Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Handling money as an engaged couple - I

Since I am newly engaged, I think it will be a good time to look at the financial side of things associated with the wedding down the road. We are looking to get married two years later, which is a more realistic time frame as my family lives very far away and my fiancé doesn't have much saved up at this point. Plan a saving plan for myself is easy, as long as I stick to my goal and follow through, but making sure that my fiancé is doing the same is going to be challenging. He is never good at managing money, and not until we started dated he started to understand how credit cards work (even though by that time, he had a few thousand dollars on each card that he was paying minimum balance on). Now, he has consolidated his credit card debt into a loan, but he still have a long way to go.

That's why, before we can even start talking about saving money for the wedding, we need to look at how to best handle this situation because obviously, I am not interested in paying his debt. Since I am the one that is more savvy in this area, I will need to come up with a plan. I have been somewhat hands off in the past few years, as I don't know why I should get involved with other people's business. However, the situation is a little different now, and I feel like if I know how to help him to stay on track, I will be helping myself in the long run also. I certainly do not want money to be a problem, so I think having a good solid plan to follow through is very important at this point.

Anyone who is newly engaged/married would like to offer thoughts?

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