Introduction
Managing finances as a couple can be an exhilarating yet challenging journey.
But fear not! With the right mindset, strategies, and a shared vision, you and your partner can build a rock-solid financial foundation that not only strengthens your relationship but also paves the way for a prosperous future.
As you embark on this joint venture, remember that effective money management requires open communication, unwavering trust, and a united front when it comes to your financial goals. By tackling financial hurdles together, you can overcome any obstacle and create a harmonious financial future.
How We Met
Our story began on the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, where a delightful twist of fate brought us together.
What truly set us apart from the rest was our mutual fascination with finances. Right there, on our dating profiles, we openly discussed our involvement in the fire movement and real estate investing. This common ground not only sparked our interest but also laid the foundation for a shared financial perspective.
Finding a partner who aligns with your financial values can significantly ease the journey of managing money as a couple.
Opening a Joint Account
As our relationship blossomed, so did our commitment to transparency and fairness.
Even before getting engaged, we recognized the importance of pooling our resources and opening a joint account. This move eliminated the need for individual contributions and simplified our financial responsibilities. Both of us contributed equally to the account, which covered our shared expenses such as rent, utilities, and joint purchases.
Managing Our Recurring Monthly Investments
As our bond grew stronger, so did our desire to align our investment and savings strategies.
We set up automatic transfers to a joint dividend portfolio and a high-yield savings account. This proactive approach allowed us to actively pursue our savings goals while earning attractive interest on our funds. Additionally, we established a joint brokerage account, enabling us to systematically invest in index funds and ETFs that mirrored our investment preferences.
We also maintained a reserve of cash for potential real estate opportunities.
Our Real Estate Ventures
Embracing the world of real estate together became a natural progression for us. Fueled by trust and open communication, we embarked on joint real estate ventures.
We strategically purchased properties under the framework of LLCs and trusts, with both of us listed as owners. By combining our assets and seeking guidance from professionals like Anderson Advisors, we safeguarded our properties and ensured equal interests. Decision-making regarding real estate purchases and other significant expenses has always been a shared endeavor, solidifying our partnership.
Conclusion
Managing finances as a married couple necessitates open communication, unwavering trust, and a shared commitment to financial goals.
Whether you opt for a joint account or maintain separate accounts, the key lies in finding a system that works harmoniously for both partners. Initiating honest conversations about income, expenses, and assets early on, and actively pursuing shared financial aspirations, can fortify your bond. Remember, personal finance is precisely that—personal. The journey we share is unique to us, and your path may differ.
Take our experiences as inspiration and embark on your financial voyage hand in hand, embracing the boundless potential of a shared financial future.
Below is a transcription of the podcast. This transcription was taken from Otter.ai so it might not be completely accurate:
Unknown Speaker 0:02
This is the digital nomad quest podcast, Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.
Unknown Speaker 0:14
Hey, guys, it’s Sharon Tseung. In this my husband, Sean pan, and we are going to talk about how we manage our money as a married couple. So Shawn and I are married now. And as a couple, we probably do things differently than most people. Because we work together a lot. We have our joint business called good sweet homes, where we talk about building generational wealth through real estate investing. And also we recently watched for meats show on Netflix, and it open our eyes to all the issues couples have around money. And it started to make me think about how common money issues must be in relationships and how they can actually make you break up or divorce over it. In fact, according to this article, it mentions that nearly a quarter of all couples break up over finances. And that’s why we want to go over our journey about how we manage our finances. We hope by seeing our journey, you guys can take something away from it, maybe get inspired by how you guys would do this in your own relationships. So first, let’s talk about how we met in the beginning, we actually found each other on a dating app called Coffee Meets Bagel and on our dating profiles, we already talked about finances a little bit, I mentioned that I was interested in the fire movement. And I put down that I was a real estate investor, instead of just saying that I’m an engineer, because there were so many engineers in the Bay Area that I wanted a way to differentiate myself. Now because we even talked about this early on and made things a lot easier for us, we each were on the same financial page. And I think it’s easier if you find a partner who has the same interest like this, obviously, it doesn’t need to be a determining factor. But it makes our lives a lot easier because we view money the same way. Like I don’t have to worry about you having some gambling addiction and not have to worry about you going on some crazy shopping spree all the time, because we both have a pretty frugal mindset. And we only spend on things we value. But we also enjoy investing our money into our self development into our businesses and into assets that make us more money. Now say you already are with someone and you guys don’t have the same ideas around money. I think your money mindset can totally be trained. So I think it’s okay if you find a partner who isn’t on that same level, because this is something that you can build. And it’s important to start with building good Finance Fundamentals like understanding why it’s important to build assets versus liabilities and why you can end up broke even with a high salary. If you don’t know these things, make sure to watch my other personal finance videos about a year into dating, we started opening up about our finances and talking about what kind of assets I had kind of debts we had. And it was nice to have all that clarity out in the open. We also talked about our different goals. And we talked about our different properties, like how much cash flow we had on them what loans we had on them from an early start, I let him know that I was very interested in investing out of state and he had already been investing out of state. So that helped me a lot in my journey. So I would say that communication is very key. Obviously, you don’t want to just right off the bat start talking seriously about money, right, you have to get to know each other first. But as you guys get to know each other, it is important to tackle these subjects before like you get married and have kids, you want to make sure you understand clearly where you guys are financially. And then as we got closer and closer with each other, we got more serious, like I moved into your place. And in 2021 or so we even opened a joint account for us this was actually even before we were engaged, we were already very serious about each other from the get go, I would say and joint account is really nice to have. Because this way, we don’t have to worry about individually contributing to like, oh, you pay this rent, or you’re gonna pay this utility bill. Instead, we all contributed an equal amount to a joint account and then paid all the common expenses through this one joint account and you’d had credit cards associated with the account as well, we would contribute equal amounts from our own personal accounts to this joint account. So it was extremely fair. And we spent all our time together. So that’s why it’s kind of like we might as well use that joint account all the time. And around that time, we actually started buying properties together around 2021. So initially, I had bought my own properties you I bought your own properties, right. But I think that we both knew we wanted to pursue this and we want to do it together. We trusted each other a lot. So it’s a lot easier kind of doing it with you. We’ve heard of some nightmare stories with friends and their siblings partnering and then having a lot of issues. But I think because we were on the same page, we talked openly about everything. We knew we could trust each other on this. I think it was about a time we figured that our finances are shared anyway. So very easy to buy property with someone else that we basically have the property to ourselves. So far, all of our properties are just between us. We haven’t been partnering with other people for our rentals, because it just makes things a lot easier. We talk about everything 24/7. So it’s kind of like we don’t have any issues worrying about what other partners would think. So right now this works best for us. We also started writing down our combined net worth on a spreadsheet. So I normally would do this by myself with my own personal finances but I started combining this with him because I really looked at him as a long term partner and I wanted to get a clearer picture of our finances and where
Unknown Speaker 5:00
We were trying to go with it. So we openly talked about our income, our expenses. So having it all on a spreadsheet meant everything was out in the open, right, we were extremely transparent and honest with each other. We knew what our income and expenses look like where we were at financially. So I think it’s really important that you get to that level and open up with your partner about these things. Now, I would say for us, it was a lot easier. So moving forward to when we got married here, we really started discussing our financial goals, business goals, and I think we did talk about it before, but I think we did it even more specifically, in this stage, because we started talking about let’s put a recurring transfer to this joint account in this dividend portfolio that we’re going to open up. So now we have several different accounts open. So we still have that personal joint account that we pay all of our expenses with. So that’s for the mortgage utility bills, if we go out, eat any kind of shopping stuff, that’s from the personal joint account, we also have several business accounts depending on what business we’re talking about. So we have a business account for social media stuff. Like if we’re going to buy a new camera from YouTube, we’re going to buy a new tree for the studio setup, we have a card specifically for that account, we also have another business account for our real estate endeavors. So anytime we make a repair, and Tammy bisetta, Home Depot for rental properties, we use that account as well. So everything that we have right now is very structured, we even combined our assets, so all of our real estate properties and move them into the different trusts that we created after we got married. And by the way, we did this through Anderson advisors, if you guys are interested, we’ll link down below, they really helped us structure everything because we have 34 units, which is a lot. So we wanted to make sure everything was protected. And we were all good and that we were equal in all of it. Right? So yeah, we were definitely doing a lot of adult things, opening these different accounts opening that LLC, but it makes it so everything’s extremely clear now, because you know, again, we mentioned we spend like 24/7 together, so there wasn’t really even a need to have our personal accounts anymore. Because we spend together we buy our meals together our groceries together, you know, we pay our bills together and all that stuff. So I would say you know, it really depends on your own style, because the joint account where we would contribute to it and spend with it was really helpful. But also, we just decided to combine completely as well. I think both methods work, it just depends on you. So definitely talk with your partner to see where their head is at for this stuff. We also set up recurring monthly investments to our dividend portfolio, we have one to a high yield savings account where we have certain goals that we’re trying to hit. So what I mentioned about the specific goals that we were trying to hit, we wanted to actively work towards those savings goals. So we have that recurring transfer, that is also getting a lot of high interest because it’s in a high yield savings account, we also have our Fundrise portfolio and we open that joint brokerage account. So we can dollar cost average every single week towards index funds and ETFs that we care about. And then we also keep cash on hand in case we have a real estate deal that we want to pounce on, let’s talk about real estate real quick. So people ask, like, who goes on title, who’s on the mortgage and everything like that? Yeah, so the way that we do is we know that there’s a certain amount of loans that each person can get. So we’re very rarely on the mortgage together, usually they’re going to be sharing qualifies yourself or I qualify for myself. But then both of us are on title, usually through the form of the LLC or trust that we are buying the properties in. Another thing to know is that we’re actually very open with our purchases. And I think a lot of that helps because we do spend almost 24/7 together so I’m never like all my own buying things without her permission. I always do get consensus for the most part about buying something over, you know, $20 or so I say, Hey, I’m gonna buy this book, or, Hey, we’re gonna get this appliance. Are you cool with it, and then usually come together to an agreement. And the only time I don’t tell yourself is when I’m buying her a gift, a secret. And usually that comes from my own personal account, because I still do have a personal she still has her own personal that we just spend on whatever we want to for our own self renewal if you want. Yep, so that’s basically it with how we manage our money. I hope this was eye opening. I really do think that it depends on the couple how you guys want to handle it. But the important thing is to communicate everything to have that trust, have that respect have that open communication, different people have different preferences and that’s why personal finance is personal. So hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
