This one had the typical mix of good and bad. The only real bad idea here (in my opinion) was sticking about 50% of your assets, or $90,000 in their case, in a low return CD. That’s just giving away money if your retirement horizon is 10 years or more out and you won’t need to use it anytime soon.

The idea they had that I like a lot is this:

And their monthly planning session gives them some good perspective about big upcoming expenses ahead. They catalogue all of their upcoming expenses for the month, and use this planning session to determine their savings rate as well.

Meetings about finance sound boring and not like anything a married couple would be doing. But this is very good advice because it keeps the couple on the same page. Most people are budgeting month-to-month. If, once, a month, you sit down and talk about your long term plans with your spouse and rejigger the numbers as needed, you make sure that both of you have the same goals and understand what you’re working for. It helps avoid the trap of one spouse undermining the other’s financial plans by being too free with spending. It also gives you a time you know you can bring up those “taboo” financial subjects without seeming like you’re nagging, lecturing, or making the other person uncomfortable. Money shouldn’t be taboo, but for many people it is. And not talking about money is just asking to let financial problems fester beneath the surface of the marriage. You don’t have to sit around and do spreadsheets with each other for an hour each month, but if you set aside the time to make some rough plans every month you’ll be better off for it.

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I think we also need to be careful about labelling weddings ‘pretentious’ or ‘extravagant’ for being costlier than what people have the means for immediately.

If we’re talking about spending $20,000 when you can afford to pay it off in a year or so, then you’re right. In the context of $50,000 weddings held by people making that much in a year, it’s extravagent – period. You shouldn’t be blowing a year’s salary on a single day, no matter how big a dream it is or how romantic it would be. There are lots of ways to cut those costs down without ruining your wedding day. The average wedding cost is around $26,000 – which means if you’re financially responsible, you’ll be spending less. After all, the average person hasn’t saved that much for retirement and has a hefty credit card debt. If you want your finances to be above average, you’re going to have to spend below the average on other stuff, including weddings.

You could check out these tips and these tips on cheaper weddings. You could also plan something simple – a getaway ceremony to a beach somewhere with a few close friends and relatives can be cheaper and a lot more romantic. But someone in the relationship is going to have to play the role of cost cutter – and guys, this may have to be you.

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Then it happens. Kate starts getting calls from cullection agencies trying to cullect on accounts that she thought were the responsibility of her ex-husband. She tries to explain to the cullectors, “the judge said that my ex-husband is supposed to pay that bill,” but they keep on calling demanding payment.

Kate knows that this is simply an error and that when the divorce was finalized she and her ex-husband went their separate ways. Their credit was divided by court order and that was that…or so she thought. Kate is now learning the hard way what tens of thousands of other divorcees already know: court orders do not negate the original contracts with your creditors.

This means that regardless of what the court says, if you signed a contract to be responsible for payment on any type of credit (home loan, car loan, credit cards, etc.), then you are still legally responsible for making sure that the payment is being made.  

This is pretty common, actually, because of the general financial stress that divorce places on people. The confusion only adds to the difficulties: even if your ex is a responsible person who doesn’t want to hurt your credit rating, as the article points out they may not know they’re the one who is supposed to pay. And if they have legitimate financial problems and start juggling bills, the black marks go on your record, too.

The article gives you a lot of good ways to plan around this problem, and it’s not that hard to do if you figure this stuff out before the divorce is over. Paying off all the accounts and credit cards with community funds and then opening separate ones is a very good idea. Refinancing or selling everything so that just one person is on the debt is important, too. The reality is that even if you have good relations with your ex, you don’t want to have your credit rating be outside of your control. It’s worth the cost of refinancing to keep your credit – there are many people out there who would gladly pay a few thousand if they could have an unblemished credit history, because they pay so much more every time they want to borrow.

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If you’re already married, and currently having fights about money, then you need to sit down and have that talk if you haven’t. I’m not talking about screaming at each other – you need to both get onto the same page about your finances, set up a budget, and agree on what your financial goals are to achieve with the budget.

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Then there’s the house, or “marital museum,” as Manhattan divorce financial analyst Michelle Smith calls it. “A weakness that often hurts women is their determination to keep the family house regardless of their ability to afford it in the long run,” she says. “They will trade away every asset in order to keep a house they may not be able to afford in five years.”

Divorcing women should be open to the idea of giving up the house and taking cold, hard cash — in the form of retirement investments — instead, she advises.

If you ever find yourself in that situation, you’re going to have to remember that you will have to pay property taxes on a house, you’ll have to keep making the mortgage payments, and your spouse may play hardball and get a lot of concessions from you if you’re determined to keep it. Whether you’re a man or a woman, the smart thing to do is probably to sell the house – you may need to downsize anyway with less people living in it, and you shouldn’t try to keep it if the payments are going to be too much for you to afford when you’re on your own. Divorce is often one of the worst catastrophes you can have in terms of your finances, so don’t make it harder on yourself by agreeing to a bad settlement out of sentimental value for something.

Discuss this in the Free the Drones Forums here.