One of the few times in our lives that two things combine to become one is when we get married. The preacher says that we become one, for richer, for poorer, for better or for worse. You won’t have a great relationship until you can communicate and agree about money. Larry Burkett, noted financial author, says, “Money is either the best or the worst area of communication in our marriages.”
Communication before Marriage
One of the most important things to do prior to marriage is to seek pre-martial counseling. Find a good counselor or pastor and sit down and find out about your future spouse. Building strong lines of communication before you get married is essential to a good marriage and a strong financial future.
Money fights are one of the leading causes of divorce in America today, so make sure that you can agree on your spending and savings goals before you tie the knot.
Combining Income
Do not combine your income before you getting married. Once you say “I do!”, then it is time to combine your finances. Starting out your marriage with a spending plan and a budget to reach your goals will get your marriage off to a strong start. Do you need to pay off debt, student loans or the wedding reception? Set a budget and stick with it. Doing so will also help you save for a home and your future.
Agree on Your Goals
In order to be able to focus your energy and your financial management to reach your goals, you first need to know where you are going and why you want to get there. Sit down together and dream about your financial future. Do you want to own a home, send your future kids to college or retire early and travel? All of these things are within reach if you set goals early, learn to save and have the power of compound interest and time on your side. To calculate your goals with compound interest click here.
Gerken Financial Coaching Can Help
We have a pre-marital coaching package that can help you and your fiancée get on the same page with your finances. We can help you to set goals, to create a plan for eliminating debt, and to save for your future purchases. Most of all we can walk you through the process of learning to talk about money.
Whether you seek help from a professional to learn to communicate effectively with money or you work on communication with your partner, in order to be pointed in the right direction you must be in agreement on where, how and why you are spending and saving money for your future.
Tim and Kathryn Gerken are Financial Coaches in Newcastle, WA. They serve their community through classes and speaking in the greater Seattle area. Their coaching services are uniquely tailored to each client.
February 14th looms in the near future. If you are in a relationship, the pressure is on to come up with a suitable nod to this retail holiday. Retail holidays can be a stressful time of peer pressure to spend money that you don’t have to impress someone close to you. My husband, Tim and I rarely celebrate Valentine’s Day because we show our love every way by the way we do things for each other. I know, however, most women expect a little or a lot of Valentine’s Day love in the form of a gift. So here are my suggestions.
This year the typical American household will have somewhere around $50,000 run through their bank account. Most will look up in December and wonder where it went. Don’t let that be you. Now is the time to get organized and establish a spending plan for your income. This is better known as a budget. A budget will help you to establish the goals for your cash. You can download a basic zero based budget form 
Thank you to the families that we have worked with this year! We have been privledged to serve you both through our coaching and through the Financial Peace University classes that we have facilitated. We hope that your lives have been changed for the better. Working with each of you has changed our lives as well. One of the many things that we have observed this year is that a budget or spending plan is only one part of a healthy financial plan. It is similar to a three ring circus. You have to have all three rings operating at once in order to have a great plan. Let’s look at these rings.
At GerkenFinancialCoaching.com we have many new visitors each day looking at our website and the services we offer. The first words out of many potential client’s mouths when they contact us is, “how much do your services cost?” This is always a difficult question for us. We started Gerken Financial Coaching after completing Dave Ramsey’s Counselor Training Program*. We want to be able to help as many people as possible in our community become stronger managers of their assets. One point that we learned from Dave is that if clients are not willing to sacrifice to make a healthy change then coaching most likely will not work for them. This is true whether is it s a 13 week class of Financial Peace University, where the participants pay $100 for a church facilitated class, or for a 3-6 month coaching relationship. The consumers of these services need to perceive value for the cost before they are willing to sacrifice to change their situation. We provide that value.
As we meet with coaching clients, we very often encounter couples who do not communicate well when it comes to their money. Often times, one spouse has been raised to handle money differently than the other. Factoring in personality differences like we find that one is a saver and one is a spender. The end result, typically, is that one partner handles all the money decisions and the other ignores the situation and complains about not being able to buy a sandwich. In our coaching, we try to help these couples to open the door of communication and work together. Here are a few tips that you may find helpful.
I have been a conflict avoider for most of my life. Part of that probably has to do with me being the first-born, part has to do with me being a perfectionist and part has to do with my not liking to be wrong. My personality type is one who likes to have all the facts and details in place and well understood before making a decision. Because I understand this about myself, most of the time this tendency works out to my advantage. Sometimes, however, paralysis of analysis sets in, stress levels are raised and opportunities are missed. I know and work with people all the time who don’t labor over making decision. Some will readily make a decision, even with very little information, and later if they don’t like it don’t have a problem making a different decision altogether.
“Mom! I need some money to go…”. Have you heard this before? Especially now as summer is getting into full gear. Your teenager may be out with friends, driving here and there and in general spending money. How do we keep from being an ATM for our teens? Well, if you taught them where money comes from when they were younger, they should already understand that money is finite. Now is the time for them to establish a budget, and possibly open a checking account of their own.
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