One surprising factor that determines your ability to build wealth
While many people joke about marrying into wealth, marriage does play a critical role in your wealth-building potential.
This is not about “marrying for money” – it is about ensuring your finances are planned and sorted from the get-go.
By having a clear picture of how you will handle your financial affairs as a married couple, you can build a strong platform from which to build a wealth asset base – rather than becoming a divorce statistic.
This can be a challenging process, as it may be intimidating to start this conversation with your partner.
However, it is a critical thing to do early in your relationship to ensure that money doesn’t become a marital issue that causes problems, but rather a way to build a strong and successful future together.
What the data says
According to psychologist Dr Nigel Bairstow, Harvard research shows that married people tend to collect nearly double the wealth of their single counterparts.
The net financial worth of those in a committed relationship is more than 77% of that of a single person – and the longer a marriage lasts, the more wealth is accumulated.
“We see this reflected in our data, with only 25% of couples who sign up for our educational courses indicating at the outset that they understand how to build wealth,” said Gary Kayle, the CEO of Worth.
“After finishing our Wealthy Couples course, that number increases to 70%, which underpins the power that financial education plays in empowering couples to build a wealthy future, together.”
Worth courses
People who have completed a Worth course have found themselves better equipped to manage money, less financially stressed, more likely to live within a budget, and more confident about paying down debt.
On a fundamental level, this is because financial education helps couples understand where their money comes from and where it goes.
It enables them to appreciate the value of things like sharing expenses, having a separate “spoil me” account, and having shared and individual investments.
“We know that managing money is tricky enough on your own,” said Kayle.
“Add a partner into the mix and it can get complicated, quickly. In fact, the reason we developed our Wealthy Couples online course is specifically because of user demand.”
A partnership worth talking about
“They say love and money don’t mix, but we believe financial security strengthens relationships. It’s one of the reasons we’re proud to partner with Worth in offering our clients access to their online Wealthy Couples™ and Wealthy Me™ courses which retail for R6,499 for R5 for a limited time. In addition, clients who complete the course also receive 10,000 Vitality Money points,” says Melana Petschel, head of Loyalty and Rewards at Discovery Bank.
Hear it from them
Jonathan Cleary says he and his partner completed a Worth course after stumbling across the benefit in the Discovery Bank app when it seemed they were going nowhere in life and backwards financially.
“Our marriage was suffering. We were brought to our knees in humility for how low we had allowed ourselves to sink.”
The latest figures show that the median age at the time of divorce in 2022 was around that of Cleary and his partner, at 46 years for males and 42 years for females.
The data shows varying differences between race groups, demographics, and earning power.
It also indicates that there is minimal difference when it comes to whether people were married via a civil union or a religious ceremony.
Instead, what is key is that more than half of all couples who divorced had minor children and that financial issues were often a significant stressor in relationships.
In fact, research by The Jimenez Law Firm has found that anywhere between 20 to 40% of divorces are caused by money problems.
These issues could range from someone entering the union with undisclosed debt, to money issues killing the romance.
And this shouldn’t be the case. For the Clearys, the course put them on the right track to financial freedom. The course, Cleary says, was “literally a life saver”.
He adds: “At 40 years’ old, we learned things we should have learned 20 years ago.”
Click here to find out more about the Worth courses for Discovery Bank clients.
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