Whether you've spent countless hours planning the wedding of your dreams or planning a long-term partnership with your significant other, don’t forget to prepare your financial future.

Most couples have different life experiences that have shaped their current financial health and perspective on finances, so it may be important to start off your life together by understanding where your partner's views either align or differ from your own. Here are some conversation starters.

Share salary and debt

You’ll be making lots of financial decisions together about your future. Be sure you know your combined salaries and what each person is bringing to the relationship in terms of savings.

It’s also important to talk with your partner about how much debt each are bringing to the table. Knowing the number of credit cards, combined debt and credit scores will be helpful as you look to make large purchases like deciding where to live, purchasing a home or car.

Also, set a plan for how you want to tackle bills and expenses. There are some couples who find they like to keep their finances separate and divide up the expenses.  Other couples like to combine their finances and then assign one person to pay the bills and manage the finances.

Talk with your partner to see what makes sense for your relationship.

Financial values

Talk through your values for saving and paying down debt with your partner. Be sure to share any goals or dreams that you’ve had for your finances such as owning a home or that Ferrari that you’ve had your eye on for a long time. And talk about things you might like to do each year, such as season tickets to your hometown football team or vacations.

Insurance

As newlyweds, it’s a good time to review insurance that you have or might need.

Start by comparing the costs that each of you are spending on healthcare, car, homeowner/renter's insurance and determine if it makes sense to combine or cancel coverage that you no longer need.

In addition, you’ll want to talk about life insurance and disability income insurance (DI). Share what each one has through work or on your own.

As you start to build your insurance plan, there are different types of protection to consider.

• Life insurance comes in more varieties than you may realize. Some focuses on covering temporary protection needs. Other life insurance types, like whole life or universal life, provide permanent death benefit protection while building up cash value that can be used for future needs.
• Disability income insurance is also a consideration in the event you're unable to work for a length of time due to illness or injury. Disability income insurance helps to protect your paycheck in the event you're unable to work for a length of time due to illness or injury.

Whatever your financial needs or goals, we have the products and financial strength that can protect you and your family throughout your life. 

Next steps

When starting to build your life with a partner, taking the time to talk through your finances to make sure you have the right savings and protection goals in place will help set your union up on a solid foundation.

Talk to an Ohio National representative to see how our products can help you. Life changes. We'll be there.^®

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