301. Newlywed Bonding #9 — Plan Ahead

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Finances—or more accurately, squabbles about indebtedness and spending—stimulate break up more than almost anything else.  

$$$  Plan ahead. Marriage vows express devotion to each other. Unplanned, unnecessary, and surprise spending and indebtedness can easily kill such devotion.

$$$  Plan ahead. The continual practice of spending less than your income reinforces devotion to each other. Teamwork bonds.

$$$  Plan ahead. Long before the wedding date, commitment to marital spending, decision-making, and success ranks as highly as commitment to each other.

$$$  Plan ahead. Budgeting generates good self-discipline to overcome and minimize the effects of bad habits. New habits can put mind over money instead of plastic over mind.

$$$  Plan ahead. If you can’t budget, you can’t plan effectively. There is no special way to do it except YOUR WAY—whatever works to keep spending below income, to make savings a lifetime process.

$$$  Plan ahead. Commit to stop, slow, or compensate for impulse buying, compulsive shopping, and immediate gratification.

$$$  Plan ahead. Reward yourself cheaply for avoiding big or unplanned big spending.

$$$  Plan ahead. Rewards create and reinforce new habits. Reward yourselves frequently for:

·        Staying within budget

·        Not having to pay credit card interest

·        Meeting your saving goals

·        Devoting to each other by not overspending in your domain of responsibility.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 297, 261, 257, 254, 247, 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]

 

 

 

261. Newlywed Bonding #7 — Look, then leap

Here’s more to help guide newlyweds. These principles, beliefs, attitudes, and convictions can be tailored to fit or rejected by each couple to help fulfill their hopes and dreams. Advice is labeled as such.

♂$♀  Budgeting comes easily if a couple focuses on building a successful mixture of spousal interaction. Lots of imagination, small bits of will power, negotiable cooperation, and frequent confirmation of mutual trust can all be energized through the budgeting process.

♂$♀  Ignore what’s past. Assume decisions already made were sound at the time. Else, you would not have made them. Hindsight sees too many mistakes; those little buggers trigger spousal disputes. Why pay attention to what can haunt, irritate, and demotivate you or generate distrust for spouse or your budgeting process?

♂$♀   Pay yourself first: Save at least 10% off the top for long term savings for home purchase and retirement. Otherwise, late in life you will limp financially before physically. It’s best the other way around.  

♂$♀  At the start of the year, allocate for church giving and short-term savings to cover Christmas and vacation spending. Then, commit to not overspending on the last two items.

♂$♀  This is ADVICE: Determine the level, develop a plan, and purposely live a lifestyle at considerably less than 100 percent of income. Doing it is critical; the percentage goal is less so.

Evil incardnate comes in next post.

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247. Newlywed Bonding #4 —Money as glue

Every couple has two options: Become enslaved to money, or make money their slave. Marriages fail more from financial problems than anything else.

We survived, but barely. We were broke for the first two decades of our marriage. Out of money before out of month. We tried everything. Grace managed money, and I overspent. I managed, and she overspent. We tried something else, and we both overspent. No savings, no cushion, nothing but repeated loans to consolidate debts.

Then, we hit paydirt. We developed a simple system that worked wonderfully. We prioritized our needs and wants and funded them with whatever we had.

We turned money into our slave. Overnight we went from broke to rich, meaning we had enough money for everything we needed, and some for what we wanted. We grew ever richer as we methodically eliminated credit card debt.

Details follow in future posts.

[More about newlyweds appears at posts 242, 230 and 224. Scroll down or search by number with dot and space following it.]