For someone new here...if you could do it all over again

[GuitarStv]

Sure.  It's very easy to understand why someone wants a prenup.  It serves a single purpose . . . to make it easier and less costly to divorce.  I don't entirely understand why someone who feels the need for a divorce would want to be married though.  If you want to live with someone for a while with no commitment, there's no need for a marriage at all.

People change and sometimes that means the end of a relationship.  Sometimes it doesn't mean the end of a relationship.  But if it does, it might be wise to have a plan ready..

I mean I just bought apartment insurance, but it's not because I'm sure my apartment is going to burn to the ground.  You feel me?

If you and your apartment got together with friends, family, and builders and made a commitment and oath to not burn down and stay together forever more, sure.  Otherwise it's not really similar at all.  A prenup isn't remotely like insurance . . . because having insurance (or putting on your seatbelt) doesn't make it easier to burn your apartment down (or get in an accident).  Having a prenup makes it easier to break your promise to your spouse.

The weird thing is, you don't need a prenup at all if you want to avoid commitment.  Just don't get married.  There's nobody forcing you to.  But if you do voluntarily choose to get married, accept that leaving the marriage will be financially difficult.  It's the whole 'I want to commit completely to someone else through marriage - but I don't really want to commit too much' wishie-washiness of the prenup that doesn't sit right with me.  It devalues what a marriage actually is.

[Metalcat]

Sure.  It's very easy to understand why someone wants a prenup.  It serves a single purpose . . . to make it easier and less costly to divorce.  I don't entirely understand why someone who feels the need for a divorce would want to be married though.  If you want to live with someone for a while with no commitment, there's no need for a marriage at all.

People change and sometimes that means the end of a relationship.  Sometimes it doesn't mean the end of a relationship.  But if it does, it might be wise to have a plan ready..

I mean I just bought apartment insurance, but it's not because I'm sure my apartment is going to burn to the ground.  You feel me?

If you and your apartment got together with friends, family, and builders and made a commitment and oath to not burn down and stay together forever more, sure.  Otherwise it's not really similar at all.  A prenup isn't remotely like insurance . . . because having insurance (or putting on your seatbelt) doesn't make it easier to burn your apartment down (or get in an accident).  Having a prenup makes it easier to break your promise to your spouse.

The weird thing is, you don't need a prenup at all if you want to avoid commitment.  Just don't get married.  There's nobody forcing you to.  But if you do voluntarily choose to get married, accept that leaving the marriage will be financially difficult.  It's the whole 'I want to commit completely to someone else through marriage - but I don't really want to commit too much' wishie-washiness of the prenup that doesn't sit right with me.  It devalues what a marriage actually is.

It devalues what marriage means *to you*.

That's okay.
No one is asking you to get a prenup/postnup, nor is anyone judging you for not having one.

You don't get to decide what marriage means for others, and I don't get what you gain from judging others for customizing their own marriage contracts, especially if they see the whole thing differently than you do.

The world is filled with such a wide range of people with such a wide range of perspectives and experiences.

[Tyson]

Sure.  It's very easy to understand why someone wants a prenup.  It serves a single purpose . . . to make it easier and less costly to divorce.  I don't entirely understand why someone who feels the need for a divorce would want to be married though.  If you want to live with someone for a while with no commitment, there's no need for a marriage at all.

People change and sometimes that means the end of a relationship.  Sometimes it doesn't mean the end of a relationship.  But if it does, it might be wise to have a plan ready..

I mean I just bought apartment insurance, but it's not because I'm sure my apartment is going to burn to the ground.  You feel me?

If you and your apartment got together with friends, family, and builders and made a commitment and oath to not burn down and stay together forever more, sure.  Otherwise it's not really similar at all.  A prenup isn't remotely like insurance . . . because having insurance (or putting on your seatbelt) doesn't make it easier to burn your apartment down (or get in an accident).  Having a prenup makes it easier to break your promise to your spouse.

The weird thing is, you don't need a prenup at all if you want to avoid commitment.  Just don't get married.  There's nobody forcing you to.  But if you do voluntarily choose to get married, accept that leaving the marriage will be financially difficult.  It's the whole 'I want to commit completely to someone else through marriage - but I don't really want to commit too much' wishie-washiness of the prenup that doesn't sit right with me.  It devalues what a marriage actually is.

I don't know why you're going off the rails on this.  Maybe your marriage is having problems?  Anyway, your assumption of "whishie-washiness" is assinine in the extreme.  Just because other people are different from you does not mean that are not able to commit all the way.

Besides, this thread is about if we could do it all over again what would we change.  Believe it or not I would not choose a different partner.  Based on everything I knew at the time, she was 'the one' and I still think that today.  I committed 100% to her.  I would not change any of that.  But I would put in a prenup of some kind because in fact she left and it is costing me about half a million dollars. 

[Cool Friend]

Sure.  It's very easy to understand why someone wants a prenup.  It serves a single purpose . . . to make it easier and less costly to divorce.  I don't entirely understand why someone who feels the need for a divorce would want to be married though.  If you want to live with someone for a while with no commitment, there's no need for a marriage at all.

People change and sometimes that means the end of a relationship.  Sometimes it doesn't mean the end of a relationship.  But if it does, it might be wise to have a plan ready..

I mean I just bought apartment insurance, but it's not because I'm sure my apartment is going to burn to the ground.  You feel me?

If you and your apartment got together with friends, family, and builders and made a commitment and oath to not burn down and stay together forever more, sure.  Otherwise it's not really similar at all.  A prenup isn't remotely like insurance . . . because having insurance (or putting on your seatbelt) doesn't make it easier to burn your apartment down (or get in an accident).  Having a prenup makes it easier to break your promise to your spouse.

Having insurance on my apartment makes it easier to withstand unexpected financial damages.  Having a prenup makes it easier to withstand unexpected financial damages.  Putting on a seatbelt makes it easier to survive unexpected accidents.

Maybe I'm not understanding your point of view.

[BicycleB]

It sounds like different cases are being considered in the prenup bit (OP, sorry for the continued derail):

1. The case where somebody gets tired in their marriage, but if they feel completely committed to it, they will find a way to make it work. If they feel like they have an easy way out, maybe they will take the easy way out instead of doing the hard work of staying. GuitarStv doesn't want this to happen, so he's anti-prenup.

2. The case where somebody does everything in their power to make the marriage work, but it just doesn't work. For them, the existence  of the prenup has no effect on the marriage or the person's motivation. It only has an effect on the divorce (specifically, by protecting assets and/or reducing difficulties). Someone thinking of this case is naturally pro-prenup (@tyort1, sorry about your divorce and lack of prenup!).

I personally believe that case 1 can occur. Ijust don't think that acknowledging the possibility of divorce requires us to assume that case 1 will occur. There's a trade-off between the slight risk of 1 happening, and the big advantage of a prenup in case 2. So on balance, a prenup sounds reasonable depending on the spouses' circumstances.

I guess if a person feels they are susceptible to becoming discouraged in a marriage and they want the security of having a big barrier to quitting, avoiding a prenup makes sense. There's a difference between Total Commitment and Not Total, I suppose.

[GuitarStv]

Besides making it easier to divorce, prenups have historically imposed a power imbalance in a relationship that favours the person making more money.  They are typically employed by high earning men, and after divorce are used to devalue the unpaid work that the wife has put into the relationship (things like child care, homemaking, etc. which despite the modern times we live in overwhelmingly still fall to the woman in a relationship).

Tyort, you're saying that the person you divorced was the one and the best thing that happened to your life.  So why then do you begrudge giving her half of your money?  Was the time you spent together not worth the cost?

As far as prenups go . . . for the third time I ask . . . why get married at all?  Nobody's putting a gun to your head and saying that you have to commit your life and fortune to another person.  So, why go through the bother of writing down all the things you want to exclude from the person you're claiming to love more than anyone else in the world?

[Tyson]

Besides making it easier to divorce, prenups have historically imposed a power imbalance in a relationship that favours the person making more money.  They are typically employed by high earning men, and after divorce are used to devalue the unpaid work that the wife has put into the relationship (things like child care, homemaking, etc. which despite the modern times we live in overwhelmingly still fall to the woman in a relationship).

Tyort, you're saying that the person you divorced was the one and the best thing that happened to your life.  So why then do you begrudge giving her half of your money?  Was the time you spent together not worth the cost?

As far as prenups go . . . for the third time I ask . . . why get married at all?  Nobody's putting a gun to your head and saying that you have to commit your life and fortune to another person.  So, why go through the bother of writing down all the things you want to exclude from the person you're claiming to love more than anyone else in the world?

Well, I think your whole premise that a prenup will sabotage a marriage is wrong so I can't really engage on your other points if we simply disagree on this more fundamental idea. 

It'd be interesting to see if there's data re: percentage of marriages that end when there's a prenup involved vs the percentage of marriages that end when there's no prenup involved.

[GuitarStv]

It'd be interesting to see if there's data re: percentage of marriages that end when there's a prenup involved vs the percentage of marriages that end when there's no prenup involved.

That's one of the first things I was looking for, but couldn't find any decent studies of the matter unfortunately.  If you do see some, let me know.

[Tyson]

It'd be interesting to see if there's data re: percentage of marriages that end when there's a prenup involved vs the percentage of marriages that end when there's no prenup involved.

That's one of the first things I was looking for, but couldn't find any decent studies of the matter unfortunately.  If you do see some, let me know.

I looked too, but came up snake eyes.  But yeah, if about 50% of all marriages end in divorce, then it'd be interesting to see if the prenup divorces were higher or lower than that.  Otherwise we're just guessing...

[Metalcat]

As far as prenups go . . . for the third time I ask . . . why get married at all?  Nobody's putting a gun to your head and saying that you have to commit your life and fortune to another person.  So, why go through the bother of writing down all the things you want to exclude from the person you're claiming to love more than anyone else in the world?

You want to know what my postnup says???
It says that even though I refinanced my mortgage-sized student loan as a business loan, that my DH is not responsible at all for that debt.
All I did was keep the loan my sole responsibility as it was when it was classified as a student loan, as it was when he married me.

Maybe where you live is different, but where I live, according to the lawyers I know, my type of case is not an exception, it's pretty much the norm: reasonable people making reasonable agreements to modify the law to reflect a fairer situation than the one-size-fits-all law dictates as-is.

Ex: second marriages where there are previous children, inherited generational property, medical/law school debt, etc. To quote my lawyer "unfair prenups aren't worth the paper they're written on, a judge will just throw it out."

Lastly, I'll turn the question on you, unless someone is religious, then why bother getting married if you aren't going to take the implications of the legal contract seriously?
And if you are going to take it seriously *as a contract*, then why *wouldn't* you take steps to make sure that the contract reflects your particular values if the contract as-is fails to do so???

You don't need to answer that question. I don't actually demand that anyone answer to me about their personal life decisions that don't affect me or anyone else. I only ask to demonstrate that different people can have different perspectives and that yours is just one, no less valid, no more.

Some of us see marriage and commitment very different than you do. Some of us see customized contracts as romantic. No joke.

[GuitarStv]

As far as prenups go . . . for the third time I ask . . . why get married at all?  Nobody's putting a gun to your head and saying that you have to commit your life and fortune to another person.  So, why go through the bother of writing down all the things you want to exclude from the person you're claiming to love more than anyone else in the world?

You want to know what my postnup says???
It says that even though I refinanced my mortgage-sized student loan as a business loan, that my DH is not responsible at all for that debt.
All I did was keep the loan my sole responsibility as it was when it was classified as a student loan, as it was when he married me.

Maybe where you live is different, but where I live, according to the lawyers I know, my type of case is not an exception, it's pretty much the norm: reasonable people making reasonable agreements to modify the law to reflect a fairer situation than the one-size-fits-all law dictates as-is.

Ex: second marriages where there are previous children, inherited generational property, medical/law school debt, etc. To quote my lawyer "unfair prenups aren't worth the paper they're written on, a judge will just throw it out."

Lastly, I'll turn the question on you, unless someone is religious, then why bother getting married if you aren't going to take the implications of the legal contract seriously?
And if you are going to take it seriously *as a contract*, then why *wouldn't* you take steps to make sure that the contract reflects your particular values if the contract as-is fails to do so???

You don't need to answer that question. I don't actually demand that anyone answer to me about their personal life decisions that don't affect me or anyone else. I only ask to demonstrate that different people can have different perspectives and that yours is just one, no less valid, no more.

Some of us see marriage and commitment very different than you do. Some of us see customized contracts as romantic. No joke.

While I'm not particularly religious, I see a lot of value in marriage.  It's an oath of commitment to another person - a promise to share all you have with another (good and bad), to love, support, and care for them until death.  While I understand the unforeseen reasons that can occur to drive one to break their word, I don't really understand why you would enter in a marriage if you're initially failing to commit to the above.  To me, a prenup feels like conditional love . . . or stripping the commitment out of marriage.  I wouldn't ever have got married if I felt the need for that . . . which is why I was asking why people who wouldn't marry without a prenup are interested in marriage at all.

[Metalcat]

While I'm not particularly religious, I see a lot of value in marriage.  It's an oath of commitment to another person - a promise to share all you have with another (good and bad), to love, support, and care for them until death.  While I understand the unforeseen reasons that can occur to drive one to break their word, I don't really understand why you would enter in a marriage if you're initially failing to commit to the above.  To me, a prenup feels like conditional love . . . or stripping the commitment out of marriage.  I wouldn't ever have got married if I felt the need for that . . . which is why I was asking why people who wouldn't marry without a prenup are interested in marriage at all.

Yep.
You've made your position 100% clear. I tried to make mine clear, but I guess it didn't quite translate.

I'm happy for you that you feel an extremely high sense of committment in your marriage. I hope you can respect that some of us with customized marriage contracts also have an extremely high level of committment.

Why judge when it isn't necessary?

[Just Joe]

I would have rented instead of buying houses for much of my life. Contrary to many here, I do not find real estate to be a particularly good investment.

Over here on the left coast, real estate ownership is what got me FIRE'd ;-)

It goes back to all real estate being local. 

I'm guessing you bought a while back?  West coast real estate is probably much less lucrative for people on the buying end in 2019.

And yet the articles aimed at the average consumer seem to speak in universal terms common coast to coast.

[pbkmaine]

As far as rental income goes, I think it’s important to understand yourself. A friend of my father’s, a teacher, started to buy small apartment buildings near his house when he was in his thirties. He was a very handy guy who loved to tinker with things and could not sit still. It was ideal for him. A dear friend, whose mother was a realtor, learned the 1% rule by osmosis and owns several student apartment buildings in a university town. She has a great manager she’s used for years. I, on the other hand, like the “easy” button for investments, so index funds is what works for me.

[dude]

One thing I wish I'd done is opened and funded an IRA way back when I was in my early 20s. Even if only a couple grand each year. Did not fully grasp the power of compound interest until I was in my mid-30's.

[nwa-non]

In a completely different direction from everyone else so far, I would recommend really figuring out what happiness looks like for you.

I recommend reflecting a lot on what you spend and why, how you work and why, what your goals are, what your barriers to success are, and what the motivations behind your goals are.

Most importantly, I recommend really getting down to the nitty gritty of the givens and non negotiables that you think underpin all of your plans and paradigms and really challenge whether or not they are actually valid and helping you.

Executing and accomplishing financial plans is actually just code for building a certain kind of life.

The sooner you realize just how much power you have over your own life, the better you can utilize finances as a tool to maximize your enjoyment of it.

What do you actually want your life to look like, and why?
Also, why doesn't your like look that way right now?

This.

Self-assessment first, all the time, every time.

Agree. Accruate self-assessment or even trying to figure out what you are assessing, doesn't come overnight. It is a process. For some it might come very quickly when you're starting out in your adult life. For some it might take a long time, even decades. I fall in the latter category. I think it is coming to me as I'm approaching 40.

[Classical_Liberal]

In a completely different direction from everyone else so far, I would recommend really figuring out what happiness looks like for you.

I recommend reflecting a lot on what you spend and why, how you work and why, what your goals are, what your barriers to success are, and what the motivations behind your goals are.

Most importantly, I recommend really getting down to the nitty gritty of the givens and non negotiables that you think underpin all of your plans and paradigms and really challenge whether or not they are actually valid and helping you.

Executing and accomplishing financial plans is actually just code for building a certain kind of life.

The sooner you realize just how much power you have over your own life, the better you can utilize finances as a tool to maximize your enjoyment of it.

What do you actually want your life to look like, and why?
Also, why doesn't your like look that way right now?

This.

Self-assessment first, all the time, every time.

Agree. Accruate self-assessment or even trying to figure out what you are assessing, doesn't come overnight. It is a process. For some it might come very quickly when you're starting out in your adult life. For some it might take a long time, even decades. I fall in the latter category. I think it is coming to me as I'm approaching 40.

Hmm...  I think self knowledge is good.  BUT, I also think we are absolutely horrible at predicting what will make us happy.  Particularly when chronesthesia is the main source.  Tangentially related is the Paradox of Choice. 

In general, humans are far better at identifying something that is currently making them miserable, than predicting a potential future situation that will make them happy.  I believe it's best to focus energy on reducing the known, current, misery creators.  Just make sure you know yourself well enough to understand why something is making you unhappy, otherwise we tend to throw the baby out with the bath water.

[Metalcat]

Hmm...  I think self knowledge is good.  BUT, I also think we are absolutely horrible at predicting what will make us happy.  Particularly when chronesthesia is the main source.  Tangentially related is the Paradox of Choice. 

In general, humans are far better at identifying something that is currently making them miserable, than predicting a potential future situation that will make them happy.  I believe it's best to focus energy on reducing the known, current, misery creators.  Just make sure you know yourself well enough to understand why something is making you unhappy, otherwise we tend to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Actually, the whole point of my post is that it IS difficult to know what will make you happy, which is why it's so important to focus on happiness.

Yes, it's critical to remove barriers to happiness, but those are a lot easier to identify, as you already noted.
The problem is assuming that removing barriers to happiness is what creates happiness. It really really doesn't.

Happiness is a skill, not a state.

My advice was never to reflect on what you think will make you happy, my advice was to challenge the paradigms and givens within which you make your decisions to try and create happiness.

I don't disagree with your advice at all, I think far too many people stay in voluntary, happiness-precluding, miserable situations because of some plan they've commited to, with some unfounded expectation that it will generate happiness at some point.

Meanwhile, being complicit in your own misery in the present is a pretty good way to stay miserable in the future, as it reinforces patterns of behaviour, and patterns/habits should never be underestimated in terms of staying power.

Happiness is not a passive state, it's an activity. It requires continual work, and it isn't easy or even intuitive most of the time.

[Classical_Liberal]

The problem is assuming that removing barriers to happiness is what creates happiness. It really really doesn't.

Happiness is a skill, not a state.

Agree and disagree.  I think the last point is valid.  However I think a huge part of that skill is "removing barriers".  To clarify that definition in the sense I write of it, removing a barrier is removing something from your life that fosters unhappiness. Not pursuing something with an end goal of being more happy.  It's the journey that creates happiness not the destination.  Mainly because we are very bad at predicting whether the destination will make us happy.  Of course, it's also true that one can be happy in any situation, even with these barriers, particulaly if they are ones out of our control. It goes back to knowing what you can control and what you can't.

Of course some people have the skill to be happy in any circumstances, I'm not saying it's impossible.  It just seems silly to remain in a controllable, miserable situation if you want to be happy.

My advice was never to reflect on what you think will make you happy, my advice was to challenge the paradigms and givens within which you make your decisions to try and create happiness.

If by paradigms you mean mental models or frameworks,  I would agree.  The more frameworks you have the deeper your toolbox.  Better to have a screwdriver when given a screw (some pun intended), because if all you have is a hammer it's gonna be a tough job.

Happiness is not a passive state, it's an activity. It requires continual work, and it isn't easy or even intuitive most of the time.

Life is a river :)