Newly Married Financial Goals & Checklist

With the wedding behind you, there is only one thing left to do: get to work! It's time to start building your lives together. Although it may sound scary at first, there is no reason to panic. In fact, now is the perfect time to start making financial decisions. The first thing you will need to do is create a budget. You might not know where to start, so I have provided a list of 6 financial goals every newlywed needs to consider.

Also, read more about Money Conversations in Your Relationship at Every Stage and download the Love and Money Guidebook with 50+ questions to ask your partner.

1. Setting up a joint account

Think joint savings, home loans, offset, bills accounts and more. Combining your cash into joint accounts can help save money by reducing the number of account bank fees you may pay, it can simply expenses and bills to be paid plus rapidly help increase savings interest or reduce home loan interest if using an offset. Plus it goes a long way to building trust and honesty ;)

2. Reviewing your insurance policies

Wills, life insurance & health insurance are the main policies to look at. You can list each other as beneficiaries of the policies should the unforeseen happen plus you may also get cheaper family health cover!

3. Discussing the division of household responsibilities

I think it's great to nominate one person as the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) when it comes to household expenses. You can't rely on your spouse not to notice if you pay a bill so it's best to have one person in control. However, this is still a team effort and the other person must still take responsibility to know what money is coming and going! Handling money can be stressful, I highly recommend having a date night each month to go through the budget look at what bills are coming in and take the time to budget and plan some fun activities for the month ahead together too!

4. Setting up a budget

Have a fun money date night to put forward what each of your wants and needs are for the following month ahead and build your budget and cash flow plan together. You may not always be able to get what you want instantly but this way you can plan ahead and be aware of each other's needs. Start with your bills, and any debts that need to be paid, then move on to your general spending. Agree on any personal debts you have on how much will be split to pay these off in advance, I recommend starting by paying off the debts in order of highest interest first then snowballing that amount onto the next one once paid off and so on and so on. If you need help check out my budget planning services to take the stress away. 

5. Plan your investing and retirement goals

You've just gotten married and want to spend the rest of your life together, this includes growing old and grey but hopefully sipping cocktails on a beach or shooting the breeze in your beautiful garden. To enjoy these later years you need to agree on your retirement plan, including setting money aside for investing. You don't have to have lots to start investing, most people working in Australia already have a superfund they can top up - however, you can't access this until your mid-60s! If you want to relax before then you can look at other avenues. I started with just small amounts into Pearler for shares and ETF trading every month or two and enjoy seeing it build.

6. Create an emergency fund

Agree on what's important if either or both of you lose your job. This can be rent/mortgage, groceries, utilities, petrol etc and figure out if you'd like 3 months or 6 months of savings. I recommend building your emergency fund in a separate bank and automating an amount to transfer each payday. This way you can't see the available balance with your regular banking app and are less likely to dip into it for a holiday or new shoes!

It is not about how much money each of you have or who brings what to the table. It is about how you use your money together. If you want to be successful, work as a team, be clear with your goals and build a budget that will get you there together! If you'd like to know when you will hit your savings goal together or how quickly you can pay off debt by combining your incomes - fill in the free initial overview here and we'll send you a personalised complimentary report.

Love & Money Guidebook