Finances

1. Do you plan to keep individual funds in separate accounts?  This question does not refer to legally mandated separations, such as your IRAs.  We ask whether you believe some of your income(s) should be channeled into individual accounts, where its disposition is under the individual's control.  If so, how much goes into each account?  As your income and expenses change, how will you reapportion these distributions?  Can YOU really spend YOUR money any way you want, no matter what your partner thinks?  If not, maintaining separate accounts is probably a wasted exercise in paperwork.  Subsequent questions refer to the money that is shared between you.

2. What if you disagree over a large purchase or investment?  Who has the final say in money matters?

3. Who writes the checks and balances the books?  Who fills out the 10-40 every spring?

4. How much can either of you spend on a "once in a lifetime" sale or investment opportunity without consulting the other?  It is best to establish a specific cap from the start.

5. What items or services, commonly bought by Americans, seem like frivolity to you?

6. If your income were drastically reduced, what luxuries would you give up?

7. How important are material possessions to you?  What would happen if you lost everything in a fire?

8. How much of your income would you like to save?

9. Do you like playing the market, or do you pay somebody else to do it for you (e.g. buy into an established fund).

10. Would you be willing to risk some of your savings on a specific, personal venture, such as starting a new business?  How much of your savings would you invest in this way?

11. How much of your income would you like to give to charity?  Which charities?

12. Under what circumstances will you loan or give money to friends or relatives?  Can you accept the risk that these loans might not be repaid?

13. If you won the lotto, 10 million dollars, what would you do with it?

Your Nest

1. Do you like to live in a rural setting, a city, or a suburb?

2. Where in the country (or world) would you like to live?  Are you constrained to certain climates?

3. Is it important for you to live near family or pre-established friends?

4. Does your career lock you into a certain location (e.g. a doctor's established practice)?

5. Do you want a house, apartment, condo, trailer?  This decision is partly dictated by financial considerations.

6. Could you be a border in someone else's house?

7. Can you share your home with others?  If someone needed extensive care, or was having financial trouble, could you bring him into your home?

8. Are there members of your extended family, or close friends that you would enjoy living with?  Are there relatives or friends that you simply could not live with?

9. In the range of neatnick to slob, where do you fall?  Do you make your bed each morning?  Keep your dirty clothes in a neat out-of-sight pile?  Put dishes in the dishwasher and wipe the counters after every meal?  Or do you let things accumulate and clean up as needed?

10. Are you a packrat, storing lots of currently unused items for possible use in the undetermined future, or do you retain only those items that have immediate utility?

11. Do you own valuable collections or equipment?  Will you be able to keep young children away from your "stuff"?

12. If you have or anticipate infants, which rooms will be safe baby-proof play areas and which rooms will be gated off?  (If you have to spend every waking moment monitoring your infant for safety, you'll be a frazzled wreck in a week.)

13. Do you have specific thoughts on how rooms should be decorated?  On color schemes?  (Usually the woman does and the man doesn't, so there is no trouble.)

14. What is a comfortable in-door temperature for you?  Can you go above or below this temperature to satisfy your partner?