Changes...
Pepperally
member
So what major/minor changes will occur after your wedding? I just started thinking about it and it's a lot at one time!
Are you changing your last name? Moving in together? Buying a house together? Joining financials for the first time? Anything else??? ETA: Maybe you will becoming a step-parent???
I'm changing my last name...I've just always wanted another last name so I'm excited to do so. The thing is, his last name is a common name of an object that people live in (also the name of a TV show), so people sometimes say "really?" when I tell them what my last name will be. In fact, I may have asked him that when he told me his last name for the first time.
We already live together, but plan to purchase our first home sometime next year. We need to sit down and figure out what our savings plan will be after the wedding. We also will be needing to open a joint account, as right now everything is separate. I will most likely take over the finances since I already have spreadsheets set up and pay bills online. He is old school and is afraid to use the internet to pay for things.
Ah yes, he's going on my health insurance plan as well. I'll officially make him my beneficiary for life insurance, too. Right now it's my brother.
Re: Changes...
Other than that, we've been living together for 3.5 years, so we share a lot of that other stuff already.
We'll definitely have some changes. We already live together and we opened a joint account recently to deposit our wedding checks in to but we plan to only use the account for our HM and vacation and travel.
After the wedding we will:
Add each other as authorized users to our currently open accounts. We want to use his account for our bills and day to day living expenses and use my account to work on paying off our student loan debt and for savings since my savings account has slightly better rates.
Change my last name.
Add FI as a USAA member since he'll qualify as my spouse. He'd qualify now but his dad would need to join first since he is a vet.
We're thinking about changing FI's car insurance and home insurance to USAA. I've been talking to them and I think we'll get a better price for the same or better coverage than what he gets now through his current insurance.
Drop my health/dental insurance and add myself to his. He has a better plan for less money.
That kind of covers everything I can think of for now but I'm sure I will come up with more later!
FI will be moving in with me. I'm hoping it's for a short time while we recover our savings from the wedding. We intend to buy a house together in 1-2 years, we're still in the buy vs build debate. I'd like to meet with a builder shortly after the wedding just to see if it's even an option.
FI and I have always been responsible for our own finances and our own houses. So we will be combining. I'm not sure how that's all going to work at the moment. I'm thinking about doing a joint account for the bills and then smaller checking accounts for our 'fun' money.
We've lived together for just over a year, so he's accustomed to my kids, but now he'll technically be a step-parent.
We're going to open a joint checking account. We've been planning on each keeping our own separate checking accounts as well, for "other stuff" instead of household things, but I don't know now if we will or not. It seems cumbersome.
We're planning to buy and renovate the house we're living in sometime in the next year, then build a house in the country after that.
He'll be adding the kids and me to his insurance and I'll be dropping my insurance. This TERRIFIES me because my older daughter's medical issues and the fact that I know what things are covered and where they are covered at. I'm going to have to do some research before December when I drop my insurance.
I will change my name after the wedding, and I'm excited about that. I'm in a similar situation with @jerkyanne in that my biological father is currently the only person I share a last name with. Now that my mother and sister have married and taken other last names, I'm excited to do the same.
We want to buy a new house at some point, but that might be a couple years down the road still.
We have no intention of having children, so really, I don't think a lot of major things will change after the wedding.
The biggest hurdle will be merging all of our finances...we've already started the process, but we've both been so independent for so long it's a bit more difficult than we'd anticipated!
I'm changing my name, we're deciding how to merge our finances, and he's moving down to where I live now - plus finding a job once he's here and getting him onto my benefits.