What would you do if you found an extra $1,900 you didn’t know you had, hidden away in a pocket somewhere? This is essentially what happens when you write your premarital contract using Hello Prenup. As many of you have already discovered, the cost of a typical prenuptial agreement is around $2,500–and can often be substantially more expensive than that. Hello Prenup has designed a software that streamlines and drastically reduces both the cost and the stress of this process, allowing you to draft your agreement from the comfort of your sofa. If you haven’t already, check out how it works.
Here are our top 5 ways to spend the (at least!) $1,900 that you save by choosing Hello Prenup.
1. Make it Grow
Invest, invest, invest!
You could put that chunk of change into a Roth IRA for yourselves or into a college fund for your future children. Imagine you invest the $1,900 into a Roth IRA, estimate a conservative 7% annual return, and don’t touch it for 10 years. It will nearly double in size (Burnette, 2021)–and that’s without considering that sometimes the annual return for Roth IRAs can be around 10% (Human Interest Team, 2020)!
Similarly, if you add a $1,000 contribution every year, it will swell to $18,522 in 10 years, growing by nearly 10x (Burnette, 2021). The money you save by using Hello Prenup could truly act as a seed for your and your family’s future.
You can also make your money grow by investing in crypto such as Bitcoin or you might consider NFTs as a part of your financial future. Every investor knows the importance of diversifying one’s assets; although it might not be advisable to bet everything you have on crypto, holding some form(s) of cryptocurrency and/or NFTs can be a wise addition to a robust portfolio.
2. Travel the World
$1,900 is approximately the cost of a long-distance round-trip plane journey for two.
Wedding planning can be expensive; your $1,900 could even help offset the cost of the honeymoon. Check out our super unique take on 5 affordable honeymoon destinations in which $1,900 could spell weeks worth of quaint air bnbs, spa treatments, chocolate, food, or wine tours, high-altitude hiking, and yoga classes galore.
Maybe you already have your honeymoon covered, but you’d like to put these savings towards another trip. If you’re on the east coast, that’s more than enough to get you to and from most places in Europe or Central America. From the west coast you could visit Tokyo, Colombia, Bangkok or New Delhi and still have a few hundred more to spare after the cost of the plane ticket. Alternatively, you might use your $1,900 in savings to visit far away family, friends you haven’t seen in a long time, or to sponsor four weekend getaways with a budget of $500 each.
3. Put it Towards Buying a Home Together
Although $1,900 may seem like a drop in the bucket when looking at soaring real estate prices, this little drop can make quite a splash if you consider it a part of your down payment. The average home down payment is only 6% (Araj, 2022). Let’s say you buy a home in Florida for around $300k, which is the average home price in Florida (Daly, 2021). That means your down payment will be $18,000. The money you save by using Hello Prenup is therefore almost 10% of your Florida down payment. Buyers in Pennsylvania, on the other hand, only spend an average of $234k (Daly, 2021), reducing their downpayment to $14,000. In this case, $1,900 is 14% of their down payment. Of course, recently-married couples often invest in smaller and more affordable houses as their first homes together, which makes $1,900 even more substantial. You’re welcome!
4. Donate to Charity
Sometimes passing on your savings is even more pleasurable than reaping the benefits yourself. Here are a few of our favorite ways to help others:
Kiva: Kiva is a micro-loan platform in which you can browse through thousands of people around the world who need small loans in order to complete important projects in their lives and communities. You could help someone in a conflict zone access a loan that might be hard to receive in their area, gift a new refrigerator to a rural low-income family in Guatemala, or help a sustainable farmer in Peru to buy organic compost. Since the money you give is a loan, you can re-invest it over and over every time it is returned. Borrowers on Kiva have a 97% repayment rate, so you can rest (mostly) assured that your investment will be returned. You can also split up your money and distribute it throughout as many projects as you’d like.
Right now, Kiva is running a promotion inspired by International Women’s Day in which they are featuring female entrepreneurs from around the world whose borrowed funds are helping them achieve financial freedom and change the world.
Camfed: An Africa-based charity that does incredible work educating girls and preparing them to be future leaders in their countries and communities. The money you save could change the lives of girls who might not otherwise have access to education.
Dads Make a Difference: This organization helps families become financially stable and self-reliant by empowering Dads and promoting healthy fatherhood practices and healthy family relationships alongside educating youngsters on responsible parenting.
Choosing philanthropic projects to support together is also an excellent couple’s activity! By donating your savings, you can make a positive impact on your own relationship and the world at large.
5. Use it to Continue Your Education or Take a Class Together
Learning together is a fantastic way to develop yourselves as people, exercise your brains, and inject a shot of novelty into your relationship. A 2000 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that participation in novel activities helped couples to improve relationship quality as well as passion (Friedlander, 2019).
Even doing something new that only takes seven minutes was reported to have made a significant difference (Friedlander, 2019)…but if you have $1,900 at your disposal, you could learn a lot more than seven minutes worth! What’s a skill you’ve both always wanted to learn or develop? Are you both interested in Sichuanese cooking, acro yoga, or stock trading?
The 2000 study also showed that the couples who enjoyed the highest rates of relationship satisfaction were those who did activities they described as ‘exciting’ (Friedlander, 2019). So, if you’ve ever wanted to take up skydiving, scuba diving, kitesurfing, or any other adrenaline-inducing activity, you could celebrate signing your prenup by investing the extra $1,900 into one of these activities.
Whatever your preference for activity type, investing the savings into learning something new together will boost your relationship.
Hello Prenup is in the business of strengthening relationships by helping couples plan and manifest fruitful financial futures. Whether you travel, donate to charity, buy a home, invest, or learn something new together, we’d be delighted if the money you save by using our service is invested back into your relationship. Ready to get started?
All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. HelloPrenup, LLC (“HelloPrenup”) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site. HelloPrenup will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. These terms and conditions of use are subject to change at any time and without notice. HelloPrenup provides a platform for contract related self-help. The information provided by HelloPrenup along with the content on our website related to legal matters (“Information”) is provided for your private use and does not constitute legal advice. We do not review any information you provide us for legal accuracy or sufficiency, draw legal conclusions, provide opinions about your selection of forms, or apply the law to the facts of your situation. If you need legal advice for a specific problem, you should consult with a licensed attorney. Neither HelloPrenup nor any information provided by Hello Prenup is a substitute for legal advice from a qualified attorney licensed to practice in an appropriate jurisdiction.
Julia Rodgers is HelloPrenup’s CEO and Co-Founder. She is a Massachusetts family law attorney and true believer in the value of prenuptial agreements. HelloPrenup was created with the goal of automating the prenup process, making it more collaborative, time efficient and cost effective. Julia believes that a healthy marriage is one in which couples can openly communicate about finances and life goals. You can read more about us here 
Questions? Reach out to Julia directly at [email protected].
References
Araj, 2022. What is the Average Down Payment on a House? Retrieved from: https://www.rocketmortgage.com/learn/what-is-the-average-down-payment-on-a-house
Burnette. 2021. Compound Interest Calculator. Retrieved from: https://www.nerdwallet.com/banking/calculator/compound-interest-calculator
Daly, L. 2021. Average House Price By State in 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-house-price-state/#:~:text=Average%20home%20price%20in%20the,when%20the%20median%20was%20%24322%2C600.&text=Median%20sales%20price%20of%20homes%20in%20the%20U.S.
Friedlander, J. 2019. The Power of Learning New Things Together. Retrieved from: https://www.success.com/the-power-of-learning-new-things-together/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CLearning%20new%20things%20together%20strengthens,failures%20are%20bound%20to%20happen.
Human Interest Team, 2020. How does a Roth IRA grow & earn interest? Retrieved from: https://humaninterest.com/learn/articles/how-does-a-roth-ira-grow/
Julia Rodgers is HelloPrenup’s CEO and Co-Founder. She is a Massachusetts family law attorney and true believer in the value of prenuptial agreements. HelloPrenup was created with the goal of automating the prenup process, making it more collaborative, time efficient and cost effective. Julia believes that a healthy marriage is one in which couples can openly communicate about finances and life goals. You can read more about us here Questions? Reach out to Julia directly at [email protected].
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