I was reading an article by consumerreports ( https://www.consumerreports.org/marriage/financial-benefits-of-marriage/ ) talking about the financial benefits of getting married. Going through the article, I found all the main points to be silly and easily circumvented. I'll list the points below and explain/offer my input on why they're invalid.

• Lower car insurance premiums/marriage insurance discounts. Being married and insuring two or more cars MIGHT save up to $600-$700 per year but it's usually only a couple hundred dollars instead. But there's already many other discounts for car insurance, like good driver discount, good grades discount if you're in school, multi-vehicle discount if under the same policy, and more. Even without being married you can still save hundreds of dollars on car insurance. Also, if your wife has a bad driving record...you know what happens.

• More tax benefits. Article samples a situation where wife makes $65k while husband makes $40k (absurd, I know). By filing taxes jointly in 2017 they would have saved $835. Congratulations, by marrying for those financial benefits that everyone talks about, you saved $835 this year if both of you made $105k! Joy! You can save much more by throwing money into a Roth IRA/401k so that that money is non-taxable.

• More Social Security options. Admittedly, this does sound like a pretty sweet deal if one member didn't pay into Social Security for at least 10 years as the article states. If the woman contributed nothing or very little to Social Security (since it's usually the man that provides) she can still receive up to 50% of what her husband is entitled by retirement age. But the average social security payment per month is only about $1200! This amount is nowhere near optimal for a comfortable retirement! Plus, it's been speculated that because of baby boomers and the massive hit to social security and the economy, payouts will be even lower for the upcoming generations. By investing into a Roth IRA/401k at a young age, one can make two, three, four, even five times the amount of Social Security you would receive in a lifetime! Do your research if you don't believe me and the proof will be overwhelming.

• Gift tax. Not much to say about this other than if you're going your own way, the only person you should be "gifting" is yourself. Admittedly I'm not too educated on the gift tax though a little bit of reading on it seems like it's transferring huge portions of real estate and assets to another person at no cost, something I would never be interested in.

There you have it, the (not so) financial benefits of marriage, broken down in my perspective. You avoid most expenses if you're a man and go your own way anyways! As a kid I always heard that financial benefits for marriage were amazing, but once I did my own research it became a huge joke. Another one of many lies that females tried to indoctrinate young males with. Do your research and start maxing out that 401k men!