How To Combine Finances After Marriage?

Carrie is with us in Philadelphia. Hi Carrie, how are you? Hi Dave, great, how are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? I am with my fiancée. We just are planning our wedding. And we are trying to talk about finances and everything, get everything squared away and figure out how we're going to join our finances when we get married. I was wondering if you had any advice for that. Yep. The old-fashioned marriage vows. Now this is after marriage, okay? This is not before marriage. You can start talking about it. You can even do some pretend mock-up budgets in pre-marriage counseling. But until you're married, I wouldn't combine finances. Now once you're married, the day you're married, I would completely combine them. The old-fashioned marriage vows say, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, unto thee all my worldly goods I pledge. Meaning we're both all in. Those are the marriages that work best. And those are the people that have the highest probability of building wealth. Very few people who get married and treat each other like roommates. Okay, half of that mustard in the refrigerator is mine. And you start all that crap where you're splitting it. I pay for the car and you pay for this and you pay for that. That's like having a roommate instead of combining your finances. When you combine your finances, it forces you to communicate. It forces you to dream together. It forces you to be afraid together when times are bad. It forces you together. And it's one of the most healthy things you can do with money. As a matter of fact, marriage counselors often say use a combining of a budget to force communication in a marriage that's struggling. And we have experienced many times over the 6 million people going through Financial Peace University, many, many, many, many, many, many thousands of letters, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of letters over the years from people saying Financial Peace University saved our marriage because we force you from a practical standpoint to start budgeting together in one checking account. And that forces you to talk about it. If Sharon goes and buys a big thing and I go and buy a big thing, there's not enough money in the account. Checks are going to be bouncing all over town. So we have to know together what's in there. And it forces us to stick to our budget. It forces accountability. It forces communication. And, you know, it's not your student loan, my student loan. If you're married, it's our student loans. You're the one who brought it, but it's ours. And it's ours. It's ours. Everything's ours. You change your pronouns from out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And you change your pronouns from yours and mine to we, we. You become French. It's ours. It's we. And that's the process I would use. I'm just telling you there's all kinds of data and the research on the marriage side of the coin and on the finance side of the coin that that's the best process that causes people to win. Now, it's not to say that one person's stronger than the other, one person's better than the other. It's not about him telling you what to do or you telling him what to do. This is about us learning to work together. We both have a vote. Submit yourselves one to another. And, I mean, I have made in the marketplace all of the money that has come into our house for 32 years of our 37-year marriage. And yet we have an income. We have an income. It's our household income. She's got as much say over it as I do. That's how we chose to run it. And that has worked very, very well as opposed to, well, I'll make it all by God. I guess I'll do what I want to do with it. And you're just going to do whatever I say. And, oh, well, yeah, now that's toxic garbage, isn't it? And you don't want to play that. Nobody wants to play that. So, good question. I'm honored by you asking it. Thank you, Kerry. Appreciate you joining us.