With same-sex marriages being legal in the United States, more LGBTQ+ couples are choosing to solemnize their union. You can formally declare your intent to marry your partner in the presence of loved ones. For many couples, the journey of marriage is about sharing a life together on various levels, including a home, a family, goals, and finances. Comprehensive financial planning is about leveraging various strategies, including investment, taxes, and insurance, among others, to build and protect your wealth. Here’s what you and your partner should know about financial planning.

Examining Financial Planning

You’ve heard the adage, “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” Financial planning is essentially coming up with a workable strategy to reach your short-term and long-term goals. In most cases, financial planning involves evaluating a person’s current income and assets and several variables to forecast future wealth and cash flow. What do you want to do with your life? How much money does it take? What is your timeframe? Many married couples use financial planning to build wealth for college, retirement, estate planning, and major purchases, such as buying a house or starting a business. Even if you and your partner don’t share checking accounts, consider the following points on building and preserving wealth.

Sharing Health and Wealth

Married LGBTQ+ couples can co-enroll in employer-sponsored healthcare. If both of you have jobs that provide medical insurance benefits, it may be advantageous for one of you to enroll as a spouse to the other instead of having individual coverage. Flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, and health reimbursement arrangements provide methods for couples to set aside income for regular and special medical costs. Health savings accounts in particular have the added benefit of being used for long-term investment. This could be a good option, especially for anyone taking medication that insurance may not cover.

Covering Your Future

Life insurance policies are a part of many comprehensive financial plans. LGBTQ+ couples can purchase life insurance to cover end-of-life expenses, including funerals, burials, cremations, and outstanding debt. Generally, the insured enters a legal contract with a provider to pay out a certain amount of money to a surviving beneficiary upon death. With an insurance plan, you and your partner can name each other, children, and other people you care about as beneficiaries. This not only removes the financial burden of your death from loved ones, but it can also leave behind a financial legacy for them to build on.

Financial Planning for Retirement

LGBTQ+ couples can also use financial planning to prepare for retirement. Many people dream of retirement, but not everyone is prepared for it. When do you want to retire? What does life look like at retirement? How much money will it take? These are important questions to answer. Retirement won’t be something to enjoy if it’s not on your terms. Retirees often have to deal with fixed income. Can you afford to retire based on your current plan? Is your current fund enough to pay for a future that includes higher costs of living and healthcare? Financial planning can help you retire how you want and when you want.

Planning for Taxes

Married LGBTQ+ couples can now file taxes jointly or continue to file separately. It’s important to take a look at your situation and make the decision that is most advantageous to your union. Filing jointly often makes a couple eligible for more benefits than filing separately. You and your partner may also qualify for adoption expense exclusions and tax credits for children and dependents. 

We’ve only scratched the surface of the potential benefits of financial planning for LGBTQ+ couples. It’s difficult to achieve a financial goal without a realistic plan that accounts for your needs, assets, and concerns. Sharing life together means sharing dreams and plans that provide a feasible path toward those dreams.