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When my ex-wife and I divorced, sorting out the financial side was the biggest logistical headache that we had. Not wanting to deal with this overhead in the midst of the emotional challenges we were facing meant that we put off formalizing our divorce for a long time. Taking just two simple steps before tying the knot would have made our lives significantly easier. The first step is to know the separation rules for your state as they pertain to finances. Notably, you may not have realized that everybody has a prenuptial agreement (a “prenup”). If you and your partner haven’t crafted your own, you get the state default version. There are two main schemes for dividing assets and liabilities between you and your spouse: community property and equitable distribution. ...

Suppose you want to hire an assistant to alleviate the mundane tasks of your job. Every day that you have the job search open, an assistant comes for an interview. Immediately after the interview you have to choose whether to hire or not hire the interviewee. The hire/no hire decision is irreversible — i.e. if you reject someone, you can’t later decide to hire them. Under these conditions, how do you determine which candidate to hire? The trade-offs are intuitive: if you don’t hire, you incur the overhead of interviewing and don’t reap the benefits of having an assistant; if you hire too early, you may be missing out on a better assistant that’s potentially coming up as a candidate. ...