The New York Times had an article this weekend called The Key to Wedded Bliss? Money Matters*. It was kind of hit and miss for me, but I did like one particular quote:

“A lot of the debates people have about money are code for how we want to live our lives.”

Money itself isn’t important. Money is simply a tool to achieve what you want. As long as you and your partner want the same things, then in general I think the rest falls into place. You just have to realize that money spent in one place takes away from another desire. However, if you don’t agree on what you want, you could be billionaires and unhappy.

My wife and I remind each other all the time about our primary goals:

• Work less.
• Be able to spend time with children.
• Travel and experience the world.

With this in mind, neither of us bug each other very much about most material things. I don’t ask for a BMW. She doesn’t ask for stuff from Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware. If our wallets start to wander, then we keep each other in check.

(The rest of the article talks about little things like having a weekly financial meeting, rotating the financial responsibilities, hiring a mediator, and other minor things that I feel aren’t nearly as important. We don’t do any of those things.)

This article caught my eye because my wife and I are currently very close to booking a week-long trip to Spain, pending vacation time approval. It was weird because many of our coworkers’ reactions were “Jeez, big spender, where did you get the money for that?”. I wanted to say something along the lines of “Remember the 18 times last month you called me cheap? Yeah, that’s where the money came from!“.

More appropriate might be “How much did your [new car] cost again? Mine depreciates less than $1,000 per year. Subtract the difference, and that’s an extra $1,000+ for me every year, which is an international trip.” They make fun of our old car. 😉

What’s the point of all this? Having aligned goals is awesome. Oh, and I love my wife. 🙂

Money magazine has an article this month about how many married folks don’t know the details about their spouse’s finances. In one study, half of the pairs questioned came up with completely different answers when asked to estimate their family’s income and net worth. Are you and your partner similar? A quiz was included that is designed for each partner to take separately. Here are the quiz questions, as well as the answers that my wife and I gave.

How much money did your spouse make last year, including salary, bonuses, commissions, and freelance pay?

Me: I did the taxes, so I got this one correct.

Her: She was about 20% below my actual gross income last year. She reads this blog, so she know the after-tax and after-spending results, but I guess she underestimated how much in taxes we get hit with. Also, I have variable side-income which is not easy to track.

What’s the last big purchase (more than $100) your spouse made, and how much did it cost?

This is a tricky question. Is this a purchase meant solely for ourselves? Although it’s not like we never spend money, we both had a hard time remembering the last time we bought a $100+ item for ourselves, like a purse or a gadget.

Me: I remembered that she bought a plane ticket for work-related opportunity for $300 yesterday.

Her: She noted that I gave a $100 gift for a friend’s wedding (from the both of us) last week.

How much does your spouse owe, counting credit card balances, car loans and another other debt, aside from your mortgage?

Me: Nothing (correct).

Her: Nothing (effectively correct, if you ignore making money with 0% balance transfers).

What is the current value of your spouse’s 401(k) or other principal retirement account?

Me: About $15,000. This is actually incorrect – it is more like $25,000. I forgot that she had been working at this job for two years already. Oops! This is kind of sad, considering I actually check and record the balance every month in a spreadsheet for our net worth updates.

Her: $15,000. My Solo 401k is actually around $23,000. She admits that this was a wild guess.

If your spouse passes away, how much will you collect in life insurance (counting both workplace and individual policies)?

Me & Her:: We both currently have ~$300,000 each in mostly-subsidized life insurance through work. We have been discussing life insurance in general recently and were looking into getting individual term life insurance policies, although we’ve been “looking” for months now. 🙁

Overall self-grade as a couple: B. We weren’t completely clueless, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I think there is a good chance that a lot of people who read this blog have significant others who are not quite as interested in finances as they are. So why not give them this quiz and see how they do? It definitely helped us get closer to being on the same page.

My wife got to ride in a single-engine Piper airplane for the first time a couple of days ago, which was exciting for her and scary for me. She even got to fly a little bit. I was surprised she agreed to go since usually I am banned from such “extreme” activities.

This, along with a recent Vanguard article about estate planning, got me thinking. Many of you reading this are the Chief Financial Officers of your households, but would your spouse or partner be able to run things well without you?

It’s funny, right now I don’t feel an urge to buy life insurance (my wife is paid well and does not depend on me for financial support), nor do I feel like I need a will (we are married, so most things would just shift to her naturally), but I do feel like I need to compose some sort of “Financial Will” because currently I take care of most of the finances. In fact, my wife hasn’t paid a single bill since we’ve gotten married! That leaves a lot of instructions to compile…

Where is all the money?
Although she knows where all our major accounts are, I have a lot of smaller accounts. I need to create a list of all financial institutions where I have accounts, what the approximate balances are, as well as a secure system to show her the account numbers as well as usernames/passwords. She already knows where all the bank statements and important legal documents are.

I should also write down all the bills, although this is another reason why I still like receiving paper statements. If a credit card or utility company wants money, she’ll get a letter.

Where do I learn about money?
As for the whole spending less than you earn thing, I think she can handle that just fine. She’s much less familiar with investing, so I would leave her this list of books to start her education. I might change this list later, but I think it offers a decent mix of basic advice and some more slightly advanced concepts.

• Suze Orman: Women & Money
• The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing
• The Four Pillars of Investing

What if I would prefer professional help?
Let’s say she feels overwhelmed and would prefer to hire a professional. I would encourage her to hire a fee-only advisor who does not work on commissions, and preferably one with a simple passive investment philosophy. I would tell her specifically to avoid names like Merrill Lynch, Ameriprise, and Edward Jones. (There are fine employees at these companies, but the conflicts of interest that exist greatly decrease the chances at finding one at random.)

Although I’ve never met with any of these firms, based on my limited knowledge of their philosophies and reputations, I would give them a shot:

• Portfolio Solutions
• Buckingham Asset Management
• AssetBuilder
• Altruist Financial Advisors

However, these advisors can be very expensive for smaller portfolios, so I would definitely prefer for her learn on her own first. Maybe I would suggest a simple Vanguard Target Retirement fund as an auto-pilot option in the meantime.

How do I keep any passive income flowing in?
Some people may have rental properties, or royalty income, or some other sort of settlement income to preserve. For me, if I die then my day job and freelance income will stop, but this website has the potential to keep earning advertising money for many additional months if not years. I would need a brief manual on how to keep this site up and running (pay the hosting bill!) and who to call if something breaks. Also I would need a list of important contacts to maintain relationships with.

Of course, I would also tell her to read the contents of this site and other sites I link to for more support and advice! 😉

I would also write down a trusted accountant and lawyer, although we already have those within the family. Hmm… anything else?

Well, it’s official. My wife and I didn’t get each other anything for Christmas. For one, we were too busy buying gifts for others and trying to get our handmade holiday cards out on time. (Okay, she was too busy with all that. I was just a slacker.) We had the following conversation about 10 times while shopping for stuff:

What do you want for Christmas?

Nothing. What do you want?

Nothing.

Okay, I’m getting you nothing then.

Okay. You too.

Okay.

Not that we are being especially frugal or eco-friendly or whatever, we just have too much stuff coming in from other folks as it is. Is that weird? I always thought it was a bit funny for wives and husbands to buy each other large gifts. Like how Lazy Man explores those Lexus commercials where the husband surprises the wife with a brand-new car.

If you use the “one-pot” method of managing married finances, doesn’t it just end up as you spending each other’s money without permission? Or it simply “letting up” when you usually would be like “heck no, you’re not buying that!” Anyhow, I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and all the wonderful things out there that can’t fit in a box.