In our desi culture, living in Pakistan or abroad, it is automatically assumed that it is the husband’s responsibility to provide for the family. Even the feminazis here expect their shohar to be the bread winner, or they wont marry. So I read this article today and wondered ke how many of our desi do-sheezaiN will be comfortable with the following questions before marriage?
The article is a bit long so only focus on the questions in bold.
http://articles.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20060327081009990001&cid=1712
Nine questions partners should ask each other before getting married
Couples talk about a lot of things when they’re planning to get married. How many kids they want, where they’ll live, how often they’ll visit the in-laws, sex.
But there’s one topic that often feels too personal to talk about. And that’s money.
In their rush down the aisle, couples often think that love will overcome any disagreements about saving and spending. It doesn’t. And so even among the most compatible couples, the prewedding vow of personal-finance silence eventually leads to frustration, fights and power struggles.
“These are conversations that you have to have, because you don’t want to wait until later when it potentially could unravel things very, very quickly,” says Lauren Gadkowski, a financial planner in Covington, La. “Talking about money doesn’t mean you’re going to fight about money. But if you don’t talk about money, then that’s where the problems begin.”
So, as another wedding season approaches, here’s a list of nine questions all newlyweds should be asking themselves and their partners. No matter if you’re 20 years old and marrying for the first time, or 50 and planning wedding No. 3, the answers will give you a better understanding of how you each view money – and the role it will play in your relationship.**
- What are your financial assets and liabilities?**
This is the most basic question – and the most difficult to discuss.
Money remains such a taboo that people are disinclined to share how much they’ve saved, how much they earn or how much debt they’ve accumulated on credit cards, auto leases and such. They’re even queasier asking a partner to divulge those details.
Yet these are important numbers to know. Money in the bank represents financial security, a source of income and a resource to afford items that can make life enjoyable. Debt, by contrast, can be a source of angst and an expense that drains the family’s monthly income. And, ultimately, it can prevent you and your spouse from pursuing what you want.
Knowing the assets and liabilities each person brings into the relationship is the starting point for the rest of the money discussions you’ll need to have. And rest assured that these numbers won’t stay hidden forever, particularly debt. The first time you and your spouse try to finance a car or buy a house, for instance, the debt will show up on a credit report.
“It’s really hard to overcome that surprise of finding out, after you’re married, that your partner has hidden debt,” says Ann Fleming, a financial planner in Walnut Creek, Calif. “That’s a big showstopper.”**
- How do you use debt?**
Once you know how much debt your partner-to-be has, take the next step and find out what* type* of debt. There’s a big difference between $30,000 in school loans and $30,000 of credit-card debt.
So ask each other: Do you amass debt in the present, figuring you’ll earn more money later in life and can pay it off then? Do you abhor debt and refuse to own a credit card? Either approach could cause marital strife if your partner isn’t on the same page.
Pay attention while dating, and you can begin to see telltale patterns. Maybe the love of your life uses a credit card for every purchase, even the $1 soda at the local mini-mart. Maybe your partner seems to be driving a more expensive car than he or she should be able to afford.
Use those observations as entry points into discussions. Ask whether your partner generally carries a balance on a credit card and how he or she envisions paying it down once you’re married. Ask if your partner borrowed money to buy his or her car, or relied on a lease. (A lease often allows people to drive a pricey car they otherwise couldn’t afford using cash or a loan.)
The point is that you must know if you are marrying into a potential debt problem. Any debt you accumulate together may be partly your responsibility if the marriage falls apart – even if you didn’t actually make the purchases.
Scott D. Cole, a financial planner in Bessemer, Ala., suggests one way to get into this conversation: Offer your partner a copy of your own credit report. "Say something like, ‘I’m excited about our life together, and I realize money is a part of our life. I’ve made some mistakes in the past, and I have some student loans, and I just want to show you my credit report so that you can see how I manage my debt,’ " Mr. Cole says. “The point is that by being vulnerable yourself, maybe your partner will open up as well. You don’t want to look like you’re snooping into their affairs, though.”
With a credit report, you’ll see, among other items, how many credit cards your partner has, the balance carried on each card and how rigorous he or she has been at paying on time and paying off the accumulated debt. Consumers can request a free copy of their credit report once a year from each of the three major providers – TransUnion, Experian and Equifax – at www.annualcreditreport.com.**
- What is your money history?**
This is touchy-feely, but how you were raised and the money memories you have shape how you deal with finances in your relationship. Some people were raised in a permissive household, where kids were given money freely without having to earn it. Others come from homes where money was tight. Some grow up behaving exactly as their parents did; others behave exactly the opposite. The roots of these behaviors are rarely discussed, yet they define how you and your partner operate.
In the classic example, a saver marries a spender, and then the couple clashes when the saver balks at how freely the spender throws money around. The spender, meanwhile, rebels at the apparent miserliness of the saver.
Even worse, though, may be when each partner simply reinforces the negative habits of the other.
Nicole and Mark Wenneker, a San Francisco couple who married 18 months ago, didn’t really discuss finances during the year they dated. “I was scared to talk about money,” the 31-year-old Ms. Wenneker says. “I figured we’d just do it later. I didn’t want to seem interested in his money; that was just too touchy.”
What she didn’t know was that her future husband was a natural spender, just like her. It “became clear when we were planning the wedding,” Ms. Wenneker says. “Mark was ready to spend all out, more than I had expected.”
The overspending continued into the marriage. “I realized we couldn’t keep this up,” Ms. Wenneker says. “I felt I had to be the one to put us through a reality check, and that created some tense moments.”
She ultimately took on the role of saver, the family’s financial gatekeeper. The role reversal “was shocking for me,” she says. “I don’t come from that kind of background in my childhood. I never thought I’d be married to someone where I am better at the finances.” Ms. Wenneker says she was raised in a house where Dad controlled the finances and Mom didn’t. As such, Ms. Wenneker says that’s the role she expected to play in her own marriage.
Some of this angst can be avoided ahead of time if partners can recognize the value the other places on money. An easy way to discuss this: "Ask, ‘What does money represent to you?’ " says Carrie Schwab Pomerantz, chief strategist, consumer education, at Charles Schwab & Co. “Does it represent choices? Security? Time together on family vacations? How will money be used to fulfill those values?”
Through those answers, you’ll begin to understand the money habits you already see. That will help the two of you shape the compromises necessary for attaining what you each want from your money.**
- Do we need a prenup?**
This is, potentially, the most explosive question. The very utterance of “prenuptial agreement” can send one partner into paroxysms of fury, since a prenup often implies mistrust or a lack of faith in the relationship’s survival.
Of course, there could be a situation where one partner legitimately wants to shelter certain assets for a special-needs sibling, or maybe kids from a previous marriage. In many cases, a spouse who expects to give up a career would do well to have a prenup; in case of a divorce, it could help him or her recoup the retirement nest egg that would have accumulated in a company 401(k) plan.
If you can’t bring up the topic yourself, “ask your planner to do it,” says Ms. Gadkowski, the planner in Covington, La. “I’m the objective third party. People call me all the time and tell me there are issues they really want to discuss with their partner, but need me to raise it. I’m OK being the bad guy if it helps you talk about the uncomfortable issues.”**
- What are your financial aspirations?**
This is the fun talk.
This is about your individual and combined hopes and dreams: the college you want your kids to attend; the lake house you want to buy; the trips you want to take; the classic Corvette you want to restore. Saving enough to retire early to open a bistro or flower shop or to do pro bono work for a nonprofit.
You may never attain all your dreams, and that’s fine. This conversation, instead, aims to help you articulate your priorities and talk about how you’ll ultimately fund those priorities together. This shows where common ground already exists, and where you need to start looking for it.
It also helps you each to gauge, over time, whether your words match your actions. If the goal is saving for a child’s education, for instance, then it doesn’t make much sense “if you’re instead buying the big house out of your price range and the Porsche instead of the Honda,” says Ms. Schwab Pomerantz.
To make sure you’re both following the script you laid out together, “get into the habit of having a financial summit once a year where you spend some time alone looking at your short- and long-term goals,” says Denise Hughes, a financial counselor and consultant in San Carlos, Calif.**
- What are your career expectations?**
Do you expect you and your spouse will both work full-time throughout your marriage, each climbing the ladder to greater salaries? Do you expect to live off one income after a child is born?
Both of you need to know what the other expects. Or else the day may arrive where one of you is saying, “But I thought we were both going to work,” and the other is insisting, “But I thought you knew I was going to stay home with the kids!”
John Pironti and Amy Sozanski, a Boston couple who will walk down the aisle in May after more than two years of dating, are sorting out those matters now.
“John never thought I wouldn’t want to work,” says Ms. Sozanski, a registered nurse. “But I’m going into this marriage thinking I’m not going to work once we have kids. So we’ve begun talking about what would I have to do in terms of part-time work to make ends meet at that point, and that’s a big discussion that has been very uncomfortable for me.”
In talking about how each person views this issue, and understanding more about why they each have their respective views, the pair has concluded that once they have a child, Ms. Sozanski won’t have to work more than a few days each month to meet financial needs.
“We went into this looking to find a common language,” says the 32-year-old Mr. Pironti. “We’ve certainly bumped heads along the way, and it hasn’t been rosy all the way through, but I’ve learned that things I thought were important aren’t as important as I thought.”**
- How do you propose we divide financial duties?**
In many a marriage, one partner often takes the reins of the family’s finances. The other is glad to let go.
But sometimes it’s not that simple. When both partners either want the money duties, or both want to slough off those duties onto the other, “you need to discuss what your individual strengths are,” says Ms. Hughes, the California counselor. “You might be really good at investments – or at least willing to handle that part of the family’s financial life – and so you can be in charge of that. Your partner might be good at managing the bills and bank accounts, so they take that piece.”
But even when one spouse willingly cedes the money duties, that spouse must remain up to speed with the checking account, the credit cards and the investment and retirement money – if only to prevent getting blindsided by a crisis. At the same time, the spouse in charge of those duties must make it a point to keep the other partner up-to-date, so that unspoken concerns don’t grow into resentments.
Family finances, says Mr. Cole, the Alabama planner, work best when both partners know what’s going on with the money. “Otherwise,” he says, “the strains build over time and you wonder one day how it got to be so bad.”**
- Will we operate from one checkbook or three?**
Young couples often assume they must have a joint checking account to prove they’re united. Older newlyweds, accustomed to managing their own money, often want individual accounts to retain their autonomy.
Neither approach is necessarily wrong – though neither is particularly right, either.
Jumping into a joint account as newlyweds isn’t always the smartest approach until you’ve had time to learn each other’s financial habits. For instance, if one partner puts every purchase on a credit card, and the other uses only cash, the family’s income may not stretch across the monthly paychecks – especially if neither spouse keeps close track of how much they’ve spent.
Better to operate from three accounts early on: a joint account that each of you helps fund to handle combined expenses such as food, housing and utilities; and two individual accounts into which you each dump a monthly allowance that pays for individual discretionary wants.
Of course, continuing to operate from individual accounts isn’t always the smartest approach, either. For one thing, those accounts can mask a family’s true financial picture, since the money is often viewed as “mine” and not “ours.” As such, says Ms. Fleming, the planner in Walnut Creek, Calif., “families have a hard time saving for important wants when their individual paychecks are going into separate accounts. There is value in feeling like you’re a unit, striving toward something important to both of you.”
Moreover, if one partner saves in that individual account instead of spends from it, the situation could bring financial tensions. The spender could see all the cash the saver has socked away, and all the spending that represents, and get jealous.
If you ultimately choose to operate from a joint account, allow each partner to spend a certain amount monthly without permission from the other. And agree on a limit beyond which a purchase must be discussed. For Ms. Sozanski and Mr. Pironti, the Boston couple, that amount is $250. Anything pricier they must agree on before buying. If, however, your partner is a serial violator, overspending his or her amount month after month, then it’s probably best that both partners stick to individual accounts.
Meanwhile, if you operate from individual accounts, both of those accounts should ultimately be made available to help afford family purchases that the joint account alone can’t handle.**
- Do you have a basic understanding of money?**
“Money is a life skill, like swimming,” says Ms. Schwab Pomerantz. “Both of you need to know how to swim, because life is full of stormy seas.”
In money terms, that means understanding the basics of how checking accounts, credit cards and 401(k) plans work. Ms. Sozanski says her fiancé “was baffled by the fact that I didn’t know you don’t just pay the minimum on a credit-card balance. No one ever told me this. He was frustrated that I didn’t know this, and I didn’t understand why it was such a problem for him.” So, he bought her a session with his financial planner, Ms. Gadkowski.
“I laughed it off,” Ms. Sozanski says, “but I figured it’s important to him, so I appeased him. And I was amazed leaving there. I was on the right track, and she told John that I was doing a great job. That has helped us.”
Mehnaz, Catty, Femme, aap teeno ke jawaboN ka shiddat se muntazir rahooN ga 
sara, no desi girl has a problem asking such questions if she likes the fellow and is not sure of his financial situation. I was asking about the other way around.
) but i personally think its both our responsibilities to share the bills. Marriage involves team work and taht means shouldering all teh responsibilities, not the ones that i like