Finances for couples can make or break a union. The rich and famous insist on signing pre-nuptial agreements before marriages between the extremely wealthy and the glamorous but not so wealthy in the hope of averting the age long practice gold digging.

But chances of success in marriage also largely depend on how the family unit treats the subject of money. Some families are used to one partner earning while the rest spend while others have different spending plans for man and wife.

Joint financial planning is one way of making use of a spousal union to drive a family into financial freedom.

The monthly budgets can be joined to reflect two incomes by husband and wife and family expenses while the rest goes to a joint family account which has both spouses as signatories.

This is not to mean that husbands and wife cannot have different personal accounts. They indeed can. For example each member of the union can diverge a fixed percentage of their income to family budgets while the rest goes into their personal savings accounts.

If agreed, the man of the home can save for their car while the woman can save for the expensive electric gas cooker or oven. At the end when each fall short of their targets they can borrow or obtain funds for the joint family account to cover the shortfall to buy the items which at the end of the day will benefit the whole family.

Joint family financial planning can help reduce the friction between families that arises as a result of family expenditure. It can help the family plan jointly for expensed expenses like school fees, financial holidays etc.

it can also help offset sudden loss of income form one spouse by altering the family budgets to fit the other spouses’ income or the family savings –a win-win for the family.

And as it goes a marriage is more so a financial union as well. After marriage, money should be largely looked at as something that can ease the pressures of individual financial pressures and something that can work positively to help gel the union.

On the other hand if looked at selfishly, it is the same factor that can bring disagreements and sow seeds of distrust.

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