A、Marriage has nothing to do with income. B、Marriage may help one get better paid. C、Marriage can lower one’s income. D、Marriage

M: You’ve spent your life building your nest egg, and protecting your assets and then it happens. You fall in love. But is marriage a good financial move for you? (1) On today’s money, marriage and your finances. Money in Today’s Financial’s editor Jean Chatzky will give us some advice. Jean, hey!
W: Hey!
M: So marriage is a beautiful thing. But look at it from sort of like a cold hard financial perspective, is it a smart thing to get married?
W: (2) It rolls a lot of people’s assets into a risky position. Because... think about it this way, we are getting married later, which means we are coming at marriage by the time that we have houses, retirement accounts, we may have kids from a previous marriage, we wanna take care of all of those things, and just tying the knot can actually put those assets in a precarious position.
M: And having that money talk when you are in love is so hard, isn’t it?
W: It’s hard when you are not in love. I mean, I only say I do what I do for a very specific reason, talking about money used to and still does at some point make me completely nuts and (3) if you don’t have these conversations, then you are going to really do yourself serious financial damage.
M: Although it is a tough job to talk about money, you gotta have the talk, right?
W: Yeah, that’s true!
M: OK! First, let’s talk about income. Now here is a question for you. (4-1) Can getting married lower your income?
W: (4-2) It absolutely can. Because if, let’s say, you are toward retirement age, and you are earning more money in retirement as a single than getting married. And it can actually lower the amount of money that you have to draw on from alimony.
M: Now, I always thought according to taxes, like everyone says, oh, getting married is so good for your taxes, you always end up saving money on taxes. Is it true or not?
W: Not necessarily. If you file jointly, that’s probably the best way to go, but there is the thing called marriage penalty and it doesn’t go away when you get older. You can actually lose money to taxes. (5) If you get married, your spouse is going to inherit all of your assets without paying any taxes on them. But it may mean that your kids do not.
This is the end of Part One of the interview. Questions 1 to 5 are based on what you have just heard.
1. What is the main topic of the interview?
2. What may be the financial result of getting married?
3. According to Jean Chatzky, which of the following statements is CORRECT?
4. What is the relationship between marriage and income?
5. What can we know about taxes and marriage?