It's Wedding Season!

In this episode of Wealth Builders, we discuss all the issues and conversations you should be having when getting married. In 2022, there is expected to be over 2.6 million weddings in the United States! With all the planning and excitement leading up to the big day, it is important to have discussions on how each of you think about money and how you will save as a couple going forward. Click the links below for the checklist we discussed in the episode as well as the insurance calculator.

What issues should I consider when getting Married?

How much life insurance calculator




This podcast is for informational purposes only. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice. StatonWalsh and Founder’s Financial Securities do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation.

Ryan Staton is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Devin Walsh  is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Check the background of this firm on http://brokercheck.finra.org/

Make sure to like and subscribe if you enjoyed the show!

For more information on StatonWalsh please visit, StatonWalsh


This podcast is for informational purposes only. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice. StatonWalsh and Founder’s Financial Securities do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation.

Ryan Staton is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Devin Walsh is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Check the background of this firm on http://brokercheck.finra.org/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of wealth builders presented by StatonWalsh. In this week's episode, we talk about a timely topic with spring, right around the corner and wedding season upon us many are heading to the altar in 2022 to get married. This is also a particularly interesting topic for our own managing partner, Devin Walsh, who has a wedding right around the corner in today's. So we're gonna have conversations about things like cashflow planning, asset and debt planning, insurance planning, estate planning, and many other conversations that should be had between couples prior to getting married. We hope you enjoy today's episode and please like, and subscribe at the end of today's show.

Speaker 2: 0:38

This is wealth builders presented by StatonWalsh, a show designed to pull back the curtain of the financial industry and bring true transparency to the forefront of conversation. On the show, we cover topics like financial education, current events, and interview business leaders and industry experts with the ultimate goal of helping listeners discover their own path to financial independence.

Speaker 3: 1:17

Ryan, we are back in today, we are talking about issues to consider when getting married, something that is pretty relevant to me right now, big days, coming up in

Speaker 1: 1:30

June, close to home, right?

Speaker 3: 1:32

A little bit, no, everybody tried to warn me how stressful it really was. But, uh, but things about say outside just the wedding planet, which I had dunno anything about is the money conversations, which is, you know, we see all the time, uh, in our work and you hear about all the news and stats about, you know, how much divorces and separations come from argument about money and the conversations people aren't having. So today I figure, you know, with, uh, the relevant topic in my life, and usually again, married the last couple years, talking about what, what should people consider when getting married insurance debt, student loan debt between save for retirement, private school fives planning, and the difficult conversations like state planning and what incapacitated death. So fun conversations,

Speaker 1: 2:28

A lot, a lot to unpack there. It's definitely a different, it's probably the most important conversation, right? Like it in our world, you know, the world that we live in professionally every day, we have these conversations. So it's a little bit easier when you know what you're looking for. You know, what you're asking about, but something that often often gets overlooked. I mean, I know this isn't true for everyone. I would say for most, you know, people don't fall in love with each other's financial plans. They fall in love with each other and get married for different reasons. What happens is a side effect of that is when you combine two families into one, you have two sets of considerations that now, you know, in, in some respects should be working together and different things work for different people. And one of the things that we often talk about with clients is just like, have you taken these things into consideration? And honestly, these are things that you should probably consider or talk about with your significant other, even prior to, to getting married. Once you, you go through that process, these are things that you ultimately, or you really don't want to have come up later. Uh, and you mentioned a few, I mean, a big one is debt, not understanding what the other has, a student loan debt, um, credit cards, car loans, things of that nature taking into consideration. Like what's our plan moving forward? Like how are we gonna be spending our money in the short term? Or do we have any major purchases that we wanna make together? If we're gonna do that, if you're gonna buy a house and qualify for a mortgage, all these things are gonna come up anyway. So naturally many people, some will avoid the conversation or not have it. You know, we obviously tell folks that that's, it's not your best course of action. And so we've created checklists and the point of today's episodes, really to kind of talk about things that you should just put in the back of your mind or conversation starters or things that you should be thinking about when we're kicking off this conversation. Because once you become married, there's all kinds of considerations. You know, you have to look at taxes, how do you, you know, make purchases? How do you take on debt? How do you grow assets? What each other has and, and, and really defining, uh, consolidated plan around what you both probably have been doing individually for a number of years. And now turning that into kind of one cohesive plan. Yeah. So really

Speaker 3: 4:46

One of the first things is just like, talk about career goals and individual goals. Like, what are your goals is one of you wanna stay home? You wanna have kids is one of you wanna stay home with the kids. You're gonna work forever. Everything. That kinda goes in the goals like retirement plan, Marc and I were watching a, one of those reality television shows every day and a couple was dating and one girls talking about max and I 401ks, I'm a taker. Oh, I'm trust.

Speaker 1: 5:12

What's a 401k.

Speaker 3: 5:13

A and she's like her like, oh no, this isn't. So having those conversations, just something that simple as that, how you contribute to 401k is something, you know, what is your retirement? Like? You wanna retire 65. You wanna retire, never wanna retire work till day die. What does that do? Are you entrepreneur once in business one day? So I think all those things are just are so important and it really, you know, relieves a lot of the stress and the future. So the surprises, um, things that talking about goals, creating a budget, having some type of financial plan or app that a couple can use and both each other budget and track what they do. Credit cards. How do you use a credit card? Do you use on pay'em off every single month you using for points, uh, with a strategy behind there?

Speaker 1: 6:00

Yeah. I mean, that's a lot. I think the biggest thing that I always emphasize is being honest about the issues that can cause stress. So being vocal about the fact that, you know, certain things are not gonna be stressful to some people, other may be, and people view stress and, and financial planning and financial security differently. There are some people that if they see$5,000 in their savings account, they feel great. And there are some people that if their savings account dips below$50,000, they feel insecure about that. And so it's just, it's being vocal or, or letting it be known. What's important to you. Why, you know, what your thought process is behind it. So you can understand each other. It's obviously on a different level, we're talking about money and finance. It's a somewhat taboo topic. You know, you wouldn't wanna bring it up at the table at Thanksgiving dinner, but it is something that if you're gonna get married, you should definitely be talking about with a partner.

Speaker 3: 6:58

Yeah, sure. So how do you have these conversations? So two people have completely different views and ideologies around money, how they spend money, how they grow up, talking about money. Cause you said money can be very taboo subject. Some people grow up in the households where you do not talk about money. You do not ask you about money, talk about money, where others are just, you know, more pre flow and with that. So how do you handle that when you have two people possibly coming from two completely different backgrounds or different thoughts around talking about money, do they still put their accounts together and have one account, do everything separately? What do you see? And what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1: 7:33

Yeah, so I think, you know, one, you gotta determine if you're comfortable having the conversation, if you are great, then you wanna really figure out whose responsibility is going to be. What, you know, you can, if there's one person in a relationship that may or may not care about managing the day to day, they have enough trust in the other person to now let you handle the bills. I'll let you handle this splitting responsibilities. The first thing you absolutely do is kind of put all your cards on the table and just really get it out there. And that's just taking stock of what you have. It's a good exercise too, just to get organized financially, to figure out where I'm spending money on what, where am I saving it? What debt do I have getting that organization in place? And sometimes, you know, we find ourselves and financial advisors, we can become a necessary intermediary, but in that conversation where let's just say a couple, they can't really come to an agreement on something, or they're not, they're not really sure where they stand, you know, maybe they come in or reach out to us and, and talk to us in the capacity of, Hey, how does this look? Like? How do we, you merge all of this together efficiently while also making sure that we're achieving what we each individually wanna achieve and then what we wanna accomplish collectively. And so if you're not comfortable having that conversation there, you know, there are always people out there that can assist there's people like ourselves. You know, there are counselors out there that specialize in this type of marriage counseling, you know, talking about finances and talking about just kind of the behavior behind how we spend money, what we spend money on and, and how we can have that conversation in a healthy way where it's not confrontational. It's just look, we're bringing two worlds together in a lot of different capacities. And we all know it. You know, when you, you get married and there's merging of, of two families, you know, you have to get over the hump of like, it's not just me anymore. It's not just the other person. It's not just their families. Like both of your families kind of become one in many risk. And there's a lot, there's enough to juggle alone. Just with that. When you throw money into the mix, you know, it can be a stressor. It doesn't have to be, but most people kind of table it. And it comes back to the surface. When there's a problem, you just wanna get out in front of that. So the simplest way to approach it is just to take stock of what you have put all your cards on the table, you know, voice your honest opinion and see if you can compromise on certain things or come to an agreement on how to create a plan. If you can't do that, then you, there are certainly professionals out there that can assist. So don't be afraid to ask for help. It's a daunting task for many, you know, I even went through that process when I got married, my wife and I sat down, what do you have? What do I have nature of my business? Obviously, like we are always looking at this through a different lens. Other people, you know, now you have to look at it through your own lens and, and figure out practice what you preach basically. And it's hard. It's challenging even for, for people like us. So, um, don't shy away from it just because of that.

Speaker 3: 10:35

Yeah, I agree. So this kind conversations that are important, not, not always easy. I mean, I remember the conversations Marisa before we were engaged. When we talking about starting this company, I'm like, Hey, here's what I'm doing. Here's part the money we have put into this. What are your thoughts? Cause knowing that she was the one in the future, you know, I respected that opinion. So I think just putting that stuff out without being surprised in the future is key. So let's start talking about the fun topic of insurance plan. You always make fun of me whenever. Talk about insurance to our clients. I'm like, all right, this meeting's gonna be boring. It's gonna be nothing fun about get outta the way. And, but it's, it is boring's morbid nos. Talk about the, what ifs, what happen, but it's so, so important to, especially if you're, if you're young and getting married, insurance can be very cheap and it's a great way to protect yourselves at early age. So let's talk a little about life insurance and disability insurance first. But if you're young, married, engaged, is it worth having life insurance? Is it, there's all kinds. There's term insurance. There's insurance is all kind power insurance. What should these young couples

Speaker 1: 11:41

Do? There are many different, many different considerations, right? So let's talk about from a high level, why life insurance, it specifically even becomes a topic of conversation when you get married, have children really, when you make any major change in your life. And the reality is that you go from being one person doing, you know, you have a singular goal, a singular track that you're running on and it's about you and what you're doing and your goals and dreams and aspirations. When you get married, what changes is, there are other people that may rely on, for example, your ability to earn an income. They may rely on you to help supplement cash, to pay bills, to participate financially in the relationship. And so why this is always something that conventionally, you know, get married. People will say, well, you need to consider getting life insurance or disability coverage. And the reason is that your life is now intertwined with someone else's, your responsibilities have potentially changed and you need to start considering how can I protect against the maybe unlikely event, but even so the event that something happens to me between now and the day that I can build enough wealth to retire, how do I bridge that gap in the event of something catastrophic happening? And one of those catastrophic events is premature death. Again, low statistical probability. If you're young, let's say 25 and healthy, but nonetheless it does happen. It's something that you definitely want to take into consideration. And that's where insurance is coming into play. That's why they become a bigger topic of conversation, disability, insurance. It's, you know, it's a little bit more selfish in nature because it's not a death benefit. That's going to someone else after you pass away, it's, it's replacing income while you're still living, but maybe you don't have the ability to earn income the same way that could become an issue because of illness. Let say, you know, heart attack cancer, think of anything. Most people, when they think disability, they think like I'm in a wheelchair and I can't walk up. You know, I can't, I can't get into a building the same way as everyone else. And that's not necessarily the case. It could be some other reason that you may not even know. You know, you could see someone walking down the street and, you know, they have the ability to kind of get out and live of life, but it's not normal. It's not, it's not the same life that they live previously and especially from an income and work perspective. So these are

Speaker 3: 14:03

All, it's really interesting. Cause I feel like it's so overlooked, especially in, in, in young couples, people, cause most people have a long term disability policy through work. We usually covers 60% it's taxable and we rarely see invite personal disability insurance policy. And when we start to have those conversations saying, you know how this actually works and how much incomes actually covered, they're kinda shocked. So looking into that kind of supplemental policy, that something you wanna protect, I think it's huge and nobody talks about unfortunately and we've rarely ever seen it. I had one and for, and for life insurance. So we always talk about how much death benefit is enough. So what, what we'll do, um, if you're listening this episode and our show notes will have a calculator where you can kind go in and play around and kinda see how much death benefit is right for you. So move on to other types of insurance. Ryan, let's talk about, you know, property and casualty homeowners vehicles. So should couples getting married? Should they have you all one policy? Um, should they join together there? What do you recommend?

Speaker 1: 15:08

Yeah, so I mean, that's another consideration, not just combining bank accounts, but do we combine some of our insurances? Should we be on each other's car insurance? Should we have, you know, when you buy a home together, you'll be on the same one if you equally own a home, but you know, just making sure that now there's two people involved. It's not just me. Should I combine it together? Should I revisit my life liability limits and the other big one that most people are familiar with these days, especially if you've bought an, an engagement ring or some kind of jewelry relating to getting married. That's another thing that gets included in homeowners or renters insurance or umbrella policies is like actually freestanding jewelry policies. So those are things that you want. You wanna have protection of personal property. You want to have protection against liability if you get in an accident or something happens. But now instead of just you there's you and potentially a fiance or a spouse, so it changes, changes the consideration a little bit. You have to look at pricing and decide how do we mesh that together? Do we keep set? Do we, you know, make it the same? It's a detailed conversation about insurance and the other piece and one that we kind of skipped over. But one that is always on others' minds is health insurance, employers, health insurance specifically, do we combine that type of insurance? Is that important to me? You know, in some cases like when my wife and I got married and we talked about it, you know, she worked for a large medical system. They have great benefits. We're self-employed individuals like in the open marketplace, health insurance is not competitive for great benefits. Do we combine, do I go on your insurance? You know, in the future, do you come on my insurance? Which one? Or are the kids on one or both? And these are a lot of things that happen. These are the adult conversations that we all avoid for a really long time, but it's just reality. So, you know, they're just to, to wrap up that insurance conversation, it's really just building a checklist one, which, you know, we've provided as part of this episode, but building a checklist and going through those different insurance and saying, all right, what do I have? What don't I have? Why would I need it? How much would I need? And then ultimately, do I need to combine anything? Is that better from a cost perspective, does it make our lives more efficient? So those are all definitely things that, that you want to consider with insurance,

Speaker 3: 17:30

All good points. And so I kinda wanna let that goes nicely into the next part, which is estate planning. And one thing that we, we just talk about nonstop, nonstop is updating, staying on track with your beneficiary designations. So autonomy, 401k at work, 401k IRA, or life insurance, whatever it may be. And it still could be their parents or their siblings, or whoever may be as the beneficiary. So I think one of the first things you want to do is just review all your, everything and your insurances, your investments, everything at work, check the beneficiary designations and review them and update in how you wish. And then also, you know, having some type of document that will trust, um, the tough conversations to have what will happen and like something happens to you. So let's talk about that for a second, Ryan.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Yeah. Let's talk about dying now. Super exciting. So estate planning often gets misrepresented as just death planning. And one of the things where we specifically like to focus on is the aspect of a estate planning or the documents that you can generate that are actually involved with what happens when you're still alive. But maybe you can't do some of the things the way you used to be able to. So incapacitation planning more specifically, what happens if I'm unable to make financial decisions for myself, who does that? What happens if I'm unable to make medical decisions for myself who handles that? And then the last piece is really you, you get into things like what happens if I do pass away and the assets that I've owned, how do they get redistributed? You mentioned beneficiary. Designations is one. There are some things, some pro that you can't assign a beneficiary to. So having a legal document in place like a will or a trust like you mentioned, will transition or transfer tho that property in whatever way that you wish, whatever way you wrote down to whomever. Whenever when you get into estate planning, when you start having children gets even harder, I've been for through it. What happens if something happens to one of us or both of us, where do my thing, not only where do my things go, but who gets, who gets to take care of my kids, who would want to do that? How is that gonna be financed? Who's paying for it. So there's all kinds of things that as you go through life, life changes, weddings are just one of them, but that's certainly so thing that you wanna take into consideration throwing another curve ball into the mix. You know, let's talk about something that is more common. You have potentially blended family. For example, a spouse was previously married, maybe has children from a previous marriage. How do you manage that? How are you, you know, blending your financials in that respect. So just young couples, you know, getting, we don't like to talk about divorce, but the stats speak for themselves. And so it's something that you have to consider, you know, someone's getting married for a second time. They have kids, they have things as shared assets from previous marriage. These are all conversations that happen in estate planning when they're issues that need to come up. And, and you know, most certainly it's, it's known information, but we're just getting into the weeds a little bit on things like financially related that may affect a family long term. So from a state planning perspective, two parts, you know, the traditional death planning, which is never fun to talk about, but more importantly, the Incaa planning and if something happens and you're just unable to do, make decisions for yourself, either medically or financially having something in place that that gives either your spouse or someone else that you trust in your life to make those decisions on your behalf.

Speaker 3: 21:07

Uh, I complet agree and it's, there's so many resources out there. You don't like, you can go to an attorney. It's so easy to do, go to an attorney, get documents drawn up, or there's even one line resource now, which are a fraction of the cause. It's simple, easy to get done, just put something in place. Um, there's great questionnaires that they, they take you through to, um, kind of really see what you, you want in those situations. So there's a lot of resources, but definitely check your beneficiaries. If you just got married or get married soon, double check his beneficiaries on every single type of account you have and just make sure you those to your wishes, last thing, Ryan taxes. So there's different ways you can file and file you follow household jointly and never sometimes is a different opinion than we see all everybody do different ways. What, what are your thoughts for how couples should look at you knowing taxe married?

Speaker 1: 22:01

Well, I definitely think that one, if you don't have someone that you work with, you should consider working with a tax professional. There always going to be the ones that are gonna steer you in the right direction. And so I can't say enough about having a good, trusted CPA, for example, and not everyone has super complicated tax situations and may not require the expertise of a CPA from a tax savings perspective. But, you know, looking at things like what deduct are available, what credits, even if you're just a w two employee and you're not, it's not super complicated making decisions like what's better for me, married, filing, jointly, married, filing separately, head of household. You know, all these things are considerations. There's a lot, you know, the other thing too is do I change my tax withholding? Do I change way that I'm reporting certain things, you know, do I have losses or other things that I can carry forward? How do my contributions to my tax advantaged accounts like a pre-tax 401k? How does that affect my taxable income? How does the combination of now me and my spouse doing that together affect our taxable income. A lot of moving part. I would say that I, you know, I find a ton of value in working with someone a, a tax professional. I think that I would recommend that, you know, unless, you know, for example, one of the, the part of the couple getting married is an accountant, then you're in luck, but certainly to take tax planning into consideration, there's a lot there. We touch on a pretty high level just to say, here's all the things that you should be considering. You can't necessarily give you a recommendation on one versus the other. You definitely wanna talk to a, a, a professional, a tax professional about that, but a lot to take into consideration. It's it may not be just as cut and dry as you think, just, you know, flipping on and going to a merit filing jointly. For example,

Speaker 3: 23:49

I agree. You definitely find a, a good partner in the tax world is definitely, it saves your money, the long run. There's a lot of things that they do that can, uh, help you out. But we we've talked about a bunch today. Me's telling me recently, I think there's like something like 2 million people getting married in 22, which is an absurd number to

Speaker 1: 24:06

Me, there's a backlog. Everybody's, everybody's rushing to the altar now

Speaker 3: 24:10

It's crazy. And just people are getting married on different days and they're pushing three. So we know there's a ton of people out there. Hope you found it's useful. There's these are just conversations that just are so important to have when you're getting married. But

Speaker 1: 24:24

Yeah, we just grab it's the surface too. So I think

Speaker 3: 24:27

It's, so what we wanna do, we have a great checklist for if you're, if you're getting married or put a link to this in the show notes, all you gotta do is click on. It's gonna have great checklist, everything you, you need to talk about. It's very easy. So don't anything. So make sure you check that out. It's a free resource to have think yous always for your, uh, also insights. We'll also have a link that show notes for, you know, if you're already talking about insurances, like we'll always hear how much, how much insurance should I have. We'll have a calculator there for you to kind of mess around there, but thanks, Brian. Thanks everybody for listening. Make sure you go in, press subscribe and like this episode and make for listening. And the next one.