Twenty Something Sense

One common thread that all of us twenty somethings share is that one day in the near future we will all walk down the aisle and start a dramatically different life.  For some this day might fall in the next couple of years and for others it might still be a decade out, but almost certainly marriage is imminent for all of us.

The question is – are you prepared to get married?  I’m in no way qualified to give advice on the soft qualities that might determine your preparedness for marriage and so I’d like to focus purely on the financial aspects of getting hooked.

There are two major costs of getting married:  an engagement ring and the wedding.  Prices are all across the board on these two, but for the sake of this discussion let’s use $5,000 for an engagement ring and $20,000 for a wedding.  Keep in mind it is not unlikely for rings and weddings to cost triple these numbers.

We’ve now established two things: 1) you are going to get married and 2) marriage is going to cost you 1/2 of $25,000+

Are you financially prepared to get married?  How much money do you have saved away to pay for this?  I’d be willing to bet my life that 99% of people in their twenties who are not within six-months of getting engaged haven’t ever considered saving for this enormous expense.  But why?

Saving for a $5,000 engagement ring would require you to save $100 a month for over 4 years!  Several people have told me that they plan to or have spent $15,000 on an engagement ring – $100 a month for over 12 years!  If you are planning to get engaged in 2 years and are going to buy a $15,000 ring – you need to save $625 a month which is possibly more than your current rent!

The point I’m trying to make in the above paragraph is this is REAL money.  If you have a $12,500 bill (half the cost of ring+wedding established above) that is likely to hit you over the next decade, than my advice would be to start saving for it today.  You need to include saving for these expenses in your monthly budget.

To take this one step further – once you’re married you are sure to start having kids eventually and you can expect to pay around $10,000 to take care of your new-born through their first year and then another $250,000 to provide for them from then until high school graduation.  Not saving for predictable life events is a great way to get yourself into debt.

Realizing that some of the readers of this blog have already been through the marriage process and have kids; I’d really like to get some advice from them on how they saved for both of these life events and looking back on their experiences what would they have done differently.  Any tips in the comments are much appreciated.