CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN TWO BECOME ONE... AND THEN THREE

Heather and I had not traveled much together before our honeymoon in Italy. Between our lack of cash in college and her lack of time early in her career, the notion of taking off overseas seemed impossible. Which is probably why we spent more time planning our 12-day, four-stop tour rather than the finer details of the wedding itself.

We began by strolling Florence’s cobblestone streets, sampling blue “puffo” gelato (it allegedly means Smurf) and stuffing our suitcases with leather goods and market cheese. We then indulged at a remote resort on the Tuscan Coast. During our day excursion to Giglio Island, Heather ate a bad clam that turned her into a barf-spewing dragon. There wasn’t a corner drug store in sight, so I bought her a pack of cigarettes and told her to get smoking (something she would never, ever do). But even that couldn’t calm the waters inside of her!

That night, she insisted I go to our romantic cliff-side dinner reservation. Staring out into the darkness of the sea, my table lit only by candles, it kind of felt like she was dead, like I was a widower returning to this magical place to remember her. In hindsight, it was probably the entire bottle of red wine talking, but man, was I emotional. Back in our hotel room, I tearfully confessed my love to this barf-spewing dragon. “How could I live this life without you?” She cracked a smile for the first time all night.

Thankfully, the clam worked its way through. She was back in action by our arrival to the Amalfi Coast, just in time for cooking class in Ravello and music on the rocks in Positano. Sipping cold Peronis at a beachside café, we realized we were sitting beside another newlywed couple. They weren’t feeling quite as carefree.

“You should’ve at least told me about the credit cards.”

“Why? It’s my money—my problem.”

“We spent a ton of money on the wedding!”

“So?”

“Well, you know I have student loans. I thought we were going to combine our accounts!”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because we’re married?! That’s what married people do!”

Eavesdropping on other people’s drama isn’t our idea of a chill afternoon, but given my profession and our next round of drinks, we couldn’t help it. This couple was supposed to be relishing in the happiest time of their lives, like we were! Even after the bad clam! Instead, they battled over the financial skeletons in their respective closets, floundering over how to pay off a wedding they couldn’t afford.

Talk about a mood killer.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll let you know that we finished our trip in Rome, touring the sites on the back of a golf cart. It was very gluttonous after a week-and-a-half-long carbo-load, but fitting for the ancient city.

Some might read this and wonder why we, a couple with six figures of student debt, would take such an extravagant honeymoon. (I have a feeling our parents were thinking just that.) But you see, this trip was our Great Thing in Life, and we had prioritized and saved for it accordingly. By the time Heather and I got married, we had already wrapped our heads around our finances. We understood our assets, our liabilities, our cash flow, and our emotional and honest goals. We knew what they were to each of us individually and how they would change together.

Maybe the newlywed couple on the beach didn’t view their marriage beyond the band, the bar, and a clever hashtag. It was an event in their respective lives, not the start of their life together. Maybe it’s easier for Heather and me to grasp the concept because we’ve been in each other’s lives since we were so young. But even for us, some of our feelings about what marriage meant to us didn’t surface until we tied the knot, like how we would feel if we had to go on without each other.

The moral of this story is that marriage isn’t about saving for a fancy wedding or honeymoon. If you’ve only thought that far, you’ve got a long way to go. This chapter will discuss sharing your financial goals, joining personal finances, and protecting the things that are most important to you with insurance and basic estate planning.

THE GREAT MERGE

Many of my young clients view a beautiful wedding as a serious financial goal. And it might be—it’s a massive financial marker in your lives. Though you’ll obviously need to make sure you don’t sit your college roommate with his ex-girlfriend, what you really need to focus on is how this merging of the minds, bodies, and souls affects your finances. Because as many of my elders have told me, what’s mine is Heather’s and what’s Heather’s is also Heather’s.

Just kidding. Kind of. Not really.

Now, before teaching the concepts you’ve already mastered to your future spouse, you must revisit emotional honesty. And if you thought being emotionally honest with yourself was hard, try being completely honest with the person you love.

This is the time to have some very serious conversations about the goals you want to achieve together. Things such as whether you want to have children, where you want to live, whether you want to live religious lives (and to what extent), when you’d like to buy a home, how comfortable of a lifestyle you want to live, and so on. Some of these are must-haves, deal-breakers, for sure. But I can’t tell you what should be most important to you. Let your mother guilt you about that.

Look, when you begin these conversations, there’s a good chance that you’re going to learn that you share similar goals and time horizons, making common ground easy to find. After all, you are each other’s better halves, so it’s no surprise that similar thinking brought you together in the first place. In other instances, you may discover differences or things you never knew about your partner, which are going to make for some pretty interesting talks. They might test your relationship, stir your emotions, and drain your energy.

Just keep in mind that friction is normal. Millennials are people with convictions and opinions about the future. We don’t just roll over and disappear into our spouses, nor should we. But we do need to make room for someone else to hustle and shine by our sides. Being a quality lifelong partner requires you to persevere and compromise, shine bright and dim it down. For better or worse, once you’re married, your triumphs and tribulations can’t always be the star of the show.

Okay, enough with this kind of advice—I’m not Dr. Phil.

Because you are in it together, you should join financial forces and combine everything into the “family pot,” right? Eh, it depends. Before you undergo the largest financial merger of your life, you should discuss the ins and outs of your finances with your partner, just like you discussed your joint financial goals. Like the couple on our honeymoon, so many people hide details from their spouses. This is absolutely, undoubtedly, 100 percent stupid—a one-way ticket to marital Armageddon. To be financially empowered as a couple, you must be transparent. If you’re willing to share the bathroom, I think you can share your numbers, no matter how great or terrible they seem.

To get on the same page financially, you will disclose your respective incomes, expenses, assets, liabilities, benefits, and policies. That should cover the financial items needed to have constructive conversations about your whole picture. I recognize that there are certain financial items that might need to remain private, but these are the exception to the general rule that you must put as much information on the table as possible to make meaningful plans. Don’t be private for the privacy’s sake.

For example, as you know from earlier, Heather has an ass-ton of student loan debt, and I have some, too. But from the jump, we laid it out there. We decided to treat everything as one pile belonging to us both, just like our incomes. For me, it didn’t matter that she had more debt. All I cared about was that we both were doing everything we could. It didn’t take long for Heather to agree that we were in it together, and that it would take our collective efforts to succeed.

Don’t take that as sugar coating reality, though. Even with years to come to terms with our joint situation, we still get into who spent what and who made what mistakes all the time. But the result is always, who cares? The only thing that makes mistakes of the past worse is secrets today. Transparency, kids. That’s the key.

Once you’ve shared your financial lives with one another, you are going to need an appropriate structure in place. This means you will need to master cash flow together as a unit, and determine how you want to share checking, savings, and investment accounts, if any.

For cash flow, you can literally combine budgets. If you both are masters of cash flow, this won’t be too hard. But if one person isn’t as savvy, the more organized spouse will need to help build up his or her cash flow skills. A rogue spending partner is bad for your relationship and ultimate financial goals. Remember, it takes time—and now trust—to master cash flow, so be patient if you are dealing with someone less knowledgeable. Also, be sure to alter your joint budget for taxes because the taxes on your income change slightly after you get married.

Sharing accounts and debts is where things get sticky. Putting money in a joint account truly means that these assets are split 50/50 between partners. When Heather’s year-end bonus was deposited into our joint account, she didn’t like my joke about how her hard-earned bonus was now half mine. Of course, hers was a normal emotional reaction, but it illustrates my point. You and your partner’s feelings may differ regarding who owns what because one partner earns more than the other, carries more debt than the other, or because one partner had brought existing assets into the marriage. You need to explore these feelings and talk them through. I can’t tell you how to divide your financial life, but I can tell you that you both need to agree on an arrangement that makes everyone feel good.

As I mentioned, Heather and I chose to combine almost all our assets (and debts) together. Thus, it really didn’t matter if she had earned a bonus or if I had a big month of production. It was all ours, regardless of how disproportionate our dollars were. Given our respective earning power, we knew that we would each have stretches of good years and less good years. Our careers are cyclical, and it took us years to build the confidence to get here. But we believe in our joint unit enough to know that we can trust and lean on each other financially now and in the future. You may or may not feel that way about your partner. Either way, that’s okay. Let those feelings dictate what you ultimately decide to do.

Things are a little different in “community property” states. Property that is owned by one spouse before the marriage is sometimes referred to as the “separate property” of that spouse, but there are instances where the community can gain an interest in separate property and even situations where separate property can be “transmuted” into community property. The rules for this vary from place to place. To make things easy, let’s assume you two are also subscribing to the “what’s mine is yours” mentality. I recommend that you deposit all sources of income into a joint checking account. This is the account that you will use to pay your fixed and variable expenses each month such as rent, credit cards, and student loans. I believe that doing it this way creates fairness and transparency between partners. It also helps you stick to your budget and more easily identify savings to allocate toward your financial goals. For the hustling entrepreneurs or independently employed, you will want to deposit your withholdings for taxes in a separate savings account. Those monies should not be comingled with the money deposited in your joint account because they will need to be paid to the U.S. Treasury on a quarterly basis.

Speaking of savings, it is usually a great idea to systematically move those cash savings from your checking account to an appropriate savings account. You don’t need a separate savings account for each of your cash-related savings goals (such as a cash reserve or house fund), but if compartmentalizing each of your goals into different savings account helps, go for it. I just don’t think it’s worth paying extra account fees to do what one account can do.

Even after you’ve merged cash accounts, I still believe that each partner should hold onto his or her own individual checking and/or savings account. Having this not only maintains your sense of independence, but it also allows you to make purchases that fall outside of the regular monthly expenses. Some call it a play account or, in my house, a pushke (Yiddish for “a little container”).

For example, if Heather wants to buy Hazel and me presents (let’s say, a bowl of truffled mush for Hazel or something practical for me that I don’t realize is a gift until I’m using it), without us knowing about it, she can use her individual account to make the purchase knowing that we won’t know about it and that it won’t affect that month’s cash flow. These accounts can be replenished when there’s a surplus in savings, but remember the goal is not to hoard too much cash there because that’s money that could otherwise be used toward joint financial goals.

Let’s not forget about investment accounts. These are the accounts that are linked to joint financial goals like financial independence, but that are not retirement accounts like your IRA or 401(k) (which cannot be held jointly, anyway). Investment accounts should also be held jointly between spouses. Because you first have to earn the right to invest, it could be some time before you have the ability to save in an investment-related account, including retirement accounts.

VALUING LIFE (INSURANCE)

When we discussed employer benefits, we punted the topic of life insurance to this chapter. And here we are, after one of the happiest times of your life, ready to talk about death. Good times!

You’ve reached the point where the topic of life insurance becomes relevant because you have someone other than you to worry about. Simply put, life insurance provides someone of your choosing, called the beneficiary, with a death benefit should you die.

It should not be too hard to imagine how things could change dramatically if you lose your partner. The emotional toll would be unrivaled, and the financial consequences could be catastrophic at a time when money is the last thing on your mind. In many cases, the loss of a partner means the loss of his or her income. Life insurance might not help with the emotional aspects of loss, but it most certainly can help with the financial.

One might ask, “How can you place a value on a person’s life?” This is a complicated question with answers that will almost always be wrong to someone. That’s why lawyers fight about it all the time in court after a person dies. However, for our purposes here, we are not examining the value of life after death. We are just looking at the economic impact that the loss of your partner would have on you and your family, and how to protect yourself against that loss.

Earlier in this chapter, I asked you to identify and quantify your goals so that they could be properly planned for. Then, when you committed to a serious relationship, you merged those goals with your partner. Now, you can use that information to figure out what you or your partner might need in the form of life insurance to be able to continue the pursuit of your financial goals. Yes, your plans might dramatically change should you lose your companion, but a lot of times they don’t. More importantly, your financial obligations don’t just disappear.

There are plenty of life insurance calculators out there that can help you understand what you need. I like the one at Lifehappens.org. Calculators like this consider some common variables to determine your personal needs, such as: expenses, outstanding debts, mortgages, the decedent’s loss of income, college educations, investment rates of return, and a factor for inflation. Otherwise, you can work with a financial professional to help you determine the appropriate amount of insurance to purchase.

Once you have obtained a figure that represents your current life insurance need, you can shop around for coverage. There are a lot of options out there, but I am going to make your life very simple. I highly recommend you start by purchasing term life insurance. Term life insurance policies offer coverage for a set amount of years, called the term. The most common term periods are 10, 20, and 30 years. They also have a set annual cost, which you might remember, is called the premium. As long as you pay your premiums, you are insured. So, if you die during the term, your beneficiary will receive the death benefit, tax-free. Term life insurance is as simple as it can get, and it is also going to be the cheapest form of life insurance coverage available. Term life insurance policies are a commodity, so depending on the carrier and its rating, most are priced competitively for pretty much the same thing. For the young and healthy, it can be very affordable. (The opposite of term life insurance is permanent life insurance, which instead of offering coverage for a set term provides coverage for your entire life. Permanent insurance comes in many forms, and it is typically more expensive than term insurance.)

To qualify for coverage, you need to go through a process called underwriting. This is where the insurance carrier assesses your riskiness. After all, if you die young, they may have to pay out some serious money. Underwriting requires you to complete an application that will ask for basic information, as well as detailed medical information, such as whether you’re a smoker or if you have any relevant family history or conditions. Typically, there is also a medical examination, which will result in a medical professional visiting you to take blood, urine, and various metrics, such as your height and weight. They could also ask you some of the same questions that you already answered on the application. Additionally, the carrier may request your medical records from your doctors to further evaluate your health.

Sounds intense? It can be, but it’s necessary to obtain meaningful coverage. When underwriting is finished, you will receive a decision from the insurance carrier letting you know if you are eligible for coverage and at what health rating. Having good or excellent health can result in significant savings on your premiums, whereas poor health or smoking can result in higher premiums (much higher if you’re a smoker, so please, don’t smoke!). By the way, before even filling out an application, you can receive quotes based on your choice of policy design, and then you will have some idea of what insurance is going to cost you.

When shopping around, I’d make sure to use a carrier that has strong convertibility privileges, meaning you can convert part or some of the policy to a permanent one if you ever wanted to without needing to go through underwriting again. I also like term policies that let you reduce the benefit amount in the future. As you get older, you typically will find your needs for insurance decrease, so it could be helpful to reduce your benefit, and therefore expenses, by reducing your policy’s benefit amount. Again, working with a good financial advisor can help you understand all the aspects of life insurance.

Life insurance strategies beyond basic family protection are beyond the scope of this book, but what you’ve just learned will set you up to utilize other strategies later on. Just like we discussed with disability insurance earlier, the goal right now is to feel better about knowing that the financial risk of something awful happening is transferred mostly off your shoulders.

THE ESTATE PLANNING STARTER KIT

Heather and I got married in 2013, almost a decade after our first date. During those early years, we did some really stupid, irresponsible shit, both together and apart. None of it fazed us at the time; not even a blip on the radar. But after we got married, I noticed a change in the way she views risk, especially her fears for my general safety running around the streets of Manhattan. Clearly, we have different definitions of what the flashing red hand on the other side of the crosswalk means.

While I find her concerns more endearing than anything, the financial advisor in me automatically thinks of the documents that would protect her should I actually kick the bucket. I refer to them as the Estate Planning Starter Kit, which consists of the following critical components: a last will and testament, a financial durable power of attorney, a healthcare proxy, and a living will.

The most widely talked about estate planning document is the last will and testament, or will, for short. This document spells out who receives your possessions and assets when you die. However, it does more than explain where your “stuff” should go. It also states other important information, such as who you want to place in charge of administering your estate, and who you want the guardian(s) of any minor children to be, should you have any. It is important to note that without this document, your state government will be the one handling your affairs in accordance with state law, which is usually a less-than-ideal situation.

In addition to a will, your starter kit should have a durable power of attorney, which is responsible for assigning an individual, known as the “attorney in fact,” who can make financial decisions for you if you become incapacitated. Therefore, should bills need paying, investments need managing, or assets need to be sold, this document will allow the attorney in fact to act on your behalf. Given the large amount of power and responsibility these powers can place on a person, it is usually a good idea to choose someone you trust.

The next component in your kit is a healthcare proxy. Much like a durable power of attorney, this document permits a specified person, the agent, to make medical decisions on your behalf, allowing them the ability to authorize medical procedures and treatments. Once again, choosing a trustworthy agent is critical. It may even make sense to have a conversation with the agent so that they clearly understand what your wishes are, heaven forbid the situation arises.

The final piece to your starter kit is a living will. This document outlines your wishes if you are not only incapacitated, but also if death is imminent, or if you are in a persistent vegetative state.

Due to their very nature, these areas of estate planning can be as serious as they are emotional. Some clients have been fearful and panicked, just brushing the surface of them. However, it’s important to recognize that, should the worst arise, the emotional cost is typically far worse than spending a few hours and dollars to put an estate plan in place.

As one last recommendation, I would stay away from online legal service Websites to build out your starter kit. Although I am all for technology making our lives easier, when it comes to matters as serious as these, it’s best to work one-on-one with a trusted legal professional. So, get it done. And be careful crossing the street.

Just like having money is nothing without goals, getting married is nothing without commitment—a commitment to sharing the good and the bad with one another, to protect each other, and to celebrate the Great Things in Life when you experience them as a team. Even if a bad clam tries to get in the way.

POPPIN’ BOTTLES

Despite my profession, Heather is the planner in our crew. She is the one circulating lists thumbed on her iPhone and filling our weekends with activities. Having an agenda is her agenda. So, in early 2015, it was no surprise when she decided that we would be having a State of the Marriage Address.

She had questions that needed answers. Would we move apartments? Would we stay or leave the city? Would we travel? Would we have a baby? And when, when, WHEN? Rather than continue to fight about this rotating list of big questions, she proposed we set a date to talk about them all at once.

About a month later, over a bottle of wine, we made some major life decisions. We would continue to save money by remaining in our one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side; we would hit the pause button on surfing Zillow for homes outside the city; we would take some domestic trips, but nothing crazy; and we would stop trying to prevent having a baby.

Note the double negative on that last one. At that point in time, we couldn’t fully admit to ourselves that we wanted to have a child. That would be too vulnerable, too uncertain. But we could concede that if we happened to get pregnant, we would happen to be happy about it.

We obviously had it all figured out. Obviously.

We didn’t think there was a chance in hell it would happen that week. We conducted the State of the Marriage Address in South Florida, while we were in Miami for Heather’s best friend’s wedding. One night of bottomless mojitos and samba dancing later, she was unknowingly carrying the seed of our spawn.

Less than a month after the big talk, every piece of our well-discussed plan changed. We needed to find a bigger apartment in a more affordable neighborhood. Aside from a few short business trips, we wouldn’t be traveling anywhere—too expensive. We would jump back on the house hunt after our new addition arrived, again pushing up our date to leave New York City.

We had nothing figured out. Nothing.

Getting pregnant was only the start of things we couldn’t control. Hazel Shaine Boneparth, our little hazelnut, was born a whole month early at a teeny 5 pounds and 1 ounce. When we took her home from the hospital late on a Thursday evening, it was to an ill-prepared apartment of unopened boxes and unwashed bottles. We triaged the situation thanks to Heather’s mom, the new grandma formerly known as Robin and now exclusively referred to as Rah Rah. And it’s been a flurry of surprises ever since.

From when we first broke the news about Heather’s pregnancy until now, it’s been interesting how many uncomfortable conversations we’ve been sucked into about our friends’ timelines for having kids of their own. I guess it was something about us taking the leap in our rat race of a city that makes people want to talk about it. Like they must justify to us why they too don’t want to have kids right now, or when they think they’ll be able to squeeze it in.

“He wants to make partner first.”

“We are redoing the pool this year.”

“We have too many Starwood points.”

We’ve heard it all, and without ever asking, really. For someone who used to plan a week’s worth of dinners on Sundays, Heather’s response is always ironic but captivating: “There will never be a right time. You just have to be open and willing to accept change.”

She’s right. Expanding your family opens you to a world filled with question marks. Out of all the major life changes we’ve discussed in this book, it’s the hardest one to control, because you can’t. It’s not just getting pregnant, birthing a healthy baby, figuring out child care, or arranging for education down the road. It’s a lifetime of constant change. The whole point of this exercise, of finding solutions for Millennials, is not just to achieve the Great Things in Life, but to be equipped to sustain change. To embrace it and let it enrich your lives.

Next, we will consider altering cash flow for your family, child care expenses, and revisiting insurance and estate planning, if necessary.

When it came to kids, my Grandpa Sheppard always said: “Love finds a way.” Years after he passed away, I now get where his was coming from. There’s nothing Heather and I wouldn’t sacrifice for Hazel. (Cue Creed’s “My Sacrifice,” which I hope is now stuck in your head. Gotcha!) But to be honest, I’d prefer not to sacrifice all that much. Grandpa Shep’s adage is cute, but doesn’t help us understand the more pragmatic side to having kids. Even though you can’t plan for everything in this department, you can tinker with your cash flow to get a sense of how costs might change in your new world as parents.

Like all the other life changes, if you follow The Millennial Money Fix and become a master of cash flow, you will have an easier time figuring out the impact that a child will have on your expenses. There is plenty that you can figure out in advance, even just using estimates.

According to a 2015 U.S.D.A. report, the average middle-income family will spend approximately $12,650 on child-related expenses in their baby’s first year.¹ That’s an average. But people are literally gaga for babies, so you know the Internet is chock-full of resources to help you figure it out more. Babycenter.com is a great resource, and they have a very comprehensive First-Year Baby Costs Calculator that you can use to try to pinpoint your baby expenses.² At the least, it will provide you with a list of goods and services you might need. You can also use the site’s Cost of Raising a Child Calculator, which is tad more straightforward.³

There are some significant initial expenses associated with having a child, otherwise known in our home as baby swag. You need furniture, clothes, strollers, car seats, and waterproof changing pads shaped like peanuts. Because of these big purchases, you need to not only work the expenses for the child into your cash flow, but you also need enough cash on hand to buy baby swag. If you managed to build a cash reserve, you should have no problem with this.

Before you go nuts buying baby Burberry, though, think back to our cash flow discussion regarding the lifestyle expenses in college. Remember that? If you can afford to dress your kid like Saint West, by all means start a Snapchat account and get posting. But keep in mind that the primary goal is to ensure your little one is happy and healthy. There are strollers that cost a thousand bucks and ones that cost a hundred. Aside from some tricked out wheels, they both will get the job done. Don’t be so concerned with what everyone else is doing with their children. You just focus on doing everything you can for yours. And if you have the funds for a waterproof changing pad shaped like a peanut, buy it.

Interestingly, one cash-positive thing about having a baby is watching your personal spending habits change. For many Millennial couples, new baby expenses can balance out by a reduction in lifestyle expenses. Heather and I have noticed a substantial decrease in our monthly credit card bills since having a baby. We used to dine out, a lot. Heather even had a food blog dedicated to our grubbing around the city, but she went on semi-permanent hiatus when morning sickness put her on an all-bread diet for nine months. Now that we bought a house in Northern New Jersey, we find ourselves staying in even more because we are just pooped. Adding a commuter train ride to both ends of our workday makes it much harder to care for the Hazelnut, but much easier to spend less money. Even if Heather still insists on shopping at Whole Foods, pizza delivery is half-price in the ‘burbs, so we’re coming out on top.

We can’t leave the baby cash management conversation without addressing one of the biggest expenses of all: child care. According to a 2015 Care.com report, the average weekly cost of a nanny for one child is $477 and $488 for two. The average weekly cost of a daycare facility is $188 for one child and $341 for the second.⁴ These are just averages, as the costs in major metropolitan areas are much higher.

You can figure out what you can afford by plugging the projected cost into your cash flow. Especially in places where the cost would be a disproportionate chunk of the household income, you might realize that you need to try a more creative arrangement. In New York City, for example, full-time nannies can cost up to $900 per week, and many want to be paid in cash. That’s your hard-earned, after-tax dollars right there. For couples with two working spouses, it might make sense for one partner to stay home during those first few years, or make a career pivot to something part-time or more flexible. You’re going to have to run the numbers, factoring in items like losing employer benefits. Emotional honesty comes back into play too, as it’s a bold move to put your career on hold to raise a child.

After Heather’s three-month maternity leave ended, I spent two days working from home and caring for Hazel, and we hired a nanny for the other three days. It was an incredibly difficult feat, but it helped us continue to save the money we needed to close on (and furnish) our house. Looking back, I wouldn’t trade those afternoons in Central Park with her for anything in the world.

Cost isn’t the only reason child care is a sensitive subject. We’re talking about someone, often a stranger, taking care of the most precious little person in your life. Yet, you have to implicitly trust them like family to function and keep earning the money you need to thrive. Heather feels like it’s a double-edged sword. She wants to work, but needs help, but wishes she didn’t need anyone’s help at all.

To that point, don’t take for granted the help of your family and loved ones. Our closest family is more than an hour drive away. We can’t begin to express how much we appreciate when family visits and gives us a much-needed break. In the past, we’d go months without a visit—by our own choosing—and now, we’d like to see them every day if we could! And that’s not just because we want to sit down at a restaurant like civilized adults. It’s because trusting blood is easier than strangers, and because you look at your child the way that your parents look at you and the baby. Money can’t buy those feelings. If you can find a way to incorporate your family into your child care situation, even if it’s at the expense of your comfort, I strongly suggest you do it. Have a spare bedroom? Offer it to Grandma and Grandpa, as often as they’ll come.

Having a child will prompt some revisions to your protection planning needs. Before marriage, you assessed the importance of protecting your income so that if something knocked you out of commission, you could continue to pursue your financial goals, knowing that your earning power is protected as you mount your recovery. After marriage, you protected yourself with life insurance to ensure that your significant other could financially survive without you. Now, with a little goober at home, your need to protect your family is much more significant from an insurance standpoint.

In the case of disability insurance, if you didn’t acquire some form of coverage already, now is the time to revisit fitting these policies into your family picture. If you disregarded life insurance previously, I encourage you now, more than ever, to consider obtaining it. If you’re healthy, there’s almost no excuse, given how affordable coverage can be. Even if you’ve already obtained coverage, you should probably still revisit the topic after starting a family to determine whether you must recalculate the amount you need.

As you know by now, my goal isn’t to scare you into thinking that something awful will happen to you. Rather, my objective is to have you reevaluate the risks in your life given the increased responsibility in your life. I sleep better at night knowing that if anything happened to Heather or me, our family would be taken care of and able to move forward in the direction that we are working toward.

As you might have guessed, a second trip to the land of insurance also means another trip to the bright and bushy world of estate planning. Earlier, this chapter provided you with an understanding of the basic estate planning documents that you should have in place once you’re married. You learned that there are documents that dictate who can make financial or medical decisions for you, as well as where your stuff goes when you die. But now that you have the most precious thing of all, a child, you are going to need to figure out where he or she goes if you and your partner are unable to care for them.

Just when you thought this topic couldn’t get any gloomier, I done did this.

Seriously, imagine the conversation that most couples—including Heather and I—have had regarding guardianship, which becomes a part of your last will. I’m not about to spill the details of ours here because we’d still like to be speaking to our parents after they read this book. This is a seriously tough conversation to have, facing an unthinkably tough situation. Depending on your familial relationships, it can get even pricklier.

As hard as it might be, you need to put your emotions aside and think about what’s going to be in your child’s best interest. Factors to consider when choosing a guardian for your child include geography, the health of the prospective guardian, your child’s schooling and friends, and many more. Yes, in a perfect world, all the grandparents, aunts, and uncles would love your children to pieces and take them in as their own, ensuring their growth as good human beings. But in reality, not every person or living situation is the right fit, no matter how much love exists.

Okay, time to shake all this death talk off. Think about all that you’ve accomplished to get here. You are only able to plan for rainy days because you’ve also planned for sunny ones. And you’ve got a lot of living left to do. Let’s move on to what the rest of life looks like for us.