Approach financial planning as a team with my partner

We did so much great work on this last weekend! It was totally worth skipping my dancin’ plans to finish this, and I feel great about what we got done and where we’re going with this. Thank you SO much for being my partner on this, baby.

Sometimes it was challenging to talk about, but in the end we did GREAT and I’m so glad we did it! I feel really good about the future we are planning together, and about our ability to talk about important things when we need to.

I used to balance our checkbook every weekend in Quicken. Now we’re working together to try and find a new routine using Mvelopes. Neither of us has used this tool before, so we’re on equal footing as far as our understanding of the software. For once it feels really nice NOT to be the expert; whenever something confusing happens we just dig in and try to figure it out… and that’s how we are learning. And since it’s an online tool, we can both work on it at the same time from different computers, sitting together and asking each other any questions that come up. I’m so glad we’re doing this together!

And now when we talk about money or make decisions about money, we will both be on the same page about the context, about our overall financial situation.

Thanks, baby, for getting that all worked out and set up, and for making sure we get that discount on the service!

Now we have all his accounts, and all my accounts, and all our joint accounts in one place. And since Mvelopes uses a different model, it will hopefully spur some shifts in the way we think about and use our money. Hooray!

Not only that, but we have been working together to tackle our debt. We prioritized one of his credit cards, since it had the highest interest rates, and paid it off. Now moving on to the next one. Hooray!

As we transition from our life now to married life, possibly with kids. It was great to get all that out in the open, understand each others’ expectations, and come up with some ideas for moving forward. Thanks, baby!

Another thing Suze Orman mentioned on that Oprah show last week is that a couple’s credit rating is basically whichever credit rating is lower, between the two of you. Which would be my partner’s.

This makes me wonder if I should be paying off his debt, instead of mine, with my spare cash. It would be an investment in our joint financial future, in getting better interest rates on large purchases we make together. On the other hand, everything could just be in my name… but I would prefer to clean out any skeletons still lurking in his closet too.

Certainly we would have to come to some sort of agreement about it; I mean, we’re not married yet! But I think we can come to an agreement that works for both of us.

My fella watched an episode of Oprah yesterday in which Suze Orman gave several couples a reality check about what they can and cannot afford. So it seems we should talk again about our wedding plans, and revise our budget downward. The idea of scaling back is a tad disappointing, but actually I’m also breathing an internal sigh of relief. It would be so much easier than making a miracle on a shoestring, or paying debt back for decades!

We keep hearing stories about marriage after marriage that has struggled or ended because of money, money values, money management, etc. I think we both feel fortunate at how well we are doing with this. But there’s always room for improvement. We have decided to do some big picture assessments and planning this weekend.

His business is really picking up, and now that I’m not worrying about that so much, I realize that the time is long overdue for me to tend to my own garden and think about where my own career is going … and what I can do to keep myself marketable in this economy.

This translates into a less predictable income. In the past this kind of thing has been more stressful, a bigger struggle for us. It’s still stressful for me, fiscal conservative that I am. But now we are communicating better and as a result we have a plan, and a backup plan, and something of a schedule. I feel much more comfortable with the risk. I’m not gonna say it’s easy. But it does continue to get less and less difficult. Thanks for sticking with me, baby. You bring some really valuable things to the table, and together I know we’re a powerhouse financial team!