Kardashian Wedding, Prenups and Talking About Money

After the 72-day marriage ended in divorce, celebrity watchers are speculating about whether Kim Kardashian’s wedding to Kris Humphries, was a made-for-TV hoax. Yet the marriage-and-divorce coverage still highlights an issue common to less grandiose weddings: not knowing your fiancé(e) before getting married and avoiding talking about money before entering into a bond that, by necessity, is intertwined with one’s finances.
“They weren’t together very long before they decided to get married, and the rest of the time they were planning this extremely elaborate wedding, so their focus was on the wedding and not the marriage,” says Micki McWade, a New York divorce coach and author of a “collaborative divorce” guide, Getting Up, Getting Over, Getting On.
The Kardashian case doesn’t mean that talking about money necessarily means getting or not getting a prenuptial agreement. It does, however, speak to the need to talk about money. Having a constructive money conversation opens up the door and breaks down the wall to topics that can be very emotionally charged like getting a prenup. (Money Habitudes is used by therapists, family law and divorce attorneys and accountants to help couples better understand each other and respect each other about how they see and handle money.)
In an ironic, related posting, Forbes contributor Nancy Anderson notes that newsflashes like the Kardashian wedding distract us from the real thinking we should be doing about personal finances:

Why are we humans so drawn into human drama instead of doing something productive?  Well, according to the research behind the book Change Anything: the New Science of Personal Success, by Kerry Patterson, et al., it is more than that.  In fact, forces are working against us influencing our decisions that we are blind to making it difficult to meet our goals and change our behaviors.

That’s partly the rationale behind the daily newsletter updates from Inspired Savings, empowering women to make smart financial choices to take more control of their life and their money.