What Are Your Long-Term Financial Goals?

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” Zig Ziglar

It has been shown that talking about money is uncomfortable and because of this, couples will keep their financial picture under wraps longer than they should. Watch enough reality television and you will see couples shopping for engagement rings before they explore what financial goals they each have and how they plan to achieve them. It isn’t surprising that couples marry without knowing what their spending versus saving style is, how much debt they carry, let alone what they want for their financial future.

As a couple, you should explore what your long-term financial goals are and look at what you will need to do in order to bring them to fruition. Gail Vaz Oxlade – financial writer – advises couples, "Have conversations about what it is you're trying to achieve. Don't just assume you both want to buy a house, and even if you say you want to buy a house, do you want to buy the same kind of house? You have to have the conversations and you can't just assume that the other person is on track with you if you don't ask the question."

Take this example of buying a home... It’s a great financial goal to have, but are you really prepared? People buy a house and get underwater because they forgot about taxes, condo fees, or closing costs. The cost for heat is too high or the roof needs a repair. In addition to being prepared to meet such goals, it’s important to know whether your partner shares the same dream.

Do you want to own a house? Is it doable in the area you are currently living? Can you afford it on your own or will you need a co-signer? At your present salary, how long will it take to save for a down payment?

Do you want children? Do you know the cost to raise a child is more than two hundred thousand dollars? Will one of you stay home instead of working to cut on childcare costs? Does one or both of you want the best of everything for your children, including private school?

Do you want a vacation property? A boat? A yearly tropical vacation?

Don’t forget retirement. It may seem so very far away when you are young, but it’s never too soon to plan. Do you want to retire at fifty-five?

What about funeral expenses? Are you planning ahead for things like this? The average funeral in Canada costs between five and ten thousand dollars! Do you want to leave an inheritance for any children you may have?

In addition to the needs of life, what are your dreams? Have you always wanted a horse? Does your partner want to visit France? You might think not all goals are financial goals, but often they are. You want to get a pilot’s license? How are you going to pay for it? You want to spend the night in a European castle? How will you pay for your flight there? All the bucket list items we have likely have a price tag attached.

All this requires planning. It may even be wise to sit down with a financial planner and obtain a second opinion on whether your goals are achievable at your current income levels and get some advice as to how you can best work towards them.

Once you agree on what your goals are as a couple, set down a plan on how you will achieve them. Not all of us are great at handling finances. Both parties should know what is going on in this regard, but based on money managing skills, one may be the better choice to hold the reins. And even if you’re taking equal roles in money managing, it’s important to ensure you’re on the same page, so bills aren’t being paid twice – or not at all – because of miscommunication.

Have You Clearly Defined What has Brought You Together?

Ask someone why they got married and they will probably answer something like, 'I thought it was the right thing to do' or 'It felt right'. Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, states that the reason we are not more clear is that gut feelings come from the limbic part of the brain and this part of the brain does not have a language function. His book, though modelled for a business setting, can be helpful in looking at relationships.

Sinek postulates that most people in business focus on what they are doing, as it is easiest to describe and is where their vision is clearest; they want to sell coats, for example. What is the result of the action, like starting a book at the last chapter. How is also fairly simple to determine, but the why – the purpose or belief behind what they want to do – is harder to elucidate. From this notion, we can assume that many businesses fail because the head of the company is working backwards – in Sinek's view – and may never be clear on the why of it all. As he states, customers buy into the why of the business, not the what.

To extrapolate this information to relationships, we will not achieve the what (i.e. happily ever after) if we do not know the why. I can no longer remember where I read this, but the following quote expresses this thought well; "Get the Why of your marriage right, fill your marriage with the right Hows, and you have a much better chance of a successful What – a great and lasting marriage." As someone who has gone through a divorce, a lot of time and energy goes into understanding why it ended. It would have been so much less heartbreaking to have invested in understanding why it began.

I have already talked about the why of relationships in terms of why you chose this person. Now, I talk more of: do your why and their why coincide? We tend to assume that people see the world the same way we do and so we may not ask the big questions that would indicate a symbiotic pairing. I know of weddings that take place before the question of whether they both want children ever came up and not surprisingly, these marriages sometimes did not end well.

What is your 'why' in entering a committed relationship? To have children? Financial gain? Belonging? Will you both be happy living in the same area? How will children be raised? Will one of you put the other through school? Will you both climb the corporate ladder?

Daphne Kingma, in her book Coming Apart, looks at helping us understand why we came together in the first place. It’s advisable to spend the necessary time to understand this before the walk down the aisle than spending time and money on therapy and legal bills to undo the tangled web a married life becomes. She encourages people to define what tasks you hope to accomplish by choosing this person to marry.

We need to know who we are and what makes us tick. It is known that the early years of life is when the brain is most rapidly developing. Some studies suggest who we are is largely determined by our first seven years. Early life experiences are important in defining who we become, the scripts we are likely to play out, and the lessons we need to learn.

It is Kingma's position that our life plays out according to emotional patterns established in our childhood. "...we try so hard to duplicate our early experience through our adult love relationships..." Is the script you are playing out a method to make up for things lacking in your childhood? Or is it just assigning meaning to what occurred in your younger years? Do you see within your partner the means to help you grow through what you need to learn. Someone who grew up in a home filled with chaos and instability may need a structured secure home in which to understand the person they are and to develop confidence to be all they can be. She goes on further to state that a marriage will end when the developmental task of one or both have been resolved – "...we have learned basically who we are.”

Kingma, in helping people understand the ending of a relationship in Coming Apart, suggests exercises that could be done to help you understand where a couple stands before deciding to make a life together. You need to look at what you are both trying to accomplish, what your relationship status has been for the past while, and what development tasks you each may be trying to complete.

Sadly, couples do not ask enough questions before they decide what they feel will last a life time and solve all their problematic concerns. Songs, poems, and movies describe that over the moon feeling we have when we are madly and passionately in love with that special someone. Research and life experience teach us that this intensity of feeling lasts only between six and thirty months. Having an understanding of this and how love is likely to change over a lifetime will lead to better outcomes for a couple. What script do you see yourself playing out, individually and as a couple? What roles? Do you have similar purposes? You need to determine how compatible you are as individuals but also in terms of life goals.

There are a myriad of questions one should ask or otherwise ascertain about the other before you bind yourself to them. Will you have children? Where will you live? If a great job is offered in Timbuktu will you take it? How is money handled? Will you be members of a specific religion? How comfortable are you with talking about sex? The more questions you ask the better.

Kingma asks, "If you have not defined what it is that brought you together, how will you know if it's working?"