Financially Ever After

Book excerpt: Your Guide to Managing the Real Dollars—and the Real Emotions—of Your Relationship Too often with money, couples face two choices: fight and risk making the situation worse, or keep quiet and risk making the situation worse. Financially Ever After offers a third option: family financial fluency—the insight, knowledge, and vocabulary every couple needs to communicate effectively about money. Jeff D. Opdyke, previously The Wall Street Journal's syndicated "Love & Money" columnist, covers any and all financial issues that couples face, including budgeting, deciding on whether to have joint or individual accounts, dividing up family financial chores, confronting debt, making major purchases, as well as handling mortgages, employment, children, and even engagement rings. He offers dozens of real-life scenarios between couples, with scripts and suggestions for how to broach delicate money-related subjects with your significant other, whether he or she has a shaky credit history or is feeling left out of family financial decision-making. The book also provides helpful tools to organize your financial life, such as a budgeting chart, a "scorecard" to track spending, and an "affordability calculator" to help you figure out how much buying a house will cost you. A must-read for any couple starting out, Financially Ever After lays the groundwork for building a healthy and thriving financial life together.