Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told
Speaker 1: you from house to works dot Com either, And welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast this Smalling And I'm Kristen Kristin. Today.
Speaker 1: I wanted to start off with some advice given to
Speaker 1: us by a wise philosopher by the name of Beyonce Knowles,
Speaker 1: you mean Fears. I think she was Sasha first when
Speaker 1: she gave me this advice. Um it says it was
Speaker 1: two pronged advice. First to the ladies it was put
Speaker 1: your hand up, and then to the men it was
Speaker 1: if you like it, put a ring on it. Now
Speaker 1: I started thinking about how Beyonce recently married Jay Z.
Speaker 1: They put the ring on it. They're both independently wealthy,
Speaker 1: so I don't think they had to have the same
Speaker 1: conversations that other ladies might have to have about bank accounts,
Speaker 1: about you know, where they're gonna live, who's gonna put
Speaker 1: the down payment on the house, ecetera, etcetera. And it
Speaker 1: got me thinking about this article we have on our
Speaker 1: site called is marriage a good investment? Because I think
Speaker 1: for someone like Beyonce, it doesn't really matter, right, Beyonce
Speaker 1: can Mary who she wants exactly. It doesn't matter. Beyonce
Speaker 1: is a good investment. But back to the article, is
Speaker 1: marriage to a good investment? Full disclosure, It was written
Speaker 1: by a married man, yep, and he comes to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that, yeah, it's a good investment. Yeah, overall, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some pros or some cons But but Kristen, we're
Speaker 1: single ladies. We have come to the same conclusion if
Speaker 1: we had written the article. I don't know, Molly, from
Speaker 1: the research that we've done, we might be at a
Speaker 1: conflict with uh with this article a little bit okay,
Speaker 1: like your first point on me, let's hash it out.
Speaker 1: First of all, cost of a wedding average cost eight
Speaker 1: grand I don't understand that, Molly. I will buy my
Speaker 1: gown from a thrift store and serve little debbies at
Speaker 1: my reception. I'm not paying twenty eight thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: a wedding. I hope I can play this podcast back
Speaker 1: for you someday, should your wedding ever get out of hand,
Speaker 1: and and and other things are gonna be out of hand. Like,
Speaker 1: let's not even approach kids expensive. Forget about kids, they're
Speaker 1: too they're too expensive. Things like divorce are expensive. But
Speaker 1: if you're let's say, you know, you've got the choice single, ladies,
Speaker 1: stay single, get married. First thing that comes to my
Speaker 1: mind is cost of living in terms of rent, month
Speaker 1: to month costs of living. Yeah, obviously it seems it'd
Speaker 1: be much cheaper to have two people splitting those costs. Yes, Molly,
Speaker 1: you are correct, Dan ding Ding. For a couple and
Speaker 1: a single person living in New York City, all right.
Speaker 1: For a couple, nine point three percent of their gross
Speaker 1: monthly income is going to rent. Single person not so
Speaker 1: cheap of their gross monthly income going to pay rent.
Speaker 1: That's a big difference that hurts. So should we get
Speaker 1: married not for the rent? And that um that that
Speaker 1: valueation was done by Forbes magazine, who made a whole
Speaker 1: other list of things that married people can split. You
Speaker 1: can split your cable television bill, your telephone bill. You're
Speaker 1: gonna pay less for food. Um, you get better car
Speaker 1: insurance because you get in a lower risk rating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get you can get couples of health insurance.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that can be split and
Speaker 1: made cheaper. And then when you look at some of
Speaker 1: the things single people are paying for with their hedonistic
Speaker 1: single lifestyle things like clothes, going out, gym memberships. We're
Speaker 1: spending more on things like that. All that stuff kind
Speaker 1: of starts to go away once you once you get married,
Speaker 1: because you need to buy the big ticket items, right
Speaker 1: and you can let yourself go yes, sweatsuits, little debbies again,
Speaker 1: but you're right, there are big ticket items that married
Speaker 1: couples start purchasing, which which do start to even things out.
Speaker 1: You're gonna buy house, probably you're gonna buy your first
Speaker 1: house or a condo, and you're probably going to need
Speaker 1: furniture to fill that house. Um, and it probably won't
Speaker 1: consist of paid by number pictures and thrift store furniture
Speaker 1: like my house no more, no more thrift ng on
Speaker 1: the furnishing because you're making a life together, right, you
Speaker 1: want to have stuff that will last. Um. But but
Speaker 1: that's additional expenses too, right, because you've got the house maintenance,
Speaker 1: you've got insurance, and you know, married people are buying
Speaker 1: large bearing these costa. According to for of all home
Speaker 1: owners are married. Um. But that doesn't mean that single
Speaker 1: people can't take advantage of this home buying as well.
Speaker 1: Single people can actually benefit more than married people from
Speaker 1: the tax breaks from from from buying property. Right, so
Speaker 1: they have um a lower deduction basically than a married
Speaker 1: couple would have. So if they do buy a house, uh,
Speaker 1: it works out better than the long run for them.
Speaker 1: And thanks to that deduction. Let's say, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're a single woman and you buy the house, you
Speaker 1: take advantage of the tax deduction, and you save as
Speaker 1: you would as though you were a married couple, you
Speaker 1: can actually end up, you know, just as financially secure
Speaker 1: as that married couple would. Right, you can beat your
Speaker 1: married neighbors basically, which is what every single woman wants
Speaker 1: to do, especially when you consider that our married neighbors
Speaker 1: do get a hit when they pay their taxes, their
Speaker 1: income taxes. There are only two ways to file your
Speaker 1: taxes when you're married. You have to either file jointly
Speaker 1: or separately. But married can't just be a single income
Speaker 1: making your way in there. And basically by being married,
Speaker 1: if you file jointly, you're gonna pay probably an extra
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each then you would if you were single
Speaker 1: and you file separately been married, you're each going to
Speaker 1: pay about three thousand more than you would if you're
Speaker 1: single for you know, more than six thousand dollar difference
Speaker 1: just by being a couple, right, And these things are
Speaker 1: gonna gonna change depending on your income bracket. The higher
Speaker 1: income bracket you're in, the more the more taxts that
Speaker 1: the married couple is going to get because um new
Speaker 1: tax codes have sort of lessened that. That meant marriage
Speaker 1: penalty for people in in the lower tax brackets. But
Speaker 1: once you start making I mean a couple is going
Speaker 1: to be making a decent amount of money, it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be too hard for them to to hit those
Speaker 1: higher tax brackets. So yeah, you're gonna take a hit.
Speaker 1: But you know, the thing to consider is that, you know,
Speaker 1: this our corner site basically looks at the couple as
Speaker 1: a whole. And if we want to take you know,
Speaker 1: a female's perspective on it, when females get married, they
Speaker 1: take a huge hit in terms of their wages, especially
Speaker 1: once they have children. I was reading a study that
Speaker 1: was published in the New York Times that found that
Speaker 1: when men get married, they start making much more. They
Speaker 1: have more incentives to make money because they might have
Speaker 1: a family and they want to support their family by
Speaker 1: those big ticket items, whereas women do not get the
Speaker 1: same benefit in their wages. Like it or not. Even
Speaker 1: though women have made plenty of career advancements, we are
Speaker 1: still more likely to stay at home to take a
Speaker 1: break from our careers if we get pregnant. You know,
Speaker 1: some women decide not to go back to work, and
Speaker 1: they're much more likely to lose money in the process.
Speaker 1: And when they do decide to go back to work,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be making on average, is much
Speaker 1: money me as a man's same position would be making.
Speaker 1: So for you know, I think this question of whether
Speaker 1: or not a marriage marriage is a good investment is
Speaker 1: really a more pertinent question for for the woman to ask, right,
Speaker 1: because it does sound like men benefit a lot more
Speaker 1: from this, uh the scenario than women do. But I'm
Speaker 1: not saying you shouldn't get married. I think that we
Speaker 1: can go over a few tips for married women that
Speaker 1: can help you put your financial priorities back on track, right,
Speaker 1: because I think I think you know, single or married,
Speaker 1: as long as you're financially savvy, you can end up okay.
Speaker 1: But there are five common mistakes that married women make.
Speaker 1: Socialists comes from smart money dot Com and Molly. According
Speaker 1: to this article, the single largest mistake that married women
Speaker 1: make when it comes to household finances is handing over
Speaker 1: the purse strings. Letting the man you know, deal with
Speaker 1: the finances. He pays the bills, you do the dishes.
Speaker 1: Big mistake. Well, even if you're not doing the dishes,
Speaker 1: you know, just maybe one person is handling the bill.
Speaker 1: Where this really needs to be sort of a joint partnership. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, go over the bills together. It might take
Speaker 1: a little bit more time, but both parties need to
Speaker 1: go what's going in, well, what's coming in, what's going out?
Speaker 1: Where that money is going right? And a lot of
Speaker 1: times if you do run into financial problems, a couple
Speaker 1: working together rather than a person working independently, UM, will
Speaker 1: be more successful at um you know, finding a solution
Speaker 1: than just you know, if one person is just doing it.
Speaker 1: And the next tip I I really liked was you
Speaker 1: need to have some individual accounts, especially a credit card. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean you think about, oh, well, we got married,
Speaker 1: let's just let's merge everything, let's pull from one pot.
Speaker 1: That's a bad idea and bad idea you need to
Speaker 1: keep in addition to I mean, a joint account is
Speaker 1: a good thing. You need to have a joint account
Speaker 1: at the same time you you and your spouse need
Speaker 1: to have individual accounts as well. Right this article Kristen's
Speaker 1: mentioning has sort of a heartbreaking story about a woman
Speaker 1: who um was basically just listed as a designated user
Speaker 1: on her husband's credit card account, and so when they
Speaker 1: broke up, she didn't have any credit rating of her own.
Speaker 1: But so if you, if you are married, keep your
Speaker 1: own credit cards so that in the unlikely event no
Speaker 1: one plans for a divorce. I hope, um, you have
Speaker 1: credit built up. And now, Molly, let's also talk about
Speaker 1: what happens with uh, you know, with motherhood. Okay, you
Speaker 1: get married, decent chance that you will have a kid,
Speaker 1: so you'll have to take at least a few weeks
Speaker 1: off of of work, and some women decided to stay
Speaker 1: home for the first couple of years. What have you.
Speaker 1: The most important thing that you can do during that
Speaker 1: time is really try to keep your career skills fresh
Speaker 1: and somehow stay involved and not completely just fall off
Speaker 1: the bandwagon, so that when you know, say five years
Speaker 1: down the road, if you want to pick back it
Speaker 1: up in your job, you're not going to have to
Speaker 1: be you know, climbing back up the ladder, right. And
Speaker 1: there are some easy ways to do this. Sit don't
Speaker 1: involved just going whole hardly back to work. You could volunteer,
Speaker 1: you could still get a networking events. Just keep keeping
Speaker 1: your doors open and always remember safer retirement, right, even
Speaker 1: if you've got a joint account. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of women have had sort of the account knocked out
Speaker 1: from under them at the last minute. You've got to
Speaker 1: save your own money. Yeah, and and it's sort of
Speaker 1: a grim reality that we have to face. But we
Speaker 1: have a fift divorce rate. You know, flip a coin
Speaker 1: and you you could end up divorced and on average
Speaker 1: a woman's standard of living decreases by twenty seven percent
Speaker 1: after a divorce. That's a huge hit. And imagine if
Speaker 1: you also have children. It's going to make a big difference.
Speaker 1: If you have um you know, kept your credit history
Speaker 1: alive and you have fresh career skills and you're still
Speaker 1: making money and have your own you know, financial identity
Speaker 1: squared away. Because even if you're not facing losses like that,
Speaker 1: divorce is expensive. It is very expensive. That is one
Speaker 1: con and the pro con column for his marriage good investment,
Speaker 1: the possible cost of divorce. Many things to think about.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you serve a little debbies at
Speaker 1: your wedding, do you think you have a higher or
Speaker 1: lower rate of divorce? Christen? Oh, well, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to ponder on that one, all right, Kristen. While you ponder,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna direct our listeners over to the article is
Speaker 1: marriage a good investment? And do you know where that
Speaker 1: article is? Well, I'm gonna hazarded guests here and say
Speaker 1: that it is on how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: moralness and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com? Brought to you by the reinvented two
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