Borrowing with smarts (part 7)

Financing a wedding

Another large ticket situation you may find yourself paying for is your child’s wedding. While not all children get married, most all do. You may find that your child marries young and you may find that your child waits a considerable time before marrying. Whatever the case, weddings are expensive. Since you hope this will be the wedding your child will ever have, you can talk yourself into all kinds of expenses. If you cannot talk yourself into them, then there is a very good chance that your spouse or child will talk you into them.

If you have children, think about trying to save fro wedding expenses just as you would save for college or a new car. Even if you just have a few hundred or a couple thousand dollars saved when the date id set, it will be a big advantage for you. Any saved money for a wedding is better than none.

In the day and age of progressive relationships, you will find that you are not just saving for your daughter’s wedding anymore. There are many different dynamics in today’s relationships that will pose as expenses to you when it comes to any of your children getting married.

Setting a limit or budget

It is also important that all parties involved agree on a limit or budget that will be spent on the wedding. If you have a lot of other debt, you do not want to try to impress everyone by throwing a huge and lavish wedding. It is your child’s special day and it is very understandable that you want everything to be perfect and storybook, but if you have a lot of other debt, your budget needs to be set accordingly. Besides, being responsible about your wedding expenses yourself sets a great example to the new couple about finances and how to be responsible about incurring debt.

Offering to pay a certain dollar amount towards the wedding is many times the best way to go. This way, the marrying couple can decide what is important to them. If the bride wants an expensive dress, she might have to settle for fewer guests and a more modest reception party after the nuptials. If the groom wants to invite all his coworkers and college friends, he may have to compromise by eliminating a full dinner service at the reception or forgo a full bar service. Most importantly, once a dollar amount has been decided on for the wedding, the couple has to be clear what they want from the wedding and compromise on the outcome and what is affordable.

Manageable wedding debt

There is no right amount that you should offer to spend on your child’s upcoming wedding. That is determined by your debt level, your income, the age of the child involved, the number of friends and family you want to invite, your cultural background, where you live, how many other children you have and much more. So, you will have to factor in all of these aspects in order to come up with an appropriate amount to spend on the wedding. Each family has its own equation they will have to compute here. So, its not as though you can just go by what your neighbor spent on their child’s wedding last year. Your contribution to the wedding should not create more debt than you can easily pay off within a year while paying all of your other debt obligations on time. This sounds strict, but paying more will hurt your debt reduction plan, harm your savings for retirement, and not teach the new couple anything positive about manageable finances.

There are many ways to throw a wedding that is cost efficient. Be certain that do not just set a budget and go, be sure that you research many different aspects of weddings.

Be sure to read our next section of this article about borrowing with smarts as it will cover paying for large appliances.

Part 8…

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