Mediate Michigan

While it’s shocking front page news that gets our attention like Larry King not having a prenuptial agreement with his seventh wife, the more sensational thing to me is that most people don’t really even know who they are marrying … financially speaking. Otherwise intelligent adults continue to enter into affairs of the wallet with little or no research as to how to protect themselves financially, or more importantly for most, how to protect their credit. As cynical as it may seem, I believe the best time to start talking about credit and financial stability is early in the dating game — the earlier the better! Don’t you want to know if a person is a financial train wreck before you fall in love with them? It’s hard to one day buy that nice house in the suburbs with bad credit and no sense of financial responsibility, so take the time to get to know each other, in every sense of the word. While discussing religion, politics and what type of pizza you both enjoy, take extra time to talk about credit, money and long term financial goals.

Romance aside, let’s talk about marriage from the practical standpoint. Two individuals decide to merge their lives and “become one.” If this is taken to the full extreme, they’ll soon share a bank account, a joint credit report and a family budget. So how do you really know that Mr. or Mrs. Right is truly Mr. or Mrs. Financial Right?

Here are a few hard and fast rules — things you MUST do before you say “I do.”

via Rodney Anderson: Affairs of the Wallet: Financial Smarts for Marriage and Divorce.