations there? Religion - How do the partners differ? Can this be reconciled? How does religion play into friends, family, time? How will children, if any, be introduced to religion? Child Planning - Having any? If not, what happens if an unexpected pregnancy occurs? If yes, How many? How are responsibilities split? What if a child is disabled? Looking at family histories, what issues might a child inherit? Can touch on goals, expectations re: Like marriage, you're adding people to your life on a permanent basis, so you have to factor them in.
Sex - How are things right now? How might things change in the future? Is there an expectation that people will try new things? How will that be broached? What's non-negotiable when it comes to sex stuff? What's absolutely ruled out? What would you each eventually want to try, or try once?
Worth googling 'fetish checklist' and sharing each other's lists. Then there's differences in libido. What's the difference now? What if libido changes with age, medical issue, medication, or post-child?
What do you foresee happening if one partner ends up dissatisfied? Same general questions as kids, minus religion unless you're really out there. Home - how will the couple live together? Is there an expectation of 'upgrading'? Having a larger house as the family gets larger? What sort of living space? What price range or city? Wedding If you're not yet married, the wedding will happen. How many people, how expensive, yadda yadda. But if you live together, some of these questions can be answered just by living together for a time.
Might be worth bringing up or discussing over time, just to see if some assumptions are wholly accurate, and others can be asked as situations or whatever come up. Both people will get an email with the results so you'd immediately know they clicked every answer and then you know you're dating a jackass. Wait no if you only check one, and i check them all, your email only shows that im into that one you checked. Thats the point so that if im into weird shit and your not, the quiz doesnt out my secret or whatever.
- [Serious] What questions should everyone ask their partners before getting married? : AskReddit?
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- 2. What are our assets and liabilities?.
These things don't pop up all at once. Identify the truly important things on that list and bring those up. I spent more than 6 years together with my wife before we got married. For example, I had a good sense of most of those without explicitly discussing them. However, I needed to know about children. I don't want them. I never want them. It's important that my wife and I be on the same page about it. So we talked several times about it before we got married. The other stuff is important. Don't get me wrong but you have to prioritize like anything else in life or you will get overwhelmed.
Understand that you should know the answer to most of this but you should have time to find it out if you're not rushing. This is absolutely brilliant, but I would add I think all people need to have a frank and honest conversation about Drugs and Alcohol. For most people this conversation can be super straight forward, but with others it is more tricky. It is especially important for these conversations to take place before commitment if one person in the couple is taking drugs or drinking a lot and the other person assumes this will naturally go away with the onset of more responsibility, "maturity" or just age.
You - Strengths and weaknesses as a person, what do you need? What are your biggest fears? Is there anything important about your history that I should know? This is perhaps one of the last major conversations to have before taking the leap. The last opportunity to bring up the dealbreakers and doozies. Hopefully this will be top comment soon. My SO and me have been talking marriage for a while kinda casually, kinda "eventually we will" Also, there are no guarantees, but you may, at this stage in things, have a sense of what kind of spenders you are, or what kind of spenders you want to be.
We have to establish some ground rules yet, but the general idea is in place. What can we do as a couple to divide the routine chores and responsibilities so that each feels they're making an equal contribution to the relationship and daily living? This is actually a totally valid question, because habit and assumptions can get in the way.
I was in a relationship with a guy for almost three years. We went to different universities, but spent summers together because I had a job in his town. The first couple of summers I did the majority of the housework because he worked more hours than I did, and I did it because it made sense we also lived in a communal house with about 10 other people, so some of the load was lessened.
After graduation, I moved in with him and was working crazy long hours at a physically demanding job, often not getting home until midnight. He refused to do laundry, wouldn't make lunches for me, and I figured out that he had really patriarchal expectations of household labor. Dumped him when the job ended and moved on. Could have been avoided by talking about it earlier instead of assuming he would do the logical thing. For me this is not even a question to be asked.
I would never marry someone I haven't lived with for several years. I would know before the marriage how we would deal with chores. I know people who don't want to commit to people financially shared house, shared finances, shared utilities, shared space until they're married. I have pretty much lived with my SO since we were together for 3 years, but it really depends on living arrangements and financial situations and independence. This is so important. I think it's somewhat taboo to ask directly about it but it shouldn't be left unspoken. Yep, this is an embarrassing subject for many and thus a secret kept until after the wedding, where it then becomes an even bigger issue that erodes trust.
You can't hide it so talk about it openly as soon as serious wedding talk starts. If there's a problem then you can come up with a plan together. It's often one of the most important things that come out of premarital counseling. This should be discussed even before the wedding. Knowing the amount of debt you both have will allow you to create a realistic budget for your wedding. I'm not saying you have to be extremely cheap, but you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on the "save the dates.
And how you each handle finances. I probably would hesitate on someone who has 60k in car or credit card debt over someone with 60k in student loans. Living debt free important to you? You may not be directly paying for it but indirectly you're very effected by it. I live in tristate New York, dated a girl who was adamant about moving to California in the future - not on my agenda for life at all. If parents think they can force a couple to do anything, that is a huge problem on its own.
Family and friends are important, but they should not be controlling your spouse and trying to dictate their life. You and your spouse are two adults. Your privacy and choices need to be respected. This is a guy I work with - her parents made it a requirement that he convert from Christianity Actually he is already Catholic, they are some kind of Southern Baptist.
1. Where would you like to be in five or ten years?
Their wedding was awkward and no booze, no dancing, her family dictates every part of their relationship. For people who are religious, things like this make sense to a certain extent. I'm evangelical and I probably wouldn't marry a Catholic — not that Catholics aren't Christian or anything, just that if that kind of thing's important to you, then you should be on the same page as your spouse as much as possible. If I have a son who is active in his faith, I would counsel him the same way.
That said, if my son isn't especially active, I'd realize that caring about his wife's denomination wouldn't do anything to address the root of the issue. However, if my son were to marry a non-Christian, I'd find that problematic assuming that my son considers himself Christian. As a Christian, I think marriage is meant not only for two people to walk with each other but for them also to encourage each other to walk with God more and more, so our faith would be a central part of the marriage.
There's enough difference in the ways that evangelicals and Catholics live that out that there would definitely be some friction — most notably in how we treat the institutional church and the Holy Scriptures. While I fully believe that Catholics are fellow Christians, there's also Catholic doctrines and practices that I can't support in good conscience, such as the veneration of Mary.
I wouldn't say marrying a Catholic is something I would never do — as long as two people truly know God, it can work — but there's certainly challenges. My now ex and I dated for 4 and half years, and we lived together for 2 and a half. Things seriously started to decline when his family moved back home and he told me he wanted to move to Boston we grew up on opposite sides of Massachusetts, his hometown is near Boston.
He ended up moving back home while we were dating to help out his family, and I followed him after I failed to make rent for our apartment. Worst month of my life, I was so far away from everything I knew, fell into a deeper depression than I was in originally, and ended up leaving and going back home. As much as we wanted to make our relationship work, we just couldn't make that sacrifice for each other. A lot of people do indeed convert just for show since they aren't invested in their own religion.
But if this is a point of contention I wouldn't want to convert for an SO because I wouldn't honestly believe their religion and so it'd be kind of rude to fake it when they care about their religion that much.
10 Questions to Ask Before Saying 'I Do'
Went to a Catholic wedding where the groom had converted for the bride. Kept doing the cross backwards, pretty amusing. I agree with most answers so far about religion, debt, kids, and so on. If any of these things blindside you, you are doing 'dating' incorrectly IMHO.
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Religion and kids sure. Debt is a little harder, you might have a clue, you might not. Some people try really hard to hide it even from those who are closest to them.
And a lot of times it's not a trust issue, but instead is well intentioned. That mentality becomes absurd as soon as you plan on marrying the person though. Getting married is dragging them into it, and not telling them before is fucked up. My SO and I were discussing getting married recently and he said "you're the first person I've dated that I could picture myself marrying because we're so honest and up-front with each other all the time, and it's true. I know all the details about his work, his finances, his life goals, and so on, and he knows the same about mine.
I can't imagine marrying someone that I felt compelled to keep things from, even the embarrassing or difficult ones. Then if their standard is lower than yours: Will you up your game? If the answer to this question is no then you need to ask yourself if you're content cleaning up after your partner for the rest of your life. As a currently single guy who bought a house expecting me and my ex would get married and split chores, keeping up on a house is some serious fucking work if you are the only one to do it. They always need to make sure they both agree on kids.
I know someone who never wanted kids and now her husband has changed his mind and does want them. I've seen divorces over one changing their mind later in life. They married not ever wanting kids but on the husbands 30th birthday he wanted to try for kids. She still didn't want them and didn't have security to have kids. They fought over it and could not work it out.
Kinda weird, but something that I have not seen mentioned was having a discussion of how much you intend on maintaining your individuality. We have married friends that can't ever seem to get permission to do anything.