September 7th, 2020
I wanted to write a quick post about a thought I had with regard to finances and marriage. Firstly though, I had a thought about families that are highly religious and keep their children from living with their boyfriend/girlfriend until they are married. I’ve often thought that this somewhat counterproductive as it would not allow the two people to see if they could actually live together successfully before they got married. I can imagine more people getting divorced from this arrangement because there may be something that they didn’t know would be an issue until they actually started living together. I feel like living together while unmarried but behaving as if you were married is a good way to see if you actually should be married and living together in the first place. I think I can safely say that I don’t want to get married to someone that I haven’t lived with because of this. Another thing that I’ve thought about that I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing, but may be worth having a deep reflection on is waiting for sex until after you’re married. I know some Christians will say that it is a sin and that it should be between a husband and wife, but then there seems an ignorance of the fact that American marriages are somehow different from Biblical marriage (this is a recent thought that would be worth exploring more in-depth). Basically, various Christians state that one must wait until marriage before engaging in sexual activities with their partner, but does the American marriage live up to Biblical standards? I seem to have some issue with this notion that I will need to explore more. I tend to think that sex should be reserved for people who are committed to one another rather than between strangers as sex between strangers can lead more to negative emotions and actions. I think it is better for people to seek stable relationships rather than one night stands and one might say to form a covenant with someone. I think it is good to save yourself for a partner you have a healthy relationship with, but it seems pretty steep a requirement to wait until the American version of marriage. This stems from the legal and financial implications of marriage that I feel some people don’t take into account because they are wrapped up the emotional love feeling that they get from each other. When that wears off, they don’t know what to do and they maybe find that they can’t actually live with this other person. two people may rush to get married because they want to have sex with each other, which may end in divorce a few years down the road. I’m hesitant to wait for marriage to have sex and to not live together with someone because I feel these are somewhat necessary to determine if I will be able to stay married to someone over the long run. I don’t want to get a divorce, but if I do I feel the best thing would be to have the divorce be amicable. I think this may be best served with a prenuptial agreement, but I get the sense that most people look down on this as it’s a sign that the couple doesn’t actually love one another. I can’t seem to get around the desire to have some sort of contingency plan in place, because life is uncertain and it’s nice to have some certainty with things especially with something as consequential as marriage. I’ve discussed with my counselor the best way to arrange finances and it seems to be that each person has their own personal accounts but share joint accounts that pay for things like housing, childcare, and vacations. The way something like housing would be paid for is that each person contributes a percentage based on what they make. If Person A makes $60,000/year and Person B makes $40,000/year and the mortgage is $1,000/month, Person A would pay $600 and Person B would pay $400. If either person gets a raise that would reduce the amount the other person would have to pay. If Person A got a raise to $65,000/year and Person B continued to make $40,000/year and the mortgage remained $1000/month, Person A would pay $620 and Person B would pay $380. This seems fair to me. To extend this to a prenuptial agreement, firstly, I’d like to keep all the money that I’ve made and saved before getting married and only split what has been contributed to the joint accounts, but doing so based on the percentage of the average salaries over however many years we were married. Again I think this seems fair, ut I’m sure there are some things that I’m not considering or that would require further refinement. Basically I don’t want to be in a worse position after a divorce than I was before the marriage and I want to make sure the division of assets is fair and accurately represents the contributions made by each party towards the marriage. I think by also keeping track of and regularly checking the accounts and running the numbers it will help me reflect on the marriage and if I was considering divorce as a solution for some minor problem it might dissuade me from behaving irrationally. It would force me to think rationally as opposed to emotionally which would help diffuse any difficult situations. I’ve held a belief that marriage and children are not decisions, but challenges and I think that it is wise to be prepared for those challenges to prevent heartbreak and harm. No matter how much I strive to be an ideal husband and father, I know I’m going to miss the mark sometimes and I want to make sure that doesn’t have a negative impact on my partner and children. In conclusion, I have some preliminary thoughts about what I would want my pre and post-marriage relationship to be like, but I’m sure they would require revision at some point.