Your ceremony is preserved on videotape and your honeymoon is a merry memory. Now it's time to take care of the daily responsibilities of marriage - including financial planning.

How you manage your money will be a key issue in your marriage. It's important for you and your spouse to reconcile early your spending, investing and savings habits. That way, you'll have more time to define and achieve your financial goals.

As any experienced financial advisor can tell you, you should develop your own, individualized plan to take advantage of the many options available, including insurance, investments and retirement savings programs.

The right insurance

Insurance certainly isn't the most glamorous of financial services - but it can deliver peace of mind. So, what type of insurance do you need?

For one thing, you can use disability insurance to protect your family and reduce the risk of income loss from accidents or health problems. You may be able to get inexpensive disability coverage from your employer. If not, you'll want to compare the policies of several different disability providers to make sure you're getting the policy that fits your needs.

If you and your spouse are in your 20s or 30s, you might want to consider term life insurance. And, you certainly won't want to be without it if you ever have children. Term insurance premiums are generally quite reasonable, because you're only paying for the death benefit.

However, term policies grow more expensive as you get older. When you reach your 40s, you might want to consider some kind of "permanent" life insurance, such as whole life, universal life or variable universal life. These policies offer an investment component in addition to the basic death benefit.

How about investing?

If you're like many newlyweds, you may not be all that familiar with the world of investments. fortunately, you don't have to be an expert to set up a sensible investment program. What you do need, however, is discipline. You can start out by putting $50 a month into a reliable mutual fund - and letting it grow, You can even arrange for your bank to automatically deposit the money each money, so you won't "miss" it.

Of course, there are thousands of mutual funds out there. How can you know which ones will be best for you. Again, a good financial advisor can help you explore your personal risk tolerance, your ability to invest, your long-term goals and other factors. As your investment knowledge and capacity increase, you'll learn more about concepts such as diversification - spreading your investment dollars among a variety of financial products - and systematic investing - regularly putting in the same amounts of money in the same investments, regardless of their short-term performance.

Never too soon to plan for retirement

As a young married couple, the thought of retirement is probably a distant dream for you. But you should be aware that people are living longer and retiring earlier, so you'll likely have many years of retirement to fund. And, retirement isn't cheap.

In fact, many financial professionals say that to enjoy a comfortable retirement, you'll need an annual retirement income of 60% to 80% of your final working year's salary.

That's a lot of income to come up with. But, by starting early enough, you can do it; over time, your retirement money can grow tremendously. You can begin by contributing as much as you can afford to your employer's 401(k) or other retirement plan. If you're self-employed, you can set up a Keogh plan. And you can also set up an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). All these plans have one key feature in common: your earnings grow tax-deferred.

That means you won't have to pay taxes on the earnings until you retire, when you're usually in a lower tax bracket. Because tax-deferred earnings grow a lot quick than investment earnings that are taxed each year, tax deferral is a huge advantage in building your retirement savings.

Get started today

As newlyweds, you have many happy and exciting years ahead of you. You can make your lives together even more enjoyable by getting an early start on your financial planning.

Gary N. Garner is a personal financial advisor with American Express Financial Advisors Inc.