There are few things that can create problems between you and your sweetie pie as quickly as money. You may have a wonderful relationship, but when you start thinking about the long-term, you’re probably going to want to talk about money with your honey. After all, who wants to find out that their one-true love has credit problems after saying ‘I do.’

Money Matters

In a study of 50,000 couples who went through Life Innovations’ marriage preparation course, the firm found “a large percentage of partners don’t talk about money or credit issues in any detail at all,” according to an interview with Peter Larson. Larson is a clinical psychologist and the vice president of Life Innovations. He said that, despite few couples discussing money matters, over 70 percent of the respondents wish their partners would be more careful when it comes to money matters.

It’s pretty clear that most of us aren’t comfortable talking about money with our nearest and dearest. There’s just not many ways to start up a conversation about money matters. But before you think about signing a lease or opening a joint account, it’s a good idea to bring up money matters. Every couple has to do it differently, though.

My husband and I had a discussion about money long before we got hitched. It started off with a discussion of who should pay for dinners and we managed to go through pretty much our general spending habits and monetary goals in one goal. We’ve followed it up with lots of discussions about specific money issues since then.

The Big Talk

I’m not exactly fond of the idea of a big talk about money. I think that if you plan on outlining your entire financial past, present and future in one go, you wind up with an incredibly stressful discussion. Furthermore, your financial situation is probably going to change in the long run. Making plans to talk about money matters every once in a while is a little more practical than trying to iron out every detail in one go.

There is no right way to start a talk about money. Every relationship is different, as is every financial situation, and it’s up to you to decide how you and your significant other want to handle money matters. The only recommendation I can give is to make sure you mention credit somewhere in your discussion. It doesn’t hurt to share credit reports if you’re in a long-term relationship. It might even help: if you’re looking at goals like buying a house, knowing knowing both credit scores can help you figure out what you need to do to be financially ready to move forward. You can also figure out what to do to improve your credit score, if necessary, or choose to have only one of your names on the paperwork.

Even if your significant other’s money situation is less-than-ideal, you aren’t necessarily in trouble. A relationship, even if you get married, doesn’t mean that you’re legally liable for any debts accumulated before you two got together — and if you don’t have any joint accounts or property, you’ll stay that way.

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