About Melissa Batai
Healthcare is one of the essential benefits your work provides. After all, a car accident or appendicitis when you’re not insured can devastate your finances. However, healthcare has become more complicated, and choosing a healthcare plan for couples is difficult. You likely have various plans to choose from, each offering varying levels of care and vastly differing prices. To make sense of healthcare, here are items you should consider.
My husband and I are generally safe, middle-aged drivers who drive older cars, so our auto insurance is reasonable. However, we recently moved from Arizona to New York. When we transferred our insurance to New York, the agent asked if we’d like the Drive Safe & Save discount. This program requires drivers to install a beacon on their windshield and then download the Drive Safe & Save by State Farm app onto their cell phones. You can earn a significant discount for your insurance premium using this tracking information.
When I worked a traditional job, I would bring my lunch to work. However, often that lunch sat in the refrigerator while I went out to lunch instead. What happened? Why did I spend money on lunch when I had a packed lunch waiting for me? I realized there were a few reasons I chose to go out, and I used what I learned to avoid eating out at work. As a result, in the last few years I held my traditional job, I didn’t eat out much. Here’s what I realized.
When I was in high school, my friend’s dad, Jerry, inherited a large sum of money. He promptly invested all of the funds in certificates of deposit, earning around three percent. His wife, Lucy, was furious. Jerry had locked that money into low-interest CDs for several years. Lucy was adamant that he should have invested it elsewhere to get a more significant return. Learning to match your risk tolerance with your spouse is imperative whenever you consider money for your future well-being. Unfortunately, Jerry and Lucy did not do that and struggled for years with Jerry’s decision on how to invest the money.
My husband and I make almost all of our meals from scratch. We rarely go out to eat and only rely on convenience foods such as frozen burritos or chicken nuggets once or twice a week. The rest of the time, one of us cooks a meal and hopefully makes enough for leftovers. However, because we cook frequently, we often need new meal recipes. That’s why I subscribe to eMeals every five years or so.
As DINKS, you may put off estate planning. After all, you don’t have to worry about who will raise your children when you pass. You don’t have to worry about creating generational wealth. However, while that is true, there are still four reasons why DINKS need to estate plan. If you haven’t done so, this is your reminder to start the process regardless of your age. Everyone, whether they have children or not, must have a plan for those they leave behind when they pass on.
When we first married, I was employed full-time, and my husband was in graduate school full-time. Our time was at a premium, so we often neglected cooking. We ate too much ready-made food and went to restaurants two to four times a week. It was unhealthy for our budget and bodies. When we kicked the restaurant habit, we started cooking at home. However, we were still low on time, so we turned to batch cooking to save time and money.
When you and your significant other are creating your budget, you may wonder how much should couples allocate for their hobbies? After all, hobbies make life more enjoyable and can be a great way to meet new friends and grow personally. Yet, some hobbies like skiing are expensive and can cause conflict if you’re not both on the same page about what to spend.
My husband and I have been married for more than 20 years, but we’ve never both worked full-time. Instead, only one of us works full-time, and the other works part-time. Although that might seem unusual, for us, it works.
One of the best steps you can take for your marriage is to get on the same page financially. Disagreeing about finances is one of the leading causes of divorce. However, if you are willing to become educated together about money management, you are less likely to argue about money. One excellent place to start your financial education is with these 4 free online financial seminars for couples.
While you can find excellent financial seminars and money management workshops for a fee, there’s no need to start that way. Free seminars can make an impact.
Each seminar is as short as 30 minutes or as long as three hours. They are a short investment in your time for years of marital peace.
Money Management International offers a course under 40 minutes, Let’s Talk: Couples and Money, which specifically targets couples and includes topics such as how to find time to talk about money, communicate your dreams, and discuss the money values you learned in childhood. In addition, the course gives several topics you and your partner can explore together to understand your thoughts and feelings about money.
This course is an excellent precursor before jumping into the other courses below.
Offered on Udemy for free, Personal Finance 101: Everything You Need to Know is a three-hour personal finance course presented in short, animated videos. Topics covered include all you need to know to manage your finances, such as how to buy a car, file your taxes, pay off your student loans, build excellent credit, invest wisely, understand and get insurance, and many more.
Are you already in debt? That can cause significant stress in your marriage as well as personally. The best step is facing your debt and making a realistic plan to become debt-free. Alison’s free course, Introduction to Managing Your Personal Finance Debts can help you do just that.
This course teaches you how to prioritize your debts, negotiate credit card interest rates, and make a plan to pay off your debt. This course is less than three hours long and has almost all five-star reviews from those who have taken it.
With Coursera’s free course, Create a Budget with Google Sheets, there’s no need to pay for budgeting software. In one hour, you can learn how to create your budget using Google Sheets, share the document with others, and edit the template you create. You and your spouse can easily share and edit the budget as needed. This is another highly rated course, earning 4.7 stars out of 5.
Now is the time to get on the same page with finances. Whether you’re engaged, newly married, or struggling with managing finances together, you can benefit from these 4 free online financial seminars for couples.
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