Lots of the younger bloggers I read are getting engaged, talking about marriage with their partners, etc. Since today is my 9^th wedding anniversary, I want to give them the best marriage advice I know. It’s really the simplest thing in the world.

Get married on a holiday weekend.

I know this may seem anti-intuitive to many people- who wants to share their big day with something else? But the truth is, your day is always a day shared by or with someone else, whether you know it or not. And my choosing a “floating” holiday like Memorial Day or Labor Day, you don’t share the actual date. What you do get is a 3 day weekend right around your anniversary, every year, without anyone having to take a day off. (Okay, this only applies in jobs where you get holidays off, but still.)

The year C and I got married, Labor Day was September 1, the earliest it can ever be. What this means for us is that within one week of our anniversary, there is always a 3 day weekend, always a chance to have a little getaway, or spend some extra quality time together.

We have a number of friends who also have their anniversary right around this time of year, and we all agree- it’s fabulous. And besides, you can always pretend that those big barbecues and parties thrown by your friends are in your honor- but other people might be mad if they realized their marriages weren’t celebrated as much, so you must all keep the secret. (Okay, that might be pushing it.)

 

What else can I tell you from my years of experience? (Which, depending on your perspective might be a lot, or not many at all- my grandparents were married for 65 years before my grandmother passed.)

Marriages in general, and finances in marriage (this is a personal finance blog, after all) require one thing- communication. They do not require you to be on the same page. Sometimes you’re not even in the same book. And that’s okay, as long as you’re talking.

You can meet your goals even if you’re working on different goals at the same time. It might take you longer to achieve them then it would if you worked together toward one then the other, but the joy of communication is that you can decide together what approach you want to take.

 

C and I have had some rough patches in our relationship. For the first two years we were together, we broke up in May. In fact, I had a rule that we had to make it through a May before we could even talk engagement. Both times, the split didn’t need to have happened. If we had simply talked to each other at the start of the issue, instead of letting it build until we just called things off. I’m not saying there weren’t other issues involved- including me being oblivious to C’s emotions at one time.

But here’s the thing- if C had said at the time “you ignored this” or “you didn’t get that” right away, we could have dealt with it. Instead, the resentment on his side grew to a point where he couldn’t talk to me about it without us breaking up.

 

Finances work the same way. If you have a financial goal, you have to tell your partner about it. They might figure it out on their own, or they might not. Why take that risk? Talk to each other. Say this is what I want to work toward. Listen when they tell you what they want to work toward. Figure out the common ground. And do what works for you as a couple.

 

In C’s mind, the most important part of a retirement fund is owning your own house. He grew up seeing seniors getting evicted, or being forced to live in government subsidized housing that wasn’t super great, because they couldn’t afford rent anywhere else. The only older people who didn’t lose their homes were those who already owned them. My grandparents built a new home in retirement. It never occurred to me to worry about losing my house.

But, whether other people agree with it or not, we have the goal of paying off our mortgage before we retire. Even if we buy another house in 5 years, the plan is to have no mortgage going in to retirement.

 

On the same level, C also believes that real estate in general is the way to building wealth. For years, I have been opposed to being a landlord. It makes me nervous. So, while we talked about rental property, we’ve never moved forward on it. (Of course, we now have an out-of-state rental due to the MIL’s passing, and that’s making me more comfortable with the situation.)

 

The point is, we learned our lessons about communication the hard way. And now, we talk. We talk about the easy stuff. We talk about the hard stuff. We compromise on some things, and on others, we each work toward our own individual goals. But because we talk, we both know what those goals are, and we’re not accidentally sabotaging the other. And we also know that those goals feed into our goals as a couple.

 

Communication is the key.

 

And it doesn’t hurt to get married on a three day weekend, either.