FOREX NEW YORK COMPANIES

Newlyweds and couples moving toward marriage, take note. Love, as it turns out, is not all you need.

Not if your goal is to avoid the No. 1 reason marriages end in divorce: Money problems.

"Mature, responsible conversations about money are a sign of a marriage that's going to be healthy and wonderful and enduring," said Brooke Salvini, a certified financial planner based in San Louis Obispo, Calif. "If you can't talk about money when you are dating, that is a red flag right there."

To get the conversation rolling, here are seven steps experts recommend to steer clear of marital money troubles:

Disclose financial records.

Before corporations merge they get a close look at each other's financial records. Take the same approach before you get hitched.

Swap statements for your bank accounts, credit cards, student loans, retirement accounts and so on. Also share credit reports and FICO scores.

"Not only can you start to put together a balance sheet of what the two of you own and what your debts are, you can start to discuss 'Do we want to combine our checking account?' " Salvini said.

Discuss financial goals.

A huge part of getting in sync with your spouse begins with discussing major life goals and the necessary financial commitments.

Discuss short-term goals, such as paying off credit card debt, and then craft a budget that sets you clearly on a path toward your goals.

Budget spending.

Failing to create and stick to a mutually agreed upon budget can lead to marital strife.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Start off by listing monthly income. Add in interest earned on money-market accounts and dividends from any investments. Then add up all expenses, including car payments, rent, groceries, gym membership and utilities.

If you're making more than you spend each month, begin planning how to set aside money for long-term financial goals. If not, consider ways to cut spending.

Treat your money as "our money."

Many newlyweds continue to see the money they earn individually as their own. They keep separate bank accounts and pitch in, perhaps equally, or not, to pay bills.

That can lead to problems, especially if one spouse earns a lot more than the other, said Anthony Chambers, a clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University.

If both spouses work, he suggests they arrange for their paychecks to be deposited directly into a joint account that's used to pay all shared expenses.

If they feel they need to have some of their money in a separate account, that's fine. But Chambers said the funds should come from the joint account so both spouses know where the money is going.

Keep credit cards separate.

It's not necessary to make your spouse a joint accountholder on your credit cards, especially if he or she has a poor credit history, which can drag down your own credit rating. Instead, make your spouse an authorized user of your credit cards. This avoids potential impact to your credit rating.

Don't split costs 50-50.

In marriage as in most other scenarios, money is power. Although splitting household costs down the middle may work early on in a relationship, it can breed resentment when one spouse makes a lot more money than the other.

"Very few things in marriage are exactly 50-50," said Chambers. "That can really start to bring up all of these other issues of fairness."

Talk about spending.

Talk about spending to find out how your habits match up. One person might have grown up in a family that counted every penny. The other might part far more easily with money.

Even small differences can become wedge issues later on.

If I were investing my own money, whom would I trust to run a company and make a profitable return?

If the choice were between someone who had been successful and made buckets of money for others who had invested with him, or someone who had not only lost money but who had also actually taken investors' money and given it to some of his cronies ... well, whom would you trust?

Let's face it: Mitt Romney has made buckets of money for those who have invested their own money with him in his business ventures. Even the Obama camp admits that.

On the other hand President Barack Obama has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the auto sector, energy sector and "stimulus" sector of our economy ... that is, none of his own discretionary money we are aware of, but hundreds of billions of tax dollars the IRS demands from us every paycheck. But he didn't stop there. In our name - USA taxpayers - Obama has borrowed trillions of dollars to invest in many sectors. What are the results?

To save GM and Chrysler, he invested $82 billion tax dollars. Surely this hefty amount would "save" Detroit? No, both companies declared bankruptcy anyway. By the way, those two companies still owe about $24 billion.

Union workers didn't lose a nickel, but those of us who had GM or Chrysler stock in our pension plans lost our shirts. Oh, and 2,500 non-union autoworkers lost their jobs not counting the closings of hundreds of dealerships and workers who lost their jobs.

In the energy arena, Obama not only shut down a hundred thousand or so jobs through his moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but he also invested tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in green energy, promising to create 5,000,000 new jobs. So, how's that working? Can you say Solyndra, Beacon Power or Ener1? Not any more, since they've all filed for bankruptcy.

And, let's not forget the nearly trillion-dollar investment in "shovel-ready jobs" poured into an abyss at the beginning of his presidency.

How many jobs have all of Obama's investments created? Checking the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have fewer Americans working today than we had before he took over investing in our economy.

We have to give the president credit - literally. He's spent trillions of taxpayer dollars trying to rev up the economy, and he's borrowed nearly $6 trillion more that our grandchildren will have to repay. If I were investing my own tax dollars, whom would I want to run this country? If you earn a paycheck, you're investing too. Choose carefully. Our grandchildren will judge our choices.