Thursday, January 22, 2009


Being Married vs Being Single

By: Asim Mohammed


Everyone knows there are many financial advantages of being married. However, not many people realize that there are financial advantages of being single too. Married couples have the benefit of sharing responsibilities and financial duties. Having a double or pooled income can help a couple reduce stress when bills and expenses need to be paid. The ease of having shared health-insurance coverage saves money for a couple. The big plus of being married is having the ability to claim additional deductions and credits. Increased earnings or shared income can result in some considerably and generous tax breaks that are not available to people who file their taxes separately or if they were to file as single.
Even though there are more advantages of being married, there are some advantages of being on the other side of the fence, being single. Liability is a topic where being single is advantageous. For example if a couple are both doctor's, which is a high-liability profession, if one gets sued that means the other persons assets are just as liable whereas if it was one doctor only one set of assets would be at risk. Another example is if two people were trying to get married and one was in good financial standing and the other was buried in debt, it might be a bad idea for the financially stable person to get married to someone who is buried in debt. It would bring them down as well. In a situation like this it would be better to stay single. Being single usually comes without the responsibility of providing for children, whereas for a married couple being responsible for children is common. In this case, single people save more money for themselves because their expenses would be a lot less compared to a married couple with kids.
The tax breaks of being single are great too. For instance, if you had an unmarried couple who both owned property they could have a larger write off compared to a couple who owns property, even though the couple’s property might be worth more.
The advantages of being single vs. married vary, though the positives of being married may be greater, it is just a matter of which life style fits you better.







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