Get real: Marriage is a business

By Liz Pulliam Weston

Marriage makes people richer.

Not all marriages, of course, and "richer" is relative. But overall, people who get married and stay married build significantly more wealth than single folks:

• The median net worth of married-couple households in the latest Census Bureau wealth study, conducted in 2002, was $101,975. For single men, median wealth was $23,700. For single women, $20,217.

• A 15-year study of 9,000 people found that during that time, people who married and stayed married built up nearly twice the net worth of people who stayed single. Even when all other factors are held constant -- stuff like income and education -- just the fact that they were married contributed to a 4% annual rise in these couples' wealth.

• Wealth declines typically started four years before a divorce was final, and the breakup ultimately reduced the typical person's net worth by 77% of that of the average single person.

Of course, most people don't marry for money, and we have some nasty names for people who do: gold digger, black widow, gigolo.

• Talk back: Do you think marriage is partly "business"?

But marriage is far more than a romantic arrangement; it has legal and financial ramifications as well. Those who ignore the business aspects of marriage do so at their own peril, as that divorce statistic shows.

I was thinking about this as I watched the reaction to my colleague MP Dunleavey's column "How to leave your husband." Many people seemed shocked by the advice that women (and men, too, for that matter) should prepare themselves financially before ending a marriage. The notion struck these folks as cold and calculating.

My take: I think a lot fewer marriages would end if -- in the beginning -- people would think more objectively about finances and how they were going to handle them.

Love does not conquer all. If you and your soul mate can't figure out how to paddle in the same direction, you'll wind up going in financial circles or -- to extend the metaphor painfully -- down the drain.

I speak not just as someone who has covered issues surrounding couples and money for years. I speak also as someone who's been happily married for more than a decade. I've learned that you don't have to have the exact same approach to money to succeed (I'm a saver; hubby's more of a spender), but you do have to be willing to listen to each other, compromise and put a plan into action.

Continued: Important skills

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