How to build a strong financial foundation in your relationship before marriage

 

Building a an excellent financial foundation before  marraige  will save your marriage from many financial challenges ahead .The best relationship advice before marriage isn’t about how to love each other or keep a home but how to build a strong financial foundation before marriage. The lack of understanding of the importance of this aspect of the relationship is the reason behind many financial problems and hardship in marriages.

The excitement of getting married never allows people to plan properly before getting into it and this constitutes major money problems in marriages. Many marriage counselling focuses on how to strengthen your marriage, how to budget in your marriage, how to handle sexual temptations, how to handle misunderstanding, and many more topics but never teaches how to lay a solid financial foundation before marriage. The counselling session is even the last thing done before marriage so it not even in the position to teach this topic when people are in a relationship.

In the military, every soldier prepares adequately before they go for battle, in sports footballers and athletes prepare adequately before they go into any competition, and lastly every student prepared before they go for any exams but it only in marriages that people hardly prepare financially before they engage in. The couple begins to plan their financial life together after they are married, this is why financial problems are the most predominant problem in most marriages because it was never prepared for.

If you are yet to marry, then this is one of the best articles both you and your partner should read and act upon and if you are already married it is better done now than never.

What is a foundation?

A  foundation in construction is the lower part of the structure or building upon which a house is built that can transfer the weight of the house directly into the earth. A financial foundation in marriage on the other hand is the basis of the marriage upon which the financial life of the marriage is built upon that holds all the financial pressure of the marriage.

In construction to lay the foundation of a building, the earth is dug to make small trenches, and cement, sand, water, and stones are mixed together to fill the trenches before the house is built upon it. In a relationship, we will liken the house to build to the marriage, the earth to dig the relationship, the stones water, cement, and sand to be the resources or skill each partner in the relationship is having. 

What both partners will have to do is to mix or bring together the resources or skills available to each other to lay the financial foundation upon which the marriage will be built in the relationship just like a house is built on a foundation in the earth. Any house built without a foundation will collapse with time or have a deteriorating appearance and the same applies to a marriage without a strong financial foundation built from the relationship.

How to use your relationship to build a strong financial foundation before marriage.

Define the financial life you are expecting

The first thing to do is for the partners to have a discussion about the kind of financial life they are expecting after marriage. In some marriages the couple may want to be doing philanthropic work or giving towards a church as a couple, others will like to take care of other family members, others may like to be travelling every year for a vacation overseas, others may want to live in a luxurious area in the city, others may want their kids to go to quality schools of high paying fees. So in short, the partners in the relationship should define the kind of life they will want to live after marriage. This will help each partner to have an understanding of the life each person is expecting before even they go into the marriage.

List all major money demanding areas 

After knowing the financial life you are expecting after marriage, the next thing to do is to list down all the major areas of the marriage that will demand money to handle. For example, depending on your choice, let say charity work, accommodation, purchasing of cars, schools etc These vital areas should be noted down so that proper planning can begin right from the relationship on how to meet the finances involved.

Calculate your current financial strength against the money demanding areas 

After knowing the various areas that will demand a lot of money to sustain in your marriage due to the preferred financial life expecting, the next thing to do is to weigh both partner's current financial strength to meet such demands. This is where it will become obvious to the partners whether they have the financial capacity to handle such demands or they will have to begin to lay the right foundation down to be able to handle the financial responsibility awaiting them. This is the area most people in a relationship never look at till they marry and begin to have marriage problems or struggles because of the unavailability of money to meet the financial challenges that might have shown up.

Employ multiple streams of income to meet multiple financial demands

Some partners in a relationship might be involved in a good-paying job so it easy for them to think they can handle all the financial bills that may show up in their marriage. This is the biggest trap most people have set for themselves and it has led to the collapse of many marriages. When someone puts all his financial demands on one source, the day that the source will be cut off due to the person being laid off work or not being able to work due to sickness or death, the family will be facing hard times financially. And hence it never advisable to depend on only one financial source to meet all your family's financial needs.

Multiple streams of income will be defined as having many money-generating avenues. The amount of money may not be the main focus of each business or investment but the returns it brings. Each amount received can be used to meet a particular financial goal in the marriage. Whiles, you are in a relationship with your partner, you can begin to plan what money you intend to use to meet the financial obligation in the marriage, and if that money is not currently available the partners can begin to think of setting up money-generating avenues to meet such demands. If the partners are currently working or having a business, the money generated from that business can be allocated to handle a particular aspect of the finances and the rest of the areas left, the partners will have to come up with a business or an investment plan to raise money for such areas.

Define the skill or resource you will need to have other streams of income.

To set up other forms of income-generating business aside your normal stream of income, you will need training and resources. Anything worth doing is worth training for , so if there is an agreement between the partners to set up additional business, then the place to start from is the skill to handle such business. Some people enter a business with no form of training and hence the survival of the business becomes a game of  chance. Since you have plan to start a business, the best way to be sure of its a success is by attaining the necessary training. Whether it's about selling or cooking or offering a service of any kind please go for formal or informal training to run that business as a success. You can obtain a paid training from online schools or training institutes around you offering shorts courses in entrepreneurship or anything relating to your business. Informal education can be obtained from YouTube or free eBooks online or information about your chosen field from several online blogs with the help of google search. The other places to get an informal education is by going to anyone doing the kind of business you want to do and seek their opinion and advice. If the partners don't know what business to do, then I urge them to begin to read books or watch videos on entrepreneurship , because this will begin to orientate their minds to think like an entrepreneurs who can see opportunities to make money.

Employ leverage of time, money and skill if you don't have the time

The easiest  way to get any difficult work done is by employing leverage .Leverage is the use of  techniques and tools  to achieve a business goal with ease and speed ,producing better results than not using such techniques and tools. In business you can leverage on others peoples time, other peoples skill and other peoples money ..Leverage is best needed when you don't have the time or money or skill to carry out a business goal. For instances you may want to go into a certain business but you don't have the skill to carry out that business ,so what you will do is to employ someone  to use their skill to work for you. It the same with going to the bank for loan to do business. The loan from the bank is the money which belongs to the customers  and has been leverage to you for your business.

I hope this article will be of help to you to plan a strong financial foundation before marriage. Kindly share with us in the comment box below if you will like to add a thought to this article.