Congratulations to Morgan Linton and Daina on their recent engagment. If you’ve been around Morgan the last year you could see the relationship escalating and pretty much assumed this day was coming soon. It’s always nice to see young love and it’s especially nice to see that his new wife enjoys domain investing and all that he does. He truly has a new partner. If I was to give him 5 points of advice in regards to domain investing.
1. Put a list together of all your domains and websites, where they are registered and for how long. Do the same for your passwords. Make sure it is kept updated and put in a safe deposit box. If anything ever happens to you, you want to make sure she has all the info necessary to access your assets.
2. Speaking of assets, your domains and websites are assets and need to be treated as such. If you get married you better decide how you want a divorce to affect your sites and domains. There is a domainer that recently got divorced and he is having a hell of a time divying up the pot. It’s hard to talk prenup during such happy times and if you want her to have them fine, but you still have to think about the “what ifs”
3. Use the “outsider” point of view to your advantage. We are too biased and we don’t have estrogen. Ask them what they think about certain purchases. They can save you a ton of money by pointing out things we miss. Don’t dismiss it as “what do you know” because she doesn’t and some times that’s a better opinion.
4. Don’t tell domain jokes around the house. They aren’t funny to anyone but other domainers. Even then it’s pushing it. Domaing Gang has a zero percent chance of drawing a laugh in most houses. Saying Mike Mann does steriods draws a “really?” rather than a chuckle.
5. Spend some time apart but just as importantly always spend time together after the kids. I tell all couples this. You need to grow as an individual just as much as a couple. You need you time. To be who you were before you met. Certainly you are a better person once you’ve found the person that you love but you also need to be you. Your friends are YOUR friends and although they certainly will accept your new wife, they are your friends not hers. Keep that friendship growing. Friends are as important as a wife. They fill another part of who you are. After you have kids you need to do somewhat of the opposite. It is common for each person to take on different roles in raising the kids and many times that forces the parents to quit building their relationship. When the kids grow up, you’ll look at each other and say “who are you?” because your jobs were to work and raise the kids. In short, there was you, then it was you and your wife, then it was your family. You have to work on all three of those indepently.
And you thought I just had domaining advice.
Great Shane advices for Morgan’s couple. My advice to Shane now, get a domain name like domaincoupleguide.com
Build a website selling an e-guide around it and you’ll make profits LOL
No, seriously I like the password thing. I don’t have anything from paypal to domains… in a safe for my wife or else so if one day I passed away all will be dropped. Because none in my family are interested about it, I can have domain names that worth thousands but nobody cares. There is only 1 or 2 .com that my son would like to have so I might transfer to his name and renew it for 10 years giving him access codes too because they are real assets I’ll never sell it.
Shane,
That was really something. I say congrats to the couple!
To assure no break-ups, make a a pre-nup that gives me all the domains and websites, including but not limited to Kayak.org ….that will discourage breakup 😉
I’ve met Morgan at a local meetup event, great guy, very happy for him. Good advice by the way, somehow it’s always very hard to bring up prenup at happy times.
While I would agree premarital counseling is advisable for any couple planning on getting married (some churches mandate it), IMO if you need a prenup, you aren’t ready to get married.
Shane, in one of your domaining tips posts, you say that GoDaddy can tell us how often people check WhoIs details for our domains, but I contacted them and they don’t have this service. Were you thinking of something else? If so, please let us know as I want to be able to check this.
Look at my article on how to do it. I’m on my phone so I can’t link. Search my site and it’s there.
Shane
Leonard,
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. If you have a small amount of money when you get married the point is moot but if you have lots of money going into it, I think you would be naive to NOT get a prenup. Nobody likes to buy life insurance either but the reality is you probably will need it. The reality is half of all people will get divorced. While I certainly hope he stays happily married, Morgan has a 50/50 shot of staying married. It’s a reality. I didn’t get a prenup because I had nothing when I met my wife and everything I have, I have because of her. After 17 years of marriage I see no divorce in my future by then again, you don’t always have to see it for it to happen. Prenup has nothing to do with being ready, it is a protection from the powers of love. You lose all sense of reality when in love. And it’s a beautiful thing.
Nice article and I have to agree 100 % on the prenup. Usually people who say you are not ready or if you really are in love, don’t have any money. No disrespect to anyone, but if one person comes into the marriage with $10,000,000 and the other comes in with their looks or their smarts and a $0 balance. Prenup is the way to go.
No matter how special or unique you are, everyone says I do, they all make promises and vows before everyone close to them, and in a lot of cases to the spiritual being they believe in. So everybody thought they were marrying their soulmate and was completed by them and every other cliche. What is not cliche is 50% end in divorce. If you are 25 and think you will know how you will feel and be at 40 is just naive. To think you will know how someone else will be ? That is just pure insanity. Its work and its luck and its a lot of other things.
Good article Shane one of the better from any blog in 2011.