by Vonda J. Sines

Created on: September 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 29, 2008

The economics of love and marriage goes a lot deeper than whether a married couple pays a higher or a lower amount in income taxes than they would if they had remained single. Read a few interviews with Dr. Phil or take a hike over to Suze Orman's web site, and you'll understand right away why so many people consider economics the number one potential problem in marriage.

The typical young single couple is so preoccupied with physical and emotional attraction that they spend little time seriously considering what happens if and when they marry and neither one is 100 percent responsible for how every penny is spent. The case can easily be made that it's actually impossible to visualize such a scenario until you're in it. This is why so many people who marry for the first time at a later age than average go to such pains to look for mates who shop and save the same way they do.

It's tempting and downright easy to be naive about the economics of love and marriage when you're single. After all, renting one two-bedroom apartment must be cheaper than funding two one-bedroom units, right? And surely it must be cheaper to cook for two than for just one. What we tend to overlook is what happens when it's time to decide where to spend money to lease that larger apartment or exactly how much to shell out to put on the dinner table each week.

Twenty-somethings, and to an ever greater extent individuals in their thirties and forties, also appear to have hobbies that might actually charm their future mates, who see them as unusually interesting people. But what happens when the new wife who absolutely adores the theater moves in with a $350-a-month ticket habit? Or when the service group he belongs to has a hefty dues tab?

Let's face it. When most of us get married, attraction is at the very top of our list, even if we're very responsible with finances. For the couple embarking on a second or subsequent marriage, economics quickly takes over the top spot on that list. There are issues that somehow didn't seem so complex before the marriage: child support, spousal support, income tax complications, real estate to be sold, the cost of revised commuting patterns, new schools, summer camp, special medical needs of new family members. Sometimes the list seems endless.

When Jennifer, 46, and her husband Mark, 44, married 12 years ago, it was a second union for each. He was attracted to her nurturing side, and she found him responsible, with prudent financial habits much like her own.

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