Do you remember the delight you felt when you heard those wedding bells? The electric nerves in your belly as you anticipated the ceremony, where you’d swear your heart and life to someone else? When you saw your partner, and your soul came alive when you saw them dressed to the nines on your special day (or, like a friend of mine, perhaps you and everyone in attendance wore animal onesies, which I think is quirky and wonderful. What is life without some whimsy?)

For many, their wedding is one of the landmark moments of their lifetimes, and rightly so. There is a lot of history and cultural significance entrenched in every aspect of the process. On top of that, chances are you spent months meticulously preparing for that singular day, when all your friends and family would come together to witness the proverbial, beautiful matrimony. And when it’s about being with the person you love most in the world, it’s absolutely worth it.

Love and relationships are one of the most essential elements to a content, joyous human experience, and their pursuit is always worthwhile. However, in the interest of practicality, we must acknowledge that it’s not always easy. There are nearly countless ways that relationships can prove more difficult than anticipated, not only in the process of finding and making them, which is challenging enough, but even once you’ve cultivated something precious.

Perhaps you’re recently married, and though you absolutely adore your spouse and most aspects of your combined life, you can’t help but notice that your satisfaction is incomplete due to financial shortcomings. In other words, you married for love, but money didn’t necessarily follow. There’s good news and bad news for this: on the one hand, we’re sorry. We’re sorry that culture failed you, and that you weren’t provided adequate financial literacy guidance or awareness. School, jobs, and media all fall short on this. But the good news is that you’re not alone, and you’re not doomed. We won’t promise that going from broke to achieving financial freedom will be easy, but we do promise it’s possible.

Your happily ever after is just beginning.

We want to take you on a journey. We want to contextualize the struggles you may face (or, if you’re reading this, might already be facing), both from a man’s perspective, as well as a woman’s, what the consequences are for financial illiteracy, the likelihood of retirement, personal budgeting, and ultimately, the ways that a financial advisor can change the game.

What are the long-term consequences to dating or marrying someone who isn’t financially literate? And if that someone is you, what steps can you take to set yourself up for success?

Failure in Our Educational Systems to Provide Us With the Tools We Would Need to Manage Our Finances Throughout Our Life

As it exists today, our education system does an outstanding job of being very inconsistent. We spend the majority of our lives learning such a wide array of subjects, of which, most will never apply to daily life, only to then demand that we suddenly hyper-specialize into particular fields of study. Due to this set-up, it’s easy for you to maybe glance over a financing class in high school (you know, one of the times in life when you’re most distracted and care the least about such things), only for it to never come up again in secondary education and beyond, when it would be more valuable to you.

This is not a formula for financial success, and does you no favors when it comes to managing a budget.

Because of that, our society is full of people who perpetuate really unhealthy or misguided understandings of money. A lot of folk think that, hey, as long as you have more money at the end of the month than you have bills to pay, then whatever you’re doing must be working. Others are addicted to impulse purchases, racking up credit card debt, and even if they manage to pay it off, the unhealthy behavior is still damaging their bank account due to poor self-regulation. Even something as innocuous and well-meaning as gift-giving can backfire, since relationships often start off with one party courting the other through meals, presents, paid experiences, etc. Those expenses can rack up quickly and quietly, catching you off guard and slamming you with stress. And because the money in these situations doesn’t always come directly out of your pocketbook, the impact these expenses make might not be immediately apparent to both parties (we all know a couple where one of them overspends, and it ends up causing both of them stress later).

It’s not often that we find two people who fall in love and are on the same page about finances. And maybe it’s not possible for any two people to be perfectly aligned, but for a relationship to survive, there needs to be a measure of understanding, compromise, and uniformity between the two. It does a relationship no good if one person is putting in extra hours at work to save up for your future home, while the other is dropping dollars on expensive novelties like handbags, trading cards, video games, or shoes. Maybe the one likes to spend all their money on expensive dinners and sports cards, while the other prefers to stay at home.

It’s even worse when neither party practices responsible financial spending. This is a recipe for not only an agonizing relationship, but a frustrating and difficult life for both of you.

And everything we’ve said so far? Exponentially more challenging when kids are in the equation. It pays to be prepared.

Greg Welborn, a financial advisor at First Financial Consulting has the following thoughts: 

“For some couples, money isn’t just ‘money’ — it means different things to different people. These are sometimes imbued with very deep emotions. One of my clients in particular, each spouse had different definitions for money. 

For one spouse, money meant security. They felt they needed to see a lot of money saved in order to be secure and not worry about starving. For the other spouse, money was more of a status symbol, where they felt that buying flashy things showed they had succeeded in life. 

These two spouses were in conflict, but the conflict wasn’t really about the money, even though it was the focal point of the arguments. The conflict was about deep-seated emotional needs and fears, which weren’t being discussed. 

When couples identify the underlying emotions, talk about them together and receive affirmation that their emotions are important, then they can begin to work through and find a balanced compromise. A good financial planner helps discover these feelings and can be the objective third party to help a client work through them.” 

Here, we will go through some of the gaps that both men and women discover when it comes to their own financial literacy.

How Some Men Might Find Themselves With Gaps In Their Own Financial Literacy

While both sexes are susceptible to all manner of financial fallibility, there’s value in drawing attention to common stumbling blocks for each, so you can identify these weaknesses in yourself or your spouse and address them accordingly. Read: also respectfully and tactfully. If you observe any of the behaviors in this or the next section, do not use them as weapons to guilt your partner into becoming better. You must come together with a mutual desire to improve towards mutual goals. “I told you so” and “see? These professionals even say your behavior is bad” will not take you very far, and almost never work. When addressing shortcomings, you must use patience and consideration.

To understand financial illiteracy in men, one must begin at the source: psychology. Men are conventionally regarded as the party intended to pay for the majority of things in a relationship. There’s a strong cultural expectation that the man is capable of providing most, if not all of the financial bulk in the relationship, allowing the woman to coast and enjoy the tasteful baubles, flowers, or other fun things he buys for her. It is the man’s responsibility to make her “feel like a queen.”

As lovely as that idea is to think about, it is not practical, and never has been for most people. Instead what it does is create a potential gateway of shame for men who feel like they are failing if they cannot provide extravagantly for their partner — even to the detriment of their financial wellness.

Even when they are well off, some of the common hobbies that men are expected to engage in can prove very expensive in the long run. Sports cars, season passes to watch their favorite team, top shelf spirits, boats, luxurious vacations — even with an above average income, unless you are steeped in wealth, these things can prevent you from creating lasting wealth through investments, saving options, and other money decisions that would support the longevity of your financial options.

How Some Women Might Find Themselves With Gaps In Their Own Financial Literacy

While it’s of course possible that women can find themselves susceptible to the same modes of thinking and errors that often claim men (we are all human, afterall, and no one is immune to human failings), they do have their own lineup of popular monetary shortcomings that hit their purses if they aren’t careful.

Due to the psychological and social pressure to look and act a certain way, a super common pitfall for women is to overspend on cosmetic improvements — expensive clothes, an abundance of skincare and makeup products, perfumes, yoga classes, personal grooming from nails to eyelashes, even cosmetic surgeries like liposuction or implants. While everyone feels pressure to look and give their best, there’s no question that America’s commercial efforts put far more stress on women to “look good for their man” under the pretense that if they don’t, their man might leave them or have an affair. Fear is a powerful motivator.

Women also face a lot of expectations to prove themselves as loving, caring mothers who provide for their children. This can mean extravagant spending on cribs, clothing, toys, and other things that don’t necessarily hurt, but are excessive when you’re trying to save for your kids college. We hurt ourselves when we sacrifice the good of the future for immediate benefits. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but if that’s how we approach everything, we’ll find ourselves quickly living paycheck to paycheck: something that can pull apart even the strongest relationships.

How Two Married Individuals Can Overcome These Financial Challenges and Take Them On Together

It doesn’t matter if you’re a few months into your relationship, or a handful of years into your marriage, every couple should be intentional and proactive about their financial health. Figure out a time to sit down and go over your budget, especially with the economic impact inflation has had on society. Every household is facing higher taxes, higher cost of milk ($4.37+) and eggs (up to $7.00, at least in Boulder), and gas prices that, despite slight declines, are far from ideal ($4/gal in Seattle at time of this writing). You need to take an objective look over your finances and assess your goals and timelines. What ambitions do each of you have for the next year? Where do you see yourselves five years from now? Ten?

Obviously, life can throw you curveballs and you may develop new dreams along the way, so your plan shouldn’t be rigid and inflexible, but you should have a direction, with self-imposed guidelines and strategies that put you on a path towards those goals, and then you need to stick to them. Do you aspire to home ownership? Paying for your children’s college? A healthy retirement that is not beholden to government assistance. As a note on that last point: to retire with $100,000 annual income at the age of 65, your household would need to save approximately $1,485,000. However, that’s assuming you have already paid off a mortgage, and the exact amount you should have will change based on your needs and expectations. The $100,000 is per person, so if you retire as a couple, you should double that, landing you closer to a total of $2,950,000. This should be able to cover a PPO health plan for you and your spouse, as well as any long-term care insurances that may fall short of the coverage you’d need during retirement. Obviously, if you think you’d be alright living off a smaller yearly income, then you can adjust for that, as well.

This is something you need to stay on top of. Financial disarray is one of the leading causes of divorce. 

"Love is essential when it comes to a marriage, but finances rank just as closely to love,” says KJ Kim of AdvisorCheck. “More often than not, you will see a couple who is deeply in love have their lives fall completely apart as they both go through the debilitating court process that one experiences when facing a divorce, and while the love is still there, the irresponsibility or the lack of financial understanding just completely ruins a perfect couple and leads to their demise. It's essential to bring out a budget and talk to your spouse immediately to prevent this from happening – and if there are any gaps in communication, to bring in an expert – a financial advisor – to lay out the dire consequences that your family could face if you head down the wrong path. Don't let yourself become another statistic and work together as closely as you can to redefine the financial health of your current or your future family."

Based on what KJ said, it is essential to focus on improving literacy on both ends, especially if it’s a difficult concept to grasp. The two of you will ultimately be so much closer if you work together to overcome these hurdles.

Here’s a couple of quick tips for tackling your budget together:

• Set up precise, easily measured goals that are achievable in a realistic amount of time.
• Compile a list of all your financial obligations. These are the items that must be paid, like rent, insurance, your car payments, phone bills, student loans, etc.
• Total your individual and combined net income, and use it as a measuring stick for how much you can spend each month without damaging the trajectory for your goals.
• Figure out what qualifies as “discretionary spending” for each of you, and ensure that nothing involved will set you back.
• More information and tips can be found here.

Working With A Financial Advisor That Understands Both of You

If you’ve sat down together and the topic of your budget has proven…stressful, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Finances and money are infamously difficult territory, often overcomplicated with a lot of acronyms, terminology, and ideas that you’ve never been introduced to.

I know someone for whom going into debt was a huge factor in their divorce. They moved into a 3-bedroom house when it wasn’t within their budget (median cost for a house in Austin, TX is $540K, $520K in Portland, OR and $350K in Orlando, FL), and a lot of their financial decisions left him and his wife in a pretty horrible place. Being broke due to irresponsibility tends to put a lot of strain on a relationship.

Financial advisors are experts who are specifically trained to help people understand their finances and ultimately make sound decisions for their future, avoiding everyday stress and things that could potentially cripple your marriage. By working with a financial advisor, you will have access to the guidance, resources, and strategy needed to gain control of your finances and reach the goals you and your spouse have set out to achieve.

A financial advisor is certified and knowledgeable about investment planning, retirement plans, estate planning, and other important areas that affect overall financial health. They offer advice on topics such as budgeting, debt management/reduction strategies, and tax optimization opportunities that will help save you money or take advantage of investment opportunities. In addition to providing information on these topics, they can also help people create a plan specific to your needs in order to achieve long-term success and reduce marital stress. Of course, just as working with any type of professional, you will want to ensure you do your due diligence so you choose the right financial advisor to work with. 

If you think a financial advisor could go a long way in repairing (or preventing) financial disarray between you and your partner, find the one that’s right for you, right here. It’s never too late to start. Make sure to also get your free AdvisorCheck membership to stay up to date with the latest financial news to improve your financial health.

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Written by Cooper Barham

Fact checked by Billy Quirk

Reviewed by Leonard Kim

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The information provided in this article was written by the research and analysis team at AdvisorCheck.com to help all consumers in their financial journeys, by providing the resources and the insights to help improve one’s financial health, make it through recessionary and inflationary periods of time, and save their earnings to use them towards building a secure financial future. 

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