Are We Talking About Finances In Relationships?

Are you talking about finances with your spouse and ensuring a safer future for the entire family? No? Time to begin, then.

We talk about love, kids, family, and emotions and even about our pets and friends; but do we talk finance with each other? This question needs to be asked by every spouse to their better half.

Being so busy in our lives, managing different cores and responsibilities, juggling time between home, office, kids and many more things; a couple often has no time to catch up on many things; many things get side-lined, even forgotten at times. Is finance one of them?

Your major financial goof-ups can be avoided just by talking to each other about it. As a couple running the household, you both share equal responsibility of making the best use of resources available today and plan better for future.

Know the real income, share the burden of expenses

Guys, do not just give an amount to your spouse to run home finance, make her a partner in the decision to spend an amount towards running of the household. Make her aware of your income and the need to budget the expenses. Let her own the responsibility with an understanding about resources.

At the same time, get involved with her in the process, understand her challenges and understand your household needs. For working partners, create a joint account to pool in the expenses of the household. By doing so; you would be creating a platform equal in many ways.

Budget

Be a team in fighting against the extra splurge and overspending. Again, only team work can yield results. A simple tool with separate expense heads would do wonders in pointing out what eats away all your hard earned income and you both can work towards stemming the leak in the budget.

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Make joint investment decisions

Everyone does save and invest; but is that  truly helping you reach your goals and aspirations? Wait! Is your spouse a partner in this process? NO! Then how do you know about her goals and aspirations? A big disconnect again. Unless and until both of you partner in the process of making investments aimed towards helping you reach your goals, the job will always be half done.

The right investment would be one where both of you are aware about the objective of a particular investment, time frame of investment, its ownership details, its beneficiary and how should one take benefit out of the same when need arises.

Be aware of investments

I come across many clients, who would all proudly announce how good their respective spouses are with money matters and how she does not need to sweat about knowing anything, when he is around. But the carefree lady misses a big point here – “when he is around”. He may have built the sun and moon; but do you know about it? Or what to do with the Sun and Moon? How would it light your world, if your dear hubby goes missing tomorrow? Or are you even aware how many bank accounts he holds and are you even the nominee in any of them?

Your better half may really be master in all trades, but knowing about the good things he has done for you and your kids is your part of the job in completing the perfect picture.

Equal responsibility lies with men to share details and whereabouts of the investments with your spouse.

Create a diary or a worksheet with all your investment/insurance/property/bank account details/insurance details because without the knowledge or understanding about the investments, no claim ever can be made and raised. Every investment made with an objective in mind needs to be communicated to ensure when the time to fulfill the objective arises, the due process is followed and right person gets benefited.

We get a lot of information about a lot happening around thanks to social media. Let’s take a break this weekend to discuss what matters most to you and your family and plan your future together. It would bring you a lot closer and boost a lot of confidence in the relationship too. Because planning for your family is nothing more than caring for their needs and when you care, you must show it too.

Save right, Invest Wise and Let your loved once know!

Published here earlier.

Image source: pexels

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