It is Valentine’s Day today, a day where lovebirds honour the unique moments and sweet memories that are engraved in their hearts. Restaurants, hotels, theatres are fully booked or crowded for couples to spend their time together the entire day, some couples even make their proposal kneel to their partners and anxiously wait for the latter’s two-word reply on 14th February. On the other hand, as the world becomes more and more modernised, the number of unmarried couples living together is also growing to become a trend in recent times. It is cool to think that sharing the same roof without tying the knot, especially on the reduction of expenses on things such as payments for respective houses, utilities, household items, etc., but there might be other commitments that this group of people may have neglected.
Money Management
Let us get this straight: Everyone has a different spending habit and it is likely that your unmarried partner may not share or understand your style of expenditure. For instance, a stay-at-home person might not consider the entertainment budget as necessary while the introvert partner would think otherwise. Hence, it is clear that though not hitched, couples who live under the same roof need to get their values over money on the same line. This could be in the form of improving each other’s credit score or even starting a joint account for everything you share on a daily basis. Of course, things could get ugly if couples decide to split when things do not work out, a simple black and white could do the trick, with both sides agreeing to reasonable terms.
Employee Benefits
When couples are unmarried but living in the same house, they are pretty much not in contentions for whatever employee benefits a person has within a said company like their domestic partner counterparts do. In other words, there is a high possibility that one is not on the other’s employer-provided health insurance, especially when both have not tied the knot. Such a circumstance would prompt couples to think about having insurance elsewhere, which leads us to the next problem.
Insurance Beneficiary
We all understand that having a partner or soulmate could mean the person is our entire world, thus it would be a shame to not think about having them as our primary beneficiary in our own insurance scheme. As marriage is indirectly related to a long-time commitment to each other, being unmarried also poses the question of should you or should you not put the name of your partner into the beneficiary column of your insurance plan. Besides, should anything bad happen to one, chances are the other, who is very loved by the former but not registered as the beneficiary of his assets, might be left with nothing at the end.
Child Raise
It is no longer a taboo for unmarried couples to have kids these days, whether it is via childbirth or adoption. Nevertheless, it could be a tricky situation when couples from the same gender want to raise children. For certain countries which do not permit this type of marriage, the practice is clearly forbidden, but for those which legally allow it, couples are required to assume maternity or paternity. All in all, the issue could grow into something larger, when partners of the same or different sex do not contemplate enough about this legal obligation.
Retirement
Being married does have the good of advantage mix-and-match of each other’s retirement plan, meaning that it could bring out the best qualities within these arrangements. However, if one plans to remain unmarried with his / her partner for life, then saving individually for respective retirements is essential. That being said, this move should be initiated in a fair manner, with communication playing a key role to it.
Now that you have read through the financial obstacles unmarried couples may have, would you be considering about getting married then? Tell us why.
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