How To Be a Financially Successful Married Couple

Financially successful gay couple

On this Queer Money™, we talked about how to be a financially successful married couple. With marriage equality comes financial responsibility. How can engaged gay couples prepare for financial challenges? How can gay newlyweds position themselves to be financially successful?

Financially successful married couple video:

Financially successful married couple guests

Dave Montez is the Executive Director of One Colorado, the leading advocacy group for Colorado’s LGBT community. Dave has, also, worked as Chief of Staff at GLAAD in New York City and the Senior Program Officer for The Gill Foundation.
William S. Matthews is a certified financial counselor, real estate broker, home buyer instructor and event planner. He has taught financial and real estate classes and workshops to a variety of groups and has counseled young people on creating healthy relationships with money. Matthews is also the author of Everything I Needed to Know about Money I Learned from my Broke @$$ Friends.

Financially successful married couple notes

In 28 states, you can still be fired for being LGBT and even putting a picture of your fiancé, spouse or family on your desk can get you fired without recourse. Marriage certificates are, also, public records.
While it’s always important to have an emergency savings account, it’s especially important for queer members to protect themselves and their partners if one or both of them is terminated.
It’s not always possible to dissolve domestic partnerships or civil unions into a marriage.
Regardless of age, have the money discussion before marriage to “make sure your marriage is a merger and not a buyout”, as William Matthews puts it. Share each other’s credit and criminal report.
There’s less now that’s completely unique for queer couples to be financially successful, but consideration is whether or not and how to start a family because the cost is typically higher than for straight couples.
For many queer couples, filing taxes as a married couple is a new consideration.
Queer couples need to do their research and talk with professionals who specialize in dealing with queer couples.
Queer couples shouldn’t feel compelled to adopt the paradigm of straight relationships. Queer couples should do what’s best for them.
The Social Security Administration recognizes all same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in determining Social Security entitlement.
Medicare extends to all marriages, including same-sex marriages, but unlike Social Security, it does not extend to domestic partners and civil unions.
How to navigate filing your first joint tax return.
How to avoid a marriage money meltdown.
Queer couples should discuss what they really want in life and budget, save and spend accordingly.
Attorneys and family planning organizations are the best resources to help understand the nuances of laws that support and don’t support queer couples. There are also U.S. Marriage Laws.
Assisted living is going to be expensive. The average cost of a nursing home in the US is $80,000.
Some of the biggest horror stories are about queer couples who have to go back into the closet when they need to go into assisted living. Make sure to understand the anti-discrimination policies of the facility and whether or not there are open gay couples that are visible.
Do you want to live it out your life in a place where you and your spouse are not allowed to be together?