Dating & Discussing finances

I saw a post about discussing finances and read the comments and I’m super disappointed in our culture we are so backward.

discussing finances is all about you two sitting together and figuring our if you can make this happen.

Start here (EXPENSES) the best place to start and which will make the conversation super healthy for both sides and easier to ask questions is “expenses”, both of you try to find out what are the expenses of you two moving in together starting from the needs bare minimum to your wants to other lifestyle.

All this time you both shouldn’t be looking for “red flags” but for comparability, some people will start mentioning secondary expenses first so u know they don’t have any financial intelligence or the big one for women is they start listing their own expenses like a pitch to an angel investor, the whole speech should be “us” are we gonna rent or do any of us has a house already? Do we need a car? Do we have one? Does both or any of you have plans and is currently saving to buy a car? If yes How long do you think it’s gonna take to buy one?

You would be asking the same questions the same way even if the woman doesn’t have an income (tho i advise everyone to both work, you will give yourselves and your kids a waaaay better life, coming from someone who’s both parents worked)

some of the things i personally like to ask and be asked even tho not very popular in Algeria, is savings, retirement investing and emergency fund and obv debt.

an emergency fund is a sum of money you save and bank away for lost income, unexpected expenses or expected ones, if u lost your job would you be able to survive for 6months? whatever is the average time to find a new job, you planning to have a kid in a year did you save enough for a private clinic or u gonna be borrowing money? (The Algerian version is Gold لحدايد للشدايد but I personally don’t find that useful, people get emotionally attached to gold and will take them a second or two before deciding if they wanna use it for an emergency, an emergency fund should be cash they you can quickly access)

There are a lot of other stuff you can discuss but this is just the mindset i think people should have.