The groom’s parents were under no obligation to cough up any money except for the rehearsal dinner, a casual affair whose “wow” factor was purposely kept at a low setting to avoid stealing any thunder from the wedding the next day. When young women started moving out of their parents’ homes and becoming self-supportive, they also began chipping in for their weddings, breaking with tradition and effectively ending the bride’s parents’ reign as the sole wedding sponsors.

Today, if an engaged couple wants to have a wedding they can’t pay for in full on their own, they turn to both sets of parents for help. And they’re getting it: A recent Wedding Wire Newlywed Report found that parents pay an average of 52 percent of the wedding bills while the couple shells out about 47 percent. Given that the average wedding in 2020 cost $19,000—down from a pre-COVID-19 high of $28,000 in 2019, according to a Knot Real Weddings Study—it may make sense for multiple parties to hand over their credit cards.

But how do you broach such a delicate subject as money? You can do it with honesty, respect, and a polite demeanor. Awkward, yes, but a necessary step since you need to know how much your budget is so you can start planning. Your folks love you but will that translate into them paying for the bar, the wedding cake, or (hopefully) more? Here are a few tips to make the talk go smoothly:

Give them a heads up

If you think that blindsiding your parents with a monetary request is a good idea, listen closely—it’s probably not. A better, proven strategy is asking to have a conversation with them in the near future. “This allows them time to get their thoughts together and give you a constructive answer,” says Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute, in Burlington, Vermont, and cohost of the “Awesome Etiquette” podcast. “Say, ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I want to set up a good time to talk with you about wedding finances and any potential contributions you were thinking of making. [Spouse-to-be] and I are figuring out what we’re working with.’ This leaves room for them to say, ‘We wish we could pay for the whole wedding but can’t. This is what we can do.’” The best place for the talk is their home or a quiet restaurant, Post adds.

Talk to them separately

Rather than making it a team effort, consider whether you and your partner should talk separately to your respective parents. “It might make some families feel a little more comfortable talking about money with just their own child,” says Post.  “Especially if they’re delivering bad news.” Include each other in any subsequent money talks with your parents.

Find out if the funds are conditional

This happens more than you might think: A bride’s mother could offer to pay for the wedding dress but with one stipulation: She gets to choose it. Or she and Dad might want to dictate the guest list, the event location, or some other major aspect of the wedding. “Whether a parent offers to pay for something specific or write a blank check, you should ask if any strings are attached,” says Post. “Ask that question as though it’s perfectly fine if there are conditions—it lets you know their expectations so you can say, if need be, ‘I really want the freedom of choice on this one so I’ll respectfully decline your help.’”

Don’t bring up how much more they gave your sister five years ago

No, it’s not because they love you less—the reason may be that they simply had more to give back then. Now they may be saving every penny to retire in a few years, have a huge medical debt to pay off, or are earning much less. Whatever the reason, don’t dwell on it; instead, keep your eye on creating a spectacular wedding with the funds you do have. “The more you keep focusing on how great you’re going to make your wedding, the less you’ll think about what your sister had,” says Post.

Be gracious, even if they offer nothing

As disappointed as you may feel, you should be understanding—they may feel worse. “If they say, ‘We can’t do anything for you,’ say, ‘I’m so glad we asked,” says Post, “so now we know how to move forward with the planning.’”

The post How to Ask Your Parents For Money for Your Wedding appeared first on Stash Learn.

I know.

When we got engaged, my fiancé and I hadn’t thought about the cost of a wedding, or researched those jarring numbers. Once we realized the price, we wondered if we should elope, but it didn’t feel right. I’d never pictured a specific dream wedding, but I’ve always known I wanted to be surrounded by friends and family. Our very generous parents volunteered to help us with some of the wedding costs, but we still needed to figure out ways to cut corners while keeping the event classy and fun. Now our wedding is just two months away, and (thankfully) the planning is done. And we hit our goal of staying under the average New York wedding.

If you’re planning a wedding soon, here are some ways we were able to get creative and save some cash.

Drop-Out Dates

My fiancé and I found our perfect venue and were so excited. Only problem? It exceeded our budget. But the manager told us there was a “drop-out” date in July—meaning a couple had booked the date but either broke up or decided to have the wedding elsewhere—and if we were willing to plan the wedding in just seven months, we could have the venue and reception dinner at 33 percent off. We took it. If you’re flexible with your date and willing to plan quickly, asking about drop out dates is an option.

As a result of accepting a drop out date, we’re getting married at a beautiful, private camp in New York’s Catskills surrounded by 160 friends and family. The venue has all the classic, rustic beauty of upstate New York with some fun and unfussy quirks that fit our lifestyle, like an on-premises dive bar for a karaoke after-party!

Invitations and Save the Dates can be made cheaply!

With all due respect to talented, hard-working artists and designers, in 2019 you don’t need to pay them to make your wedding invitation. So many free templates already exist. Plus, services like Canva and BeFunky make it easy for anyone with a keen eye to design an invitation. I designed my Save the Dates in Photoshop and had 200 printed beautifully for $113. If I had more time to research, I probably could have gotten them even cheaper.

Forget Expensive Thank You Cards

Even if you go big on invitations, do not go big on Thank You cards! Every invitation service will try to pressure you to buy matching Thank Yous. But guess what? Nobody cares about that. We bought 300 lovely Thank You cards for $41 on Amazon.

Remember Craigslist?

There are so many things that married couples need to get rid of after their wedding. White umbrellas. Chalkboards. Decorations. Card boxes. Craigslist has been a great resource for picking up these little things secondhand. In all, I spent $50 on Craigslist purchases, and saved at least $400.

Follow Vendors on Social Media and Look for Deals

Most wedding vendors—the florists, photographers, and caterers that help make the event—will offer some kind of deal at some point during the year, so keep an eye out! I’m not great at haggling, but by following vendors on social media, I was able to take advantage of deals they offered, like $500 off our photographer. I also tracked “Trunk Shows” at local bridal boutiques, and snagged my dream dress for 10 percent off. It’s a traditional, white, A-line gown, but with rainbows.

Buy Practical Gifts for Your Bridal Party

The tradition of a cash-strapped couple buying gifts for their bridal party strikes me as a little odd, but we’re going with it anyway. But instead of wasting money on silly or unnecessary gifts, we’re buying matching ties for the groomsmen and paying for the bridesmaids to have their hair done. This saves some money for our bridal party ($40 on ties for each guy, and $70 on hair for the ladies) and ensures everyone will match and look their best.

Use Your Friends and Family

One wonderful thing about planning a wedding is how many people volunteer to help. So put them to work! One of my bridesmaids is in a screenprinting class, and printed a custom design on canvas gift bags for guests. My aunt with a Cricut is making a sign to place in front of the venue. My mother has beautiful handwriting and addressed the invitations, so no fancy printing or calligrapher was necessary. My sister’s boyfriend is a musician and volunteered to play the ceremony.

Take advantage of your friends with special talents, Costco memberships, or simply extra time on their hands to do tedious work. In the end, we saved at least $1,500 on items our friends and family made for us!

Happy planning!

The post Put a Ring on These 7 Money-Saving Wedding Tips appeared first on Stash Learn.

When you stare dreamily into the eyes of your new husband or wife and say to each other, “Let’s make smart financial decisions with all the wedding gift cash we just got!”

Okay, so it may not be the first thing you tackle in the hours after you say, “I do.” But how to spend that wedding windfall deserves some serious consideration.

“You’re in this relationship and you are committed to each other. So the same thing should apply to your finances,” said Trent Bryson, a certified financial planner and CEO of Bryson Financial in Long Beach, California. “Part of a marriage is you’re coming together and you’re starting to plan things together.”

Before you walk down the aisle (or at least before you start writing all those thank you notes) check out our dos and don’ts of spending your wedding gift cash.

Do start a joint savings account

While some couples prefer to keep separate bank accounts, it makes smart financial (and relationship) sense to set aside an account that’s for both of you. A joint savings account is a great team effort to save for major household items like kitchen updates, furniture, or new appliances. You can even it used to fund a vacation or for a baby and starting a family. Consider having an automated deposit from your paychecks and then discuss with your spouse how and when to spend the money you save.

Do build an emergency fund

Regardless of your financial situation, consider setting up an emergency fund. It can help you achieve your financial goals.

Tyler Dolan, a CFP with Society of Grownups, got firsthand experience with this “do” after he got married in 2014. He and his new bride sat down and made a list of financial priorities, starting with stashing away three to six months of income just in case.

“It’s really important to have something to fall back on in the event something unexpected happens, he said. And in Dolan’s case, the unexpected happened in the form of being laid off shortly after they were married. “Thankfully we had the emergency fund to draw from because, if not, we would have been totally scrambling and panicking.”

Do begin a joint retirement account

There’s no better time to get that nest egg started, Bryson said. And it’s also a symbolic gesture of your commitment to growing old together.  “The earlier you get started,” he said, “the better off you are.”

Two retirement plans to consider are an individual retirement account (IRA) and a 401(k). While you can only contribute to a 401(k) if your employer offers them, anyone can set up an IRA, and you have some choices—you can set up either a traditional or Roth IRA.

You can find out more about the differences between IRA and 401(k) accounts here.

Do save for a down payment on a house

This “do” is Bryson’s favorite way for new couples to spend their wedding cash because it’s both practical and fun. “It’s the most stable investment you can have,” he said of homeownership. “If they can use it as a down payment on a house that’s within their means, I think that that’s the best.”

Do pay off your student loans and credit card debt

Sure student and credit card loans aren’t sexy. But then again, neither is debt. “You are easing a burden together,” Bryson said. “And you’re saying, ‘Let’s remove this stress from our lives and pay this down so that we can begin the next step.’”

Do invest

Whether you are increasing your contribution to your 401(k) or investing for a medium range goal, 5 to 10 years out, make sure your money is working for you, Dolan said, “rather than having it sit in a bank account.”

Do consider life insurance policies

Talking about death isn’t the most romantic gesture. Think of it instead as caring enough about each other to make sure you’re protected. Getting started with life insurance right away makes smart financial sense for several reasons. First, the younger you are, the lower your premiums could be. Life insurance can also take a weight off your mind when it comes to providing potential income for your family, and for paying costly burial services in the event of a death.

Don’t blow it all on your honeymoon

This will not be the only vacation you take as a married couple. Instead of blowing all your cash on a far-flung, exotic and expensive honeymoon create those first memories together on a nice vacation that you can comfortably afford. “Spending more money on a honeymoon doesn’t create more happiness,” Bryson said.

Don’t keep the money under the mattress—or anywhere else in the house

This is Dolan’s No. 1 ‘don’t.’ That wad of cash and checks in your hand no doubt feels good, but it’s not safe to keep it lying around, even if you think it’s well hidden. “Stuff happens,” he said. “There could be theft, there could be fire.” Put that money in a bank account as soon as you can.

Don’t buy a brand new car

No one wants to drive off into the sunset in a 10-year-old beater, but a short-term reward is not the best use of your wedding gifts. With a major (and possibly unnecessary) splurge, “you’re already kind of tainting the idea of something permanent,” Bryson says. “If you’re getting this gift and you really want to set yourself up for success, think about it in the long term, just like you are committing to the relationship in the long term.”

Don’t forget to treat yourselves just a little… and within reason

It’s your wedding! You have a wonderful reason to celebrate and, thanks to the gifts, a way to do so. But the key, Dolan said, is to make it a splurge rather than a spree. He and his wife decided to add a few wedding-gift funded extras to their honeymoon, like a sunset sail or a nice dinner together.

“It’s okay when you are sitting down with priorities and goals to say, ‘Let’s have a little bit of fun,’” Dolan said. “Not with all of it, but it’s important to understand that life is short.”

The post Financial Advice for Newlyweds: What Should I Do With Wedding Gift Money? appeared first on Stash Learn.

Valentine’s Day, as an annual romantic celebration, was invented by Hallmark about a hundred years ago to sell greeting cards. Since then, it’s expanded into a $20 billion industry. That’s how much people spend on Valentine’s every year, according to the National Retail Federation.

We break down Love Inc., by the numbers.

Gold

Gold, the key ingredient in wedding bands, has been in use since ancient times, as jewelry and also as money, because everybody recognized the value of the glinting, yellow metal. It has industrial uses as well, that have nothing to do with ornamentation. Your cell phone contains bits of gold. It’s also in cars, circuit boards, dental fillings and NASA space equipment.

All the gold in the world totals about 170,000 metric tons, if it were all gathered together in one place. If all the world’s gold were melted into a cube, that cube of solid gold would measure 20.7 feet to the side.

Americans eat $18 billion worth of chocolate per year, which amounts to 18 percent of the world supply.

So how much is gold worth? We normally weigh it in ounces, not tons, and it’s currently trading at about $1,300 an ounce. Gold is volatile, and it increased increasing 12% in December and January, before dropping to its current level, as the stock market roiled through its extreme sell-offs since last week, including the Dow’s biggest single-day point drop ever (down 1,175) on Monday.

With gold priced at about $1,300 an ounce, now might not be a bad time to buy a wedding band. Yet,  the price of gold has gone way down since hitting its peak in 2011 of $1,889.70 an ounce.

Fortunately most wedding bands weigh no more than 0.35 ounces. That little band around your finger doesn’t amount to much weight. But here we are, paying $300 to $3,000 for a wedding ring. Why? Because it’s “platinum”? No. It’s because of the sentiment.

But that pales compared to engagement rings, which can cost more than $6,000, on average. Remember, there’s no rule that says you have to spend that much. Or even that a ring must have a diamond at all.

Chocolate

Americans love chocolate. Those $5 heart-shaped Russell Stovers at Walgreens and those $125 gilded boxes of Godivas really add up to billions and billions of dollars of consumer spending.

Americans eat $18 billion worth of chocolate per year, which amounts to 18 percent of the world supply.

Valentine’s Day spending gets a big piece of that. We’re expected to spend about $1.8 billion on candy on February 14. And that includes a lot of chocolate hearts with gooey centers.

Where does all this chocolate come from? Big Chocolate is dominated by Nestle, a Swiss conglomerate, and Hershey and Mars Inc., and also Ferrero, the maker of Nutella.

One of the biggest business stories of the year so far is when Nestle sold $3 billion worth of candy brands, including Butterfinger and Babe Ruth to Ferrero. Chocolate is big business.

Weddings

Weddings are a $76 billion industry. There are more than 300,000 wedding-related businesses employing 1.2 million people and the industry is growing 2.8% every year.

How much does the average wedding cost? About $35,000, according to recent survey from The Knot, a site devoted to the wedding industry.

The venue where the wedding actually takes place gets the lion’s share of the take, about $16,000, followed by the band, who typically earn about  $4,000. Overall wedding prices vary widely depending on the location, with Manhattan being the most expensive, at $78,000. For those on a budget, Arkansas is the cheapest, but even in Little Rock the typical wedding costs $19,000.

That doesn’t even count the cost of the honeymoon.

The average cost of a honeymoon is harder to nail down, because it depends on the destination. A 2015 report from WeddingWire, a company that works in the wedding retail industry, puts the average honeymoon cost at about $3,882.

One classic honeymoon is the ocean cruise, and cruises are a big business, creating a $117 billion industry annually, according to the Cruise Lines International Association. How much does a cruise cost? A website for cruise line might list packages starts at $1,000 for two, but the travel guide Frommer’s says the average is closer to $4,000.

Remember: Food is included, but many times, the drinks are not

Starter homes

The term “starter home” seems to suggest something cheap purchased by newlyweds, in the hope that it will appreciate in value and they’ll someday sell up to something bigger. The median price of a home sold in the U.S. in December 2017 was $335,400, according to the U.S. Census. So a starter home is likely to  be cheaper than that, on average.

Hundreds of thousands of people are buying these lower-cost homes. In tracking real estate deals by price, the Census Bureau says that 18,000 units sold for less than $150,000 in 2017. Another 62,000 houses sold for between $150,000 to $199,999, and 187,000 abodes sold for between $200,000 and $299,999.

Beyond that, as the price of houses get more expensive, the number of buyers drops.

Who says you can’t put a price on love?

The post The Business of Valentine’s Day: Love Inc. appeared first on Stash Learn.