Should women invest before marriage?

Besides buying myself a car, what else can I buy in my name that will not make me have a conflict with my future husband? Will a man find me too ‘challenging’ for him if he finds out I have invested in property?

These are some of the questions young women grapple with as they think of investing before marriage. There is one school of thought that believes that a man should do the investment while the woman takes care of ‘small’ things such as buying kids clothes and food for the family. This thought is quite popular among the low-income women and, surprisingly, even among some super scale salary earners.

Besides, before the current rat race whereby women want to prove that they are as good as men or even better, our mothers took the role of housewife and the man took care of the bills as well as investment. Life was simple. There were no fights about ‘mine’ and ‘yours’.

With this kind of background, some women hesitate to invest in their names even before marriage. Many argue that men will ‘fear’ them for their financial empowerment and instead, look for a woman with less muscle when it comes to money. It is said men are more comfortable taking care of a woman than having a woman who comes to the table with equal financial power.

The second school of thought, which is our focus today, rubbishes such reasoning. Once you get a job, whether you are a man or woman you must do two things: One, invest for your future comfort or for that rainy day when, for example, you are between jobs and two, for your retirement. Yes, your retirement. There is nothing as certain as retirement. That is if death doesn’t grab you earlier.

These days, I hear there are even death policies being sold by insurance companies – you choose the kind of coffin you will be buried in and start saving towards that end...

Anyway, this pro-investment school of thought encourages women and men to be aggressive in sniffing out investment opportunities, seeking professional financial advisers and getting their money into projects that will earn them sufficient returns. Only an insecure man will fear marrying a woman with a sharp mind to invest for the future. As long as you put everything on the table before marriage and agree on separation of ownership, there is nothing to fear; not even about losing your pre-nuptial investments.

In fact, you must have your investment before marriage secured. A colleague who got married two years ago, entered the union a millionaire; that is if you take her savings in our Sacco into account, which is about Sh1.2 million shares and a few pieces of land she bought through the Sacco, which keep appreciating every few months. She also bought shares in blue chip companies at the NSE and gets tidy dividends every year. She points out that she and her husband agreed during courtship that what was already hers remains that way but it is her decision whether she would want to include him. However, she put it clear that she was only going to change beneficiaries from her parents and sister to her children once they come along.

She says her investment before marriage gave her a solid foundation and a dependable fall back in case anything went wrong, financially speaking.

Then, and I think the most important bit is that her investment before marriage ensured that she entered the relationship commanding respect. For the last two years, her husband has not treated her as a junior partner in the union or used derogatory terms to refer to her in case of financial inferiority as she has heard some of her friends being called. When a man pulls the family purse – with time – he starts to see the wife as a leech.

“Therefore, it is important that you too, are ready to use your money for the betterment of the family. For example, if you are jointly investing, say, without being coerced, how much you will contribute to the project and go ahead and do it,” she says, adding that some women are so mean with their personal investments that they can’t ‘touch’ it even if someone was on fire.

Invest when you are young, that is her advice; but don’t fear using your investment to ensure your life is comfortable.