I adore my wife - she’s a wonderful woman and a wonderful mother. We go together like two peas in a pod on most things, except for money (and cats, but that’s entirely off topic). We’re both frugal, but she’s never been into any sort of financial planning at all, and this has led to many, many strange and sometimes uncomfortable discussions, and because we didn’t sit down and hash out basic financial things before we got married, there have been a stream of uncomfortable financial issues that have cropped up during our marriage that led to nothing but confusion and disappointment because we weren’t on the same page to begin with.

If you’re about to get married, I would strongly encourage you to take a few hours and discuss these ten questions with your spouse-to-be, just so you know what’s going on.

How much money do we have? What’s in all of your accounts? Hint: if you’re hiding things here, then it doesn’t speak well for the level of trust that will be in your marriage.

How much debt do we have? This needs to be completely honest, with all cards on the table, or else you’re just begging for a big fight after you get married. You will be much, much better off if you both reveal your complete, true financial state, because if you do not, you’re hiding a major skeleton in the closet that will someday jump out and really, really disrupt the tranquility of your life.

How much income can we expect? What do you both make in a year? Will that grow in the future? How steady is your employment? Will there be enough money to pay for the standard of living that we’re envisioning together, or will we have to make an adjustment?

What are our known and required expenses? You’ll find yourself saving money on most of these things when you get married, but you need to touch base on all expenses. Perhaps one of you has alimony payments, or else has several maintenance prescriptions that need to be kept up. These financial requirements are important and need to be specified right off the bat so that both parties know what’s required and you don’t have an argument about them later on.

How much do we frivolously spend each month? If you’ve been burning through money to put on the impression of being wealthy to impress him or her, you need to come clean about this now. If you’re a shoe addict, or have a thing for your DVD collection, be honest about the cash you’re burning on these pet projects, but also be realistic about how much you’re going to cut down (if at all) when you get married. If this will cause problems, it’s best to talk them out before the marriage than after.

Should we use an allowance system for frivolous spending? You need to specify how you’re each going to be realistic and fair about frivolous spending. It’s not healthy for any marriage for one person to spend like crazy while the other one doesn’t have a dime, and it’s also not healthy for both people to spend a certain amount, but one person “spends” more with the help of a credit card.

Will we combine our money? For most couples (but far from all couples), combining your money is the best choice. Many argue that not doing so indicates a lack of trust between the two sides, but there may be reasons for keeping them separate. Talk about this in detail and plan for the best move for you.

If combined, who will be the primary money wrangler? In most marriages, one member handles most of the financial decisions. Be clear on who that is going to be so that you aren’t caught in situations where you’re both making moves and the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Who’s going to make sure the bills get paid and also keep track of the money that needs to be in each account?

How will we combine our physical assets? Figure out what items you’re going to keep after marriage and figure out a fair way to get rid of the excess so no one is upset with anything. I recently heard about a wedding where both people had houses before marriage, but in the month before the wedding, one of them sold their house and went on an $15,000 shopping spree. From what I hear, the “honeymoon” period was quite short in that one.

When we marry, what will happen to our estate? Obviously, in the event of one of you passing, all assets should go to the other, but what if you’re married and you both pass on? If you’re about to marry someone that just assumes that everything will go to her niece, then you may want to clarify things before you even jump in.

Trust is the key to any marriage, and money can be one of the hardest parts to build trust on. Take the time to do it right.

A reader wrote in recently asking whether or not wedding bells should be in his future. What do you think?

My fiance and I are considering marriage. However, it seems like financially, marriage is a mistake. We both work full time and it seems like a greater proportion of our incomes would now go into a higher bracket. Are there any tax benefits to being married that might offset this?

If your salaries are very similar, then yes, you will pay more income tax as a married couple than as singles. If your salaries are far apart, however, there is a tax benefit for getting married and the wider the gap, the better.

However, marriage comes with many other financial benefits. If one of you has excellent health care coverage and the other has mediocre coverage, you can likely both be able to have the higher quality coverage for little cost to you. Insurance rates, particularly for auto insurance, are lower for married couples (significantly lower in our case). Plus, if one of you meets an early end, the benefits of being married are tremendous: the longer-living spouse gets Social Security survivor benefits, automatic inheritance rights (if you’re not married and one of you dies, you’ll lose a lot of money dealing with probate), and you don’t owe any estate tax, either.

My wife and I were making very similar salaries when we got married, but after combining our auto insurance and indicating we were married as well as combining our health insurance, we ended up saving money over the course of a year even with slightly higher income tax.

Also, when we go to buy a house, should we put both our names on the mortgage application? How are you and your wife handling this?

If one of you has terrible credit and the other has really good credit, then just one of you can apply for the mortgage, but lenders will only lend you an amount that could be repaid with annual payments equal to 28% of the combined salaries of the people on the mortgage. So, if you’re both making the same salary, having only one of your names on the mortgage means you can only borrow half as much as you otherwise could borrow. My wife and I both have very good credit ratings, so we both put our names down, enabling us to borrow pretty much any amount we wanted.

The only time I can think of when marriage isn’t financially beneficial is when you think there’s a good chance that divorce may follow it.

My wife and I have a monthly financial review meeting where we sit down with all of our bills, credit card statements, and so forth. We go through everything together, item by item, and try to figure out where we can trim our spending. Most of the time, we’re in pretty clear agreement on things, but once in a while we disagree on the necessity of an item. What this entire discussion comes down to is a clear definition of our wants and our needs.

What are wants and needs? In a nutshell, needs are the things that you absolutely have to pay in order to live and avoid bankruptcy: housing payments, taxes, groceries, commuting costs, and so on. Wants are the things that you spend money on that you don’t explicitly need, like dining out or music.

As a rule of thumb, my wife and I allow each other a certain amount of wants in a given month, because life isn’t fun if you can’t have anything that you want. My wants are usually books, food, and occasionally music; hers are much more varied. By capping our wants at a reasonable level each month (and also with the peer review process on such spending), we often find ourselves saving quite a bit of money each month.

The tricky part is determining whether some of your spending is a have or a want. For example, let’s say we have beef burgundy for supper and in order to make it, we have to buy a new bottle of cooking wine (we generally buy pretty cheap wines for cooking wines, like “two buck Chuck”). It’s not explicitly a need, as you can prepare food at home without it, but it also really stretches the definition of want as well, as things like cooking wine enable us to prepare delicious meals at home that encourage us to eat at home instead of getting takeout or eating out, so in the long run buying a bottle of cooking wine is a money saver for us.

Here’s the process we go through to determine if something is a need or a want:

First, we list all of our spending that isn’t strictly essential in a month. Things that are essential are housing bills, most gas costs, staple foods, medical bills, insurance, and so on. These are things that we have to pay no matter what.

After we’ve made that list, we list everything that’s clearly a want. Entertainment and hobby expenses, dining out, and so on go under this category and immediately go on the want list.

This leaves us usually with a handful of things that we talk about - things like the cooking wine and so on. This process is more organic, but it usually comes down to the following question: would we have spent more money than this had we not purchased the item? With a bottle of inexpensive cooking wine, the answer is usually “yes,” because we likely would have eaten out more often without tools like that in the kitchen, thus costing us more in the long run. We use a similar philosophy to mark things such as CFLs as needs.

After this process, reviewing the list of wants helps us keep our eye on the financial ball each month. We usually strive to keep ourselves within our self-imposed allowance - and thankfully, we’re both usually way under the limit.

Marriage and finances can at times be a difficult mix. Each person has distinctly different experiences with money, and each person may have completely different philosophies on how that money should be spent. This often creates marital troubles, but these troubles usually boil down to a lack of communication at some point along the line.

In short, If you want a healthy and financially sound marriage, get over your hangups about talking about money. Don’t ever be afraid to sit down with your spouse and go over the nickels and dimes of your life. Make sure you define your goals together as a team, not separately. And make sure that you have compatible philosophies on discretionary spending - if your partner spends far more or far less than you’d like, it’s going to cause some discomfort and you need to clear the air.

Along these lines, a reader wrote to me recently with the following problem (edited a bit for grammar and clarity):

My future wife and I are generally on the same page when it comes to finances. We have the same long term goals and she is by no means a rich girl. But with that being said, when she sees a little extra in the joint account, she spends it… I don’t want to go behind her back to sock away a little cash but it may be the only way. Any ideas?

When you dig right down to it, this is an issue about communication. Even though you’re both generally on the same page about financial issues, there’s apparently a communication gap somewhere about what to do with extra money. Here are some potential solutions, some of which I like and others I don’t.

Forget about it. If it’s an insignificant amount, this might be the best avenue. Allow your partner the joy of having a little bit of spending money and just let things be. The only problem with this is if the spending seems to grow over time, which means that there’s a fundamental problem.

Take the money and put it somewhere else without saying a word. This solves the financial problem, but does nothing at all about the communication problem. Eventually, these withdrawals will come out, and it will cause a problem. Why? By doing this, you’re showing a lack of trust with your partner.

Have an open ended conversation about it. Here we have the opposite situation, as this solves the communication problem but merely hopes to solve the financial problem. The talk might help to alleviate some of the communication problems and really help to get your financial perspectives more in alignment, but there’s no guarantee of a solution.

Set an “allowance” for both of you. Another possibility is to set a spending “allowance” for both of you. Start off the conversation on the issue with this proposal. Although this does solve the problem if you both stick to it, when I first proposed this to my wife, it was met with heavy resentment and a sense that I was treating her like a child. If you try this, you need to be very careful.

If I were you, though, I would try this solution. Set up an automatic savings plan into an emergency fund, then don’t sweat the rest. If you’re finding yourself with regular “excess” that can be spent on trivial stuff and it’s making you uncomfortable, suggest sweeping some amount each week or month into an emergency fund automatically. Then, if there’s still some left over, don’t worry about it and just enjoy spending it. What will happen over time is that you’ll subtly adjust your own life to compensate for this extra savings.

Good luck!

When we got married, we received a ton of gifts from family members of all kinds, ranging from towels to a weird statue of a hobbit to a knife set to towels to a handmade quilt to towels. Needless to say, we still have plenty of towels.

Today, though, there are only a few that really stand out from the pack, gifts that really stuck with us and proved to be really useful in our life. In every case, these gifts were ones that helped us to be more frugal and do more things for ourselves. They’ve saved us money, saved us time, and helped us to build a richer relationship.

With that in mind, a reader sent me the following email this weekend:

What sort of possessions would give newlyweds a helping hand along their road to financial independence? An good example is a crock pot - affordable, useful and will save us many $$$ in the long run.

So, without further ado, here is The Simple Dollar’s Frugal Wedding Registry. All of these gifts should help a couple get on or stay on a solid financial path leading toward a very bright future together, both financial and otherwise.

For any couple: Smart Couples Finish Rich
Virtually all couples, when they are married, are not yet on the same financial page. That’s what this book is about - helping couples sit down and define their financial relationship, figure out if their financial goals match and ways to encourage the goals to match, and also plan for a lifetime of financial success together. They might forget about this gift at first in all of the hubbub around their wedding, but give it a year or two, and they’ll likely turn to this book when they discover that their financial life is leaving the honeymoon stage. At that point, this book is an incredibly valuable gift.

For the outdoorsy couple: A national or state park pass
If they enjoy backpacking, hiking, or camping, free access to state and national parks will provide them with many, many hours of wonderful experiences for free. Some of our nations’ most beautiful areas are in state and national parks, and I can’t tell you how many fond memories I have from hiking and walking in national parks with my wife in the early years of our marriage. We used a park pass at multiple parks across the northern tier of states and some of our best memories of our marriage come from those state and national parks.

For the time-constrained couple: A high quality crock pot, like the KitchenAid KSC700SS
Couples made up of two professionals often barely have time to see each other in the evening, let alone prepare a meal. So they burn money on takeout instead. With a crock pot, though, they can easily prepare their own meals in a few minutes before work, and have a delicious homecooked meal waiting for them when they arrive home. You can also print out my earlier posts on slow cookers, The Art of the Slow Cooker and By Request: Five Essential Crock Pot Recipes for inclusion with the gift, to give them some free materials to start off with.

For the couple without anything saved: A mutual fund
Buy them an appropriate amount of a mutual fund somewhere and tell them to hold onto it until they need it for a major purchase, like a home. This is a great gift to get a large group of relatives involved in. Just a few months ago, I saw a couple receive only one “major” gift: a $5,000 mutual fund that was to help them make a down payment when they went to buy a house in a few years.

For the do-it-yourself couple: A sewing machine
Some of you might immediately write this off as archaic, but an individual who thrives on making stuff for him/herself can get a ton of value out of a quality sewing machine. My wife has one and has made everything from curtains to pajamas to quilts with it - it’s one of the best gifts we’ve ever received.

For the kitchen-averse couple: How To Cook Everything
Forget Betty Crocker or even Joy of Cooking (even given my attachment to the latter), this is the single best book I’ve ever seen for beginning cooks. This book is loaded with details on preparation, explaining the finer points of almost every common culinary practice. The recipes (and there are a bunch of them) focus on a merger of simplicity and flavor in an effort to show beginning cooks that it is indeed easy to create something delicious in the kitchen. If you know someone who doesn’t cook for themselves much but has any potential at all, this is the book to give them.

For the food-loving couple: A high quality knife set
During our first few years together, we made do with a cheap knife set that made most tasks very difficult. When we upgraded to a high quailty knife set, it made all the difference in terms of our food preparation. Suddenly, it didn’t take an hour to chop vegetables, and with some practice on how to actually use a real knife, I was chopping carrots in fifteen seconds where before it would take eight minutes or so. This increase in speed got us to cook at home much more, and the knife set has paid for itself.

For the movie-addicted couple: A prepaid subscription to Netflix
If the couple loves watching movies together and has built up a large DVD library, that DVD library is probably sucking away a lot of their money each month. Get them a gift subscription to Netflix so that they’re not burning so much cash buying movies - and can instead find better uses for the money. My wife and I received a year-long subscription to the service and it massively cut down on our DVD buying habits.

For the thoughtful couple: Your Money or Your Life
This book, more than any other, presents a thought-provoking view of money’s role in a person’s life. It makes some very powerful connections between reducing spending and quality of life and provides a ton of interesting activities that can authentically change a person’s perspective about money in their life. If the couple is thoughtful and loves discussing things, get them a copy (or a pair of copies) of this book - they’ll find plenty to discuss in it, and may find themselves making better and more frugal financial choices as a result.

If all else fails…: Cash
For many, this seems unimaginative, but actually think about the bride and groom for a minute. They’ve just gone through a wedding that had great expense and may have put them in debt, and they’re about to embark on a married life that will probably involve even more debt. Help them out now with some cash, and maybe they won’t fall as deep into debt. I know that many of our friends and family gave us cash for our wedding several years ago with explicit instructions to use it to “get started,” so we used it to pay off some wedding, honeymoon, and credit card debt. Because of that, we had our wonderful wedding memories without the bad feelings of all of the debt we had to pay off.

My wife and I have been married for nearly four years, and we dated for six years before that, so it came as a surprise to some other couples this weekend that we do not combine our finances together. Instead, we each maintain responsibility for a specific set of our shared bills and our savings goals (generally, I manage savings and investments and a few bills; she handles most of the other bills). Unfortunately for us, this was not a decision we hit upon easily; it took a lot of negotiation, some uncomfortable choices and discussions, and a bit of arguing to find a balance that really worked for us.

The truth is I can’t tell you whether or not you should combine your finances with your signficant other; it has a lot to do with individual comfort levels, trust, and many other marital issues that one could write books on (and many have). However, it is a decision that all couples face, particularly if they choose to marry or agree to a long-term commitment: should we combine our finances or not?

Here are eight tips for making the decision - and the subsequent planning - as painless as possible. I wish I had done these things with my wife much earlier than we did.

Have a serious but respectful talk about your basic personal finance values and expectations. If this sounds uncomfortable, here are some tips for making financial talks with your spouse much easier.

Lay your fears on the table - and calmly listen to each other. My biggest fear was that my wife would feel more inclined to spend frivolously if we combined our money. It turned out she felt the reverse - my spending would increase, too. There was some truth to both beliefs and this was a major part of why we decided to keep our money separate.

Clearly lay out what is expected from each of you. What is each person responsible for? We found it easiest to lay most of the bill paying on my wife, and most of the saving and investing onto me - that way, when we talk about our finances, it is understood that she handles many of the monthly bills, but I handle our savings and usually figure out how to handle major purchases.

Don’t get mad if your significant other says something you don’t want to hear. If your partner expresses concern that you spend too much, there’s probably a reason for it. Instead of getting defensive, ask yourself if he or she is right, and even if not, compromise a little. This is generally good advice for any financial arrangement.

Make a list of everything you both need to cover in a given month - and make sure it is covered. This way, there’s no situationn like “who paid the cell phone bill?” You’re just making sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Don’t forget to include at least some savings on that list.

Discuss your overall goals - even make a list of them. This was a major difference between myself and my wife when we were first married. My biggest goals revolved around retirement and I was dumping huge amounts into a 403(b) so that I could retire at 59 1/2 (or even earlier) and live very nicely. My wife, on the other hand, dreams of a wonderful home in the country with an acreage, a small barn, and some woods to wander in, which is going to be expensive. Right now, we’re working towards both, and to do that we decided that we needed to trim a lot of fat from our budget to make it happen.

General investment concepts should be discussed. I discovered that I am a far more conservative investor than my wife, and as a result of our discussion, we ended up making numerous changes to our investments, balancing some risky ones (foreign small-cap stocks) with some safer ones (bonds). The volatility still makes me nervous, but the low potential growth of my investments made my wife believe we’d never get ahead.

By this point, it should be pretty clear how compatible your financial views are, and a decision on whether to combine your money should be quite clear. For us, it was clear that it worked better to keep them separate, at least for now.

Regardless of how you arrange things, you should have a discussion about your money at least monthly. This can be as simple or as detailed as you like, depending on your comfort level, but there should be at least some time set aside regularly so that each person can be as informed about your shared finances as possible.

Many people file away romance as something that really only needs to happen around Valentine’s Day or an anniversary, or identify it with something expensive, like a dinner at a classy restaurant. The truth is that you can put a smile on your significant other’s face almost any time - and it doesn’t cost a dime. Try doing one of these every once in a while - it will help maintain your relationship and make your significant other happy when you do one of these out of the blue - and they’re all free (or nearly so)! If you want an investment that will pay dividends, these ideas will strengthen that valuable asset that is your relationship without costing you a dime.

Many apologies to Paul Simon for the title of this post.

(I’m going to alternate with using her/him on each item on this list, but all of these are solid ways to put a smile on your significant other’s face regardless of gender.)

1. Write a note. Put it somewhere where he will find it during the day when you’re not around.

2. Pick a flower. Come home and give it to her. Put it in water and leave it there for a day or two.

3. Give a kiss. When he looks a little down, walk up to him and give him a kiss. Deep and passionate or light and romantic, your choice.

4. Hold a hand. When the two of you are side by side, just quietly take her hand in yours and give it a little squeeze.

5. Pay a compliment. Tell him that he’s a great husband sometime just right out of the blue.

6. Give a hug. When you first see her, give her a big hug. Wrap your arms around her and pull her close for a moment.

7. Rub a back. After a hard day, when he lays down next to you, softly rub his back for a while.

8. Leave a Post-It. If you leave first in the morning, put a Post-It note on the bathroom mirror for her to find.

9. Cook a meal. Make something at home that you know he likes, even if you don’t. Works well with #3.

10. Cuddle. Even if you’re tired, wrap your arm around her and hold her close for a few minutes as you’re about to drift off to sleep.

11. Get up early. Wake up an hour or two early some weekend and do a task for him that he doesn’t like doing.

12. Take an interest. Make an honest effort to be interested in something she likes. Spend some time actually being involved with it.

13. Go on a walk. Take her on a walk somewhere and talk about whatever comes to mind. Works well with #4.

14. Fix a problem. If you know something’s been bothering him, just fix it sometime without prompting. Find a new home for the cat he doesn’t like. Take down that goofy painting he can’t stand.

15. Clean a window. Do some small household tasks, even if they’re not typically “yours” to do. It’s subtle, but it works.

16. Watch what he wants. If he wants to watch a particular show that you don’t like, just let him watch it, cuddle up next to him, and try to enjoy it.

17. Ask a question. If she’s doing something she seems to enjoy, ask her questions about it and listen to the answer.

18. Leave a token. Put an item that will remind him of you in his belongings when he is packing for a trip. Use your imagination.

19. Look her in the eye. When she’s telling you something that’s important to her, look her in the eye when she’s talking. It shows interest, trust, and love.

20. Say “I love you.” Out of the blue, without provocation.

Recently, I discussed how to break the ice and have a financial discussion with your spouse and an astute reader made a very good point afterwards during an IM conversation: after such an intense discussion, it might be appropriate to do something romantic - with a frugal attitude in mind.

With that idea in mind, along with the fact that Valentine’s Day is slowly approaching, here are six great (and inexpensive) romantic ideas for all occasions. I’m using a wide variety of different approaches, but they’re all tested ideas and they’re all quite frugal.

1. A bouquet of wild flowers.
This is free and completely romantic. Look for some places where you might find flowers growing in the wild. If you don’t know of any places, ask around. Go there, cut some flowers, make a bouquet out of them, and then give them to your lady love.

2. Space.
This seems kind of awkward to some of you, but quite often you can put the spark back in your relationship by giving the other person some space. Suggest doing a bunch of household chores outside or away from the home and encourage your spouse to just take it easy today and do something relaxing. After several hours, check in; the results will almost always be good. My wife and I do this for each other regularly; one of us goes to the park and shopping with our son while the other one stays at home and just relaxes for a few hours. It’s always a good thing.

3. A “first date” reenactment.
For most of us, our first date with our significant other was a pretty cheap affair. In my case, it was a matinee at a theater, a window shopping trip, and a very cheap dinner. I remembered when the exact day of that date was and ten years later we reenacted the whole thing. It cost about $12 and was incredibly romantic.

4. Breakfast in bed.
Get up early. Scramble some eggs, pour a glass of orange juice (or coffee), make some toast (or a bagel), and bring it in to your waking honey. A newspaper or a magazine is a good touch, too. Then let him/her relax while you tend to the kids (if you have any). A flower in a vase on the tray is another nice touch.

5. A love letter left somewhere special.
Spend some time writing a love letter in your own handwriting. Don’t know what to write? Here’s some solid and simple advice. Then just leave the letter somewhere where it will be found in the next day or two, preferably when you’re not around. I generally like using my wife’s pillow, as she always goes to bed before I do.

6. Picnic by candlelight
This is a great way to spend a romantic evening, and it works perfectly on an evening where there’s some chill in the air, but it’s not freezing. Essentially, you just pack a picnic basket with sandwiches and other picnic foods, but also pack some extra blankets and some candles. Get to the park a bit before dark, spread things out, and light the candles. Then eat, talk, cuddle up under some of the extra blankets, and look at the stars together.