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Me ex left me about 5 years ago.
Previously we were splitting mortgage and utilities that came out to (for ease of calculation) $2000/month.
When she left, she got an apartment that cost (again, ease of calculation) $1500/month. I kept the house/mortgage/utilities and pay those fully out of pocket.
So I'm spending $1000/month more than I would be in the counterfactual where she stayed (was paying $1000 for housing, now $2000). She'd spending an extra $500/month (and I didn't even count utilities and such for her). We'd cumulatively have $1500/month 'extra' if we stayed together. Over a year that's $18,000. Over 5 years, that's $90,000. So I would, individually, be $45,000 richer (probably more! I could invest more!) in that counterfactual. That's several vacations, a new car, that's a new roof on the house or other major renovations.
I am doing well for myself. Salary is fine, debt is manageable.
I would be doing much better if I could find a reliable partner to shoulder either part of the bills or the housework or, ANYTHING really. Financially the 'hole' I'm in compared to the one where I'm happily married is getting deeper by the month.
And there are millions of people in similar situation, could be partnered but are not. Those folks don't, strictly speaking, show up in the economic stats as 'struggling.'
And that's before we talk covid-induced inflation and the attendant increase in prices of housing, vehicles (and insurance, and repairs), and medical care.
So yeah, there are some feedback loops out there that can make someone doing fine 'economically' still be struggling. Big one: difficulty finding affordable housing means more living with parents which means harder to find a partner, which makes it harder to afford housing, AND means there's more housing demand (if people start moving in together, that reduces demand on housing and lowers prices!).
And being clear, I'm not angry at her about it. I've processed and moved on. But I'm acutely aware of the price of being single, if for no other reason than to help me calibrate how much I should 'compromise' to bring a new woman into my life.
Having a partner can also be very very expensive. I'm easily $500k+ in the hole from paying all my ex-girlfriend's costs, who refused to get a job for 15+ years. (I'm extremely low-status in the dating market. I finally got out of the relationship, so at least I'm alone and miserable rather than paying through the nose and miserable.)
What's funny is that I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal. I know suggesting that makes me the worst kind of misogynist. We're supposed to pretend that relationships aren't transactional. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/communication-2
My ex was not the most frugal person.
Racked up student debt paying OUT-OF-STATE TUITION for reasons that read to me as asinine.
But at least it was a decent major. She had a tendency to just assume if you pay a lot for something it must be the best/high quality. Also had a tendency to throw out old things and buy new when something broke. Which, uhhhhh in hindsight was probably a warning sign.
I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.
This winnows out a LOT of the field very early. I was dating a girl the last few months who apparently liked to select fancy restaurants just to see if I'd blink at paying the bill. At least, that's the game as I interpreted it. She would also cook for me so I was curious to see where things went. A few hundred dollars later and I can't even get a text back now.
Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.
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500 k$ ÷ (15 a × 365 d/a) = 91 $/d
That's comparable to the cost of legal prostitution in Australia. But, unfortunately, prostitution remains illegal in the Land of the Free™.
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I'm almost afraid to jinx myself, because I have such a good thing going, but I'm eternally grateful my wife and I made it through so many trials and tribulations. We survived losing jobs, lockdowns, health issues, values drift, relocating. Then the usual things like having kids, buying a house, etc. I truly don't know what I'd be doing with my life without her and the life we've built together.
All that said, somehow, I'm making 50% more in take home pay than my last job, and yet with a stay at home mom and two kids, my budget is stretched thinner than it's ever been stretched before. I heard some random anecdote/joke on a woodworking channel. Dude knew some guy who had 6 kids, and he asks how he can afford so many. Guy says "Well 6 kids costs the same as 3 kids". Dude just goes "WTF?!" and guy responds "No matter how many kids you have, they cost everything". And that's about right. No matter how much money you make, there always seems to be something the kids "need", or in many cases need. Like being kept out of public schools run by fucking machines.
It’s because there’s a lot of talk about the devaluation of the dollar, and everything’s more expensive, etc., which is all true to some degree. I’ve continued noticed the cost of food prices steadily creeping up in ways that have caught me by surprise; because they haven’t plateaued yet; and likely won’t come down in the future. Input prices are becoming more expensive. What’s almost never acknowledged thought is lifestyle inflation. Just consider the way people live today and what they expect from the world.
When I reflect on my life growing up, my sibling and I were spoiled pretty rotten early on by our extended family and especially grandparents. My father did quite well and made enough money for my mother to stay at home. She never had a job in her entire life. Taken care of by dad and then by husband. But my father was pretty tight with money and what he considered a “necessity.” Not really when it came to his own personal habits the way I saw it, but definitely where it concerned my sibling and I. Car needs to be fixed? Did it himself. Including changing the head gasket by himself. Home cooked meals every night. No eating out. I went to public school (hated it). We can get by without a fancy private school. Networking to move us into a place leased by a family friend. Rent was lower than the market rate. Across the board. How many people would you say on average operate with that kind of mentality today?
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There's some factors about additional kids that are merely additive vs. multiplicative, I've heard.
Obviously you can hand down clothes, toys, etc. Once the older ones are old enough to be responsible, they can supervise the younger to some extent. Once you have a minivan you just need proper seating.
I've got a buddy who has two kids... and a buddy who has FIVE. I hang out with both of them at the same time, and last time all the kids were there. It was wonderful controlled chaos, 4 kids playing Mario kart whilst 2 others cheered them on and a third was playing with the family dog. They keep each other entertained and they're all mostly toilet trained and know how to eat properly. In a certain sense, I could absolutely see myself raising 7 of the buggers simultaneous (no, not really, but aspirationally sure).
And they both live fairly comfortable lives, its just all free time is consumed by the kids' needs.
So yeah, I expect every spare red cent will go into the family, and I'll have to give up most of my bachelor ways, but I do not fear financial apocalypse.
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You are talking about it’s cheaper to have essentially a roommate - a childless relationship.
I was highlighting how it’s much more expensive today to NOT be single but have a child bearing relationship. Costs sky rocket in that situation because you need to live in areas safe for families with good schools or pay for private school. Family health care is expensive.
A childless relationship is really just being single with a roommate. And yes that’s cheaper.
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I have to work to remain silent when some of my longtime married friends complain about money. Several couples I know have been married since law school (so 20 years now, sigh), they have been sharing rent/mortgage/expenses since then, they bought houses during the 2015-2020 3% interest/lower prices sweet spot, the ones working for governments got some loan forgiveness during the Biden jubilee, etc. They are $300k plus ahead of people who married later and bought houses later (to say nothing of being way ahead of chumps who were foolish enough to pay off student loans). The world's tiniest violin is still too large when they complain about money.
My ex is the one who convinced me to buy a house, which turned out to be EXCELLENT timing. Closed in November 2019, right before Covid arrived and locked us all indoors and shot housing prices through the roof. Miraculous timing. That's a silver lining in the whole situation. Without her I'd probably even now be stuck without a house! Drastically different life course.
She also left right as interest rates were at their lowest, so I refied into an even lower interest rate (with the help of a good friend).
I am exceedingly lucky in this regard. My youngest brother just bought a house with his wife (and kid!) and his payment is twice what mine is. Its a good spot, though.
There's like six times in those previous 5 years where I might have ended up having to sell the property if things had gone differently, due to sudden expenses or dips in income. The immediate aftermath of a hurricane was a rough one for me. But I pulled it out each time.
It is only recently, like the last six or so months that I've felt like I'm not constantly 1 bad month away from a serious lifestyle downgrade.
It really sucked at the time.
DINKs get no sympathy from me.
I bought my first house in July 2008, so basically the top of the market before the housing bubble burst. Sold it 5 years later for basically the same amount, which considering the overall housing appreciation trends of the past 30 years is REALLY sad.
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Part of why people are single is that women expect a provider in a marriage. If they are asked to pay half the rent they will naturally leave much more. Dual income marriages are not really an option under normal human nature and so being dual income is not the solution to the problem. It's more like a huge part of the problem itself, that people think it should even be needed.
I absolutely love to take on the provider role, but there's some additional authority that I expect to come with that that a lot of women ALSO don't want to grant. I.e. I will make final decisions on any big spending, I will dictate how the house is used, I will get a final say in how she dresses and maintains herself.
I have had a life insurance policy in place for the past two years on the off-chance I met someone worth keeping, because its just the responsible thing to do while I'm healthy. I embrace the job of ensuring she is never left destitute.
In 'exchange' I abjectly refuse to have a 'man cave.' The whole house is indeed my castle, she can have a "woman cove" and do whatever she wants with it.
I see this arrangement as utterly fair and equitable for any woman willing to help raise my kids.
At the time we split, ex and I were making probably about the same amount of money. She went on to a pretty high-paying job so I know she's doing fine in the abstract, but I've managed to build things up to the point I'm certain I make more than her now. Or, more to the point, I can easily afford to keep a SAHM if she's got "realistic" expectations as to how often and where we vacation and the level of luxury we can maintain.
The real problem is that many, many women are fully inculcating the expectations for wealth that they received either from their parents/upbringing or social media.
I generally agree that the two-income expectation has created a lot of the exact problem we're seeing.
I know probably two handfuls of couples that engage in trad gender roles, where the man is the provider, both lefties and righties. I think this is probably the biggest dealbreaker I've ever heard. There is a charitable interpretation that is barely acceptable in regards to a joint physically fit lifestyle or jointly modest/religious lifestyle but I think this is going to be a huge constraint for you. People just don't like others having control over their bodies. You are better off looking for values a partner should have that would lead them to converging to your "final say" rather than explicitly trying to exercise the control.
I'm sure, most people think they are giving folks grand ol deals.
Does it make it any better that I'm willing to reciprocate in that regard?
I don't know how else to describe "don't go out and get any tattoos, drastic hairstyle changes, or plastic surgery without my approval somewhere in the loop."
The whole problem is that objectively speaking, a huge majority of women have chosen to be obese, wacky haircuts and hair colors, and tattoos and ever increasing numbers of piercings.
All are factors that make them look horrible.
And all this whilst marriage and relationship rates are in the toilet.
Why do you suppose that is?
I wouldn't really consider it 'choosing', at least in any sense narrower than that in which the victim of a mugger 'chooses' to hand over his wallet.
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The reason it comes across as weirdly controlling is that women in happy relationships don't suddenly dye their hair and get a new tattoo that they know their husband will hate. That's already a sign that the relationship is on the rocks, without any control rhetoric. This is true of most things (getting fat less so, especially after some children). If you say "wow, those huge pants that are trending sure are ugly!" And she goes out and buys the ugly pants you hate, that is already a sign that she doesn't respect you. That's less the case with things like getting fat and cutting her hair after bearing your children, because small children really do like pulling hair with surprising intensity, and all things cooking and exercise related can become harder.
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You are supposed to look for women who value their husbands opinions, and they themselves don't value those things. Then give your opinion, but leave the ultimate decision authority to the individual. The problem is that what you've stated in this comment and the previous comment around "control" aren't really the same thing. This is pretty much the same thing as women who date abusive deadbeats, it's about vetting. You need to vet women for a propensity to do the above, and even if you have this meager dating pool, toss out the ones that would... have some standards.
Authentic choice is the most costly signal of all.
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That part stood out to me as well. I couldn't imagine what it even meant. Sure, he could divorce her is she got too fat or something, I guess, but otherwise I'm simply confused.
Right but that would violate the sanctity of marriage that I am assuming he values. It's a rock and a hard place. I've observed he feels powerless about it. Leading to control issues creating a negative feedback loop. The ironic thing is that this would easily be resolved by just filtering for women that already have a similar outlook/values system. No need for the control if they already agree with and value your opinion.
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I feel obligated to point out that a person can share a house with someone who is not his romantic partner.
There was a period I was renting out one room to a friend who was thankfully a good roommate.
Just understand that living with roommates is undeniably a reduction in living standards, which still appears as 'struggling' (relative to the previously-expected norms).
I enjoy having my living space to myself, I enjoy a big yard, garage, etc. So I'm just not inclined to share the space with someone I'm not banging and raising kids with. I am willing to pay for this solitude, and thus far can afford it.
I'm also the ONLY one of my local friend group in my age range who owns a house at all.
In my experience once you age out of college/grad school finding new roommates is hard. It's like dating but with a harder cutoff. After 30 they either can't pay or are intolerably insane.
I live by myself in a big two bedroom apartment and wouldn't mind a roommate but my luck with the last few has been bad and rent has gone up so much in the last 5 years (I'm grandfathered in with an old lady landlord.) that I wouldn't save any money downsizing to a smaller place (plus I'd have to spend time and money moving), so I have a spare bed and bath that collects dust.
Bingo.
I wouldn't let someone who didn't come vetted in my house with access to all my stuff.
Sure an extra grand or so would be nice. But I've done enough landlord tenant law (read: ONE CASE is all it took) to realize the downside risk is appreciably large.
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I like how being poor is referred to as house hacking.
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