The Unsexy Conversations In Marriage

One thing that many people that are not married assume is that marriage is this fairy tale where you come home kiss each other, cuddle, have delicious meals, sex all the time, and this over abundance of money because of your newly combined finances. That is not true. Maybe the first week or so is like that then reality hits. Here are 5 unsexy conversations that we had to have this year. Each of these all though not fun are important to our marriage surviving and thriving.

1. Death- I know this one sounds so terrible to think about because you are so in love and your significant other is not going anywhere anytime soon. The reality is it's a possibility. We don't know what each day holds and preparing for death is something that we started talking about before our marriage. Everyone should have life insurance policies! They don't cost that much and it protects your family if something were to happen to you. We have term life policies through Northwest Mutual for now. We also have policies through work. We took out a policy through an outside company now because we are young and healthy and we don't have any pre-existing conditions. If we were to wait this one out it would be more expensive. Also we wanted something outside of work because you never know what the future holds and it's good to get that policy locked in early. We also had to change the beneficiaries on our work policies for 401K and the life insurance policies because WE are now a family. Make sure that you do both of those early because you really don't know what will happen and it's better to be safe than sorry.
2. Health Insurance- Over this last year we have talked about health insurance way more than we ever wanted to. We have had multiple trips to urgent care, trips to the doctor, trips to specialist, visits to the emergency room, and one extended hospital stay this year. With all of this we had lots of medical bills to sort through. We also had to dig into what was covered and what wasn't covered and make phone calls to the insurance company to dispute some charges. From here we had to decide what was getting paid and when. I am thankful that we have good health insurance and that we had a flexible spending account. If we didn't have these things in place we would have been paying a lot more out of pocket. The health insurance conversation is one that we will be having again soon because it's open enrollment we have to sit down and compare our policies and select the one that will work best for us. Again not a fun conversation, but one that has to happen because life happens and you get sick or at the very least you need to get your teeth cleaned, so understanding your health insurance is very important. 
3. Aging Parents- Not that our parents are super old, but they are getting older. We had to talk through what we would do if one parent died or needed some type of assistance. Figure out your stance on parents moving in now before emotions are involved. I am personally of the belief of letting our parents stay independent as long as possible. I also truly believe in ALL grown people having their own place and space. Another topic about parents that we still have yet to discuss is the different life insurance policies that our parents have, and where we can find them if something happens. We know that with us both being the older siblings many of these responsibilities will fall on us. I know no one wants to think about their parents dying or getting older, but these are conversations that you have to have to be prepared for when it happens.  
4. Money- We knew that when we got married that we would combine our finances so we started our account together when we started saving for the wedding. After the wedding we set up our direct deposits to go to the joint account, and a couple months later we opened a savings to transfer our excess money! We thought we were doing big things! We thought our finances were working really well we had enough money to pay all of our bills, tithe, and we were paying off debt. We had enough money to try amazing restaurants. We had enough money to buy multiple flights at the same time. We even had enough money to pay for all of our vacations. Then we started Financial Peace University and we realized that we were not really telling our money where to go we were just spending it without a real plan of how to get out of debt. Now, we have to talk about the plan, and we had to work together to set that plan in place. Last weekend we had our first budgeting meeting. We had to budget everything and assign every dollar that comes in to something. During that meeting we "found" a lot of money! Now we have a clear framework to be 100% debt free by 2019. We even realized that we would have my car paid off by the end of the year just by sticking to the plan. Although not a fun conversation it is an ongoing necessary conversation so that we can be on the path to be wealthy. Also money is the number one cause of divorce so this is one area that we are really committed to being on the same page about. 
5. Household Responsibilities- We are still figuring this one out, but one conversation that we did have before we got married is who didn't mind doing what chores. We are learning how to really rely on and use one another for different things too. Also no one person will always do the things that they don't mind doing. We both do dishes. We both clean bathrooms. We both grocery shop, and we both do laundry. This conversation will continue to evolve as life changes too. I am sure once we throw kids into the mix what works now won't work with little ones around. Then once said little ones are old enough to hold a rag they will help with the household responsibilities :-) 

These are just a few of the unsexy, but necessary conversations that we have had to have. Again marriage isn't all about sex, love, and happily ever after. There are some other things that have to be discussed to make a marriage flourish.

When we were just engaged and really didn't know what life had around the corner!