August Theme: Money and Couple
Interestingly, whenever I show my clients or prospects my very first booklet titled ‘ $avvy Parents’, their first reaction would almost always be awe that I wrote my booklet at such a young age. But after that, they will laugh it off when they find out that I have no plans of getting married in the near future. They will always ask me “Since you are not even getting married then how can you understand what we are going through?”
Well as a matter of fact, I have to agree to disagree because it really doesn’t matter whether have I went through the experience to be able to provide genuine and useful advice. A coach doesn’t necessarily need to be the number one player to be teaching someone to be number one because it is a total different game plan. If you don’t believe it, go google Tiger Wood’s coach’s biography, and you’ll too see that his golfing skills probably doesn’t supercede Tiger Wood’s.
I have always prided myself to be my client’s financial coach whereby I do my best to provide the best advice to them so as to maximize their benefits with minimum resources. I know that there are many consultants out there providing advice that is more beneficial to themselves more than their clients therefore I hope to be able to rectify this problem through the people I meet. I will always do a restructuring of my client’s insurance portfolio if needed especially when I discover that they have in fact purchased many ‘pointless’ policies. Those policies are usually sold either through roadshow agents or by their friends who asked them to ‘support’ them. Well, I am not saying that it is wrong to support your friend but it is often the case where the so-called friend actually sells the plan based on his interest and not the client’s.
Back to the issue of money management between couples, many couples face a lot of issues relating to bad money management during their early years of marriage. Some even related it as early as during their courtship times. Seriously, during the serious courtship years (Abt 1-2 years before marriage), it is the right time to start saving and planning for your futures. During this phase of your lives, you have to be completely honest with each other about your financial situations and visions. You need to decide who is going to be the financial controller and how your future decisions regarding money is going to be decided. You also have to start allocating a certain percentage of your income for different purposes and that includes insurance.
Ideally two people are supposed to be savers but in reality if you happen to have one saver and one spender in a relationship, I think it is already quite wonderful because can you imagine two of them are spenders? Two of them will not have a sense of responsibility towards money and will splurge the money in whatever way they like. Over time, I can assure you that they will divorce one day because of money issues. Personally I can relate well in this area because of my family background. There are 3 couples in my family which I used to do a study and see which one is the best for me to model after (shall not reveal too much personal stuffs.)
Yet there are people who tell me that planning too much will not work due to the fact that it takes too long and is too troublesome to maintain. Allow me to ask you this question: “ Would you rather take time to plan out before marriage or take time to rough out all the money issues ahead of you after marriage when you are both only in the mid 20s” I’m sure different folks have different strokes and we all take responsibilities for our decisions. Hence at the end of the day, it’s the couple that bears the consequences.
To sum it up, do allow me to share with you on the things that are within a couple’s decision to plan for. Below are the things that I gathered based on my personal observations and other’s experiences:
- Decide whether it is important to hold a hotel wedding dinner as compared to a simple lunch ceremony.
- Set aside a budget for the whole wedding inclusive of shoots and gowns and start saving 1-2yr before.
- Also put aside small amount of money for renovation loans
- Make sure your CPFOA has enough funds to settle the initial down-payment of the flat.
- Have a joint account mainly for household expenses (% allocation is negotiable between couple)
- Set aside 5-10% of monthly income for luxury stuffs for couple. It can be used to buy branded stuffs or mainly for holiday trips. Not only will it motivate couples to save, it will also build stronger bonds when going for trips and cut down on unnecessary quarrels.
- Decide on the type of insurance plans to buy and find a good consultant that is in the business for long.
- If you need to buy a family car, decide on the type of car you need and budget. I often advise not more than 35% of family income should go into buying a car. This includes considerations of petrol, road tax, insurance and car maintenance.
I really hope that my sharing can benefit the couples out there who spend time to read my post. It may not be easy to implement nor work through but I am very sure it is something that is worth practicing to have a happy and blissful marriage.
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