“While people may come into a marriage with their own assets, they need to take some time after the wedding to sit down and start getting organized as a couple,” advises Andrew Peterson, a vice president at Fidelity Investments.
• Be transparent. There’s nothing that says you have to put all your cash into a joint savings account – but at the very least you’d be “less than truthful” by not divulging any outstanding debts – and then figuring out, together, how to pay them down.
• Safely store your information. Quick: What’s your new spouse’s Social Security number? And what other vital information don’t you know if a sudden need arises?
To truly mark your financial coupling, you might consider using an online
service such as FidSafe.com that lets you store, access and share all your new family’s important records and documents anywhere via a web browser or iOS app.
Not only is it free and simple to use with handy checklists, but even before it was officially introduced two years ago by Fidelity, Barron’s magazine gave the service five stars for being what it called “the first cloud-based safe deposit box we’ve seen that’s secure enough to organize everything from financial statements, insurance policies, and real estate records to a will, IRA benefits, and even passwords.”