I’ve been noticing a conflicting trend in the last few months regarding marriage and advice to younger generations, as well as observations by older ones. In short, some articles are saying young people are getting married earlier, even while in college or early 20s now for combined social and financial benefits, and the other is that people are avoiding marriage now, finding no utility in it.  Both aspects miss the point of marriage. Let’s get the known features out of the way.

Tax Impact

There’s no question that getting married and filing jointly seems to have noticeable impacts. In simple terms, everything seems to get bigger. Income limits, standard deduction amounts, credits and everything tax-wise seems to bump up in terms of advantages. The truth is not much has changed; the limit changes are simply the combination of two individual people into one entity, tax-wise, when filing jointly. If a couple was to file separately, most of the limits and eligibility amounts would be similar to being alone again.

However, the reality is people don’t live evenly their whole life. It’s frequently the case one keeps working solid while the other may step out, the most common being pregnancy and having children. Medical issues could also take a person out of work for a while, and the same for studies. In short, lop-sided earnings happen all the time between a married couple, but they still get the benefit of the same tax limits and eligibility being married when filing jointly. That means higher income levels before benefits phase out, larger tax credits and similar. 

Financial Impact

Generally, married people are considered a better risk for all kinds of financial tools, ranging from bank accounts to loans. Married people are assumed to not being the type that run off and abandon responsibilities, so they get treated better due to assume stability. We can all think of examples where that’s not really true, but the assumption is well-established in financial processes.

Individual people, especially young and entering adulthood, are a huge unknown to the fiat system. Frequently with little credit history and minimal work records, young people alone are expected to earn their stripes with time and generating payroll records before being trusted financially. This starts with basic savings and checking accounts and expanding from there to other instruments.

Social Impact

The government, religion and society want people married. Married people tend to be more stable, they focus on income and buying homes which drive the economy in a lot of ways, they stay in jobs longer, and they have children which also drives the economy. All of those things also generate taxable income and sales, which the government benefits from. Then there is the social aspect.

People are respected and accepted more as married than as individuals. For example, if a married couple moves into a neighborhood, everyone assumes they are a new family or an upsizing couple. If an individual moves into a home in the same neighborhood, he or she is considered weird and suspect, especially if a man. Different cultural patterns and rules come into play, some overt and some mundane that treat married people different, usually advantageous.

For the individual, however, men are usually able to use marriage to step up, while for many women marriage becomes a "step aside." Women in the majority of cases give up the chase to be the breadwinner and primary partner to raise children and support their male partner. Men focus all their attention on income and let/assign their female partner take care of the domestic side. This isn't usually a formal conversation; it more often than not happens on the natural, especially as children enter the picture. For non-hetero partners, however, marriage or close to it can still be an equal pursuit of success; it just depends on what the partners want out of their relationship versus independence.

The Missing Point

I can’t say it with enough emphasis: marriage is not a financial strategy.

If you’re even thinking as a young person of using it to make life easier financially or socially, or you’re assuming it gives you and your partner advantages, they will be minimal compared to the challenges of what it takes to keep a marriage going.

The first few years of marriage may seem easy. People want to be with each other, the honeymoon phase is in full effect, and people are still growing into connecting with each other. However, after about 4 to 5 years, the work begins. At that point you generally know the person, the maturity phase starts, and the evaluation starts with, “Is this it, nothing else new is happening?” Then one has to decide whether the marriage is worth continuing. It doesn’t happen like a scheduled decision; instead, the decision happens through thousands of interactions and moments that aggregate to a feeling of satisfaction or disappointment. This is why people start to look to cheating or divorce the most during this phase up to 7 years, ergo the “7-year itch.”

Moving beyond the first phase takes mental commitment. It can be confounded by finances like trying to make ends meet, managing debt, trying to buy a home, kids, or dealing with unexpected surprises. If you're still with someone after 10 years, then there is a real good chance the marriage is going to stick, but it's still a 60/40% risk of divorce. Why? It depends on kids. If there is a full family, a tremendous amount of time, effort, frustration and money goes into raising children, even just one alone. When that's over, then people are older and they look around and go, "Where did my life go?" This is where the second phase criticality moment hits, and divorce can happen frequently here too.

Now, past the kids becoming adults and still sticking together, marriage past 20 years has a real good chance of staying solid. I'm not making this up. Once at this point, you're realizing, whether you were paying attention or not, you're with your partner for the full ride, good or bad, for better or for worse, no pun intended. What makes this realization hit hard? Health, retirement and starting to move into one's later years. You're not the big hit on the dating market anymore, and your protection and stability is your partner. While he or she might have their drawbacks, they know you and you know them, and that's fundamental survival safety in numbers. But to get to this point, again, it takes a lot of work, commitment and sacrifice. Marriage is not a simply style choice to get a tax break or societal pass. And somehow that message is getting lost in today's media, which can be costly for those diving in with wrong intentions.