How To Create A Shared Financial Vision With Your Spouse

Ideally, even before you get married you and your (future) spouse will sit down and talk about your vision of the future together. A centerpiece of that vision of the future should be tied to financial things. Even things you may not consider monetary, have profound financial implications. Choose this article as a guide to help you harmonize your view of the future how to keep your relationship strong over the next 50 years.

1. Will you make a home? Take a moment to describe the type of home you’d like to have. Discuss the city and even the neighborhood where you’d like it to be. Talk about how much you’ll spend on your home.

2. How many children will you have? This decision may have previously been made, but be sure to confirm with each other what you intend to do. Don’t let financial considerations determine how many children you have, let the number of children you intend to have to guide your financial planning. There is always a way.

3. Will someone stay home with the kids while they’re young? It is important to talk about your careers and how you’ll manage raising the kids. Specifically talk about how you’ll manage your roles as parents, providing for and taking good care of the children.

4. How much, more education will you and your spouse pursue? You may be forty years old and still thinking about finishing college or getting back in school for a graduate degree. Spend time understanding one another so that you appreciate each other’s individual goals for schooling.

5. How much responsibility do parents have for their children’s college education? Some parents believe that their children are on their own after age 18 and others feel like helping their children through college is their obligation. Still others help their kids all the way through graduate school, even if the kids get married. Make sure you’ve talked about your view of a parent’s liability for a child’s schooling.

6. Is debt to be avoiding morally? Some people approach debt with purely rational thoughts. Others view debt as morally wrong. Be sure you and your spouse have talked about your views about debt so that you can develop either identical or at least mutually respectful approaches to borrow money, using credit cards, etc.

7. What sort of cars will you drive? This seemingly trivial question may have a greater impact on your ability to achieve your other financial goals than any other question in this article. If always driving different cars are important to you, that will have implications. If you are content to drive older cars, that will have different implications.

8. Where and how often will be your vacation? For countless people, photos of family vacations are prized possessions and the memories are cherished treasures. For others, travel is a stressful burden. Talk about your view and how you’ll approach family vacations. Do not forget to think, at least briefly, how the dynamics of vacations will change as your children leave the nest. Will you expect your children to visit home with their families at the same time each year or just pop in when they can?

9. When and where will you retire? Not only do you need to decide when and where, but also how you’ll retire. What do want to retirement to look like? With careful planning, you may be located in a position to retire much earlier than your peers. Some people can’t imagine retiring—some never do. Talk about what’s important to you.

As you discuss your financial future together, your goal should not be to persuade your spouse in your view so much as it should be to really understand how your spouse feels about these issues. If you can both listen and understand where the other is coming from on each issue, it will be easy to eventually reach agreement on a shared vision.

With a clear, shared vision in place, you’ll want to create specific long-term goals for realizing the vision. Buying a home will require a down payment, helping the kids with their college expenses will require college savings, retirement, too. As you look at the big picture, start developing the distinctive, actionable and measurable goals that will enable you to realize your vision. Then comes the hardest part. You’ve got to develop the short term action plan—the budget—that will help you achieve those goals and realize your vision.