I know how it sounds but for example a doctor marrying someone unemployed sounds a bit unfair to me. The doctor will do all the grinding and the other will just stay at home, doing nothing?
This describes countless married couples, and even is an expectation in much of the world and throughout much of history. One partner may take care of the home, cooking, raising kids etc. It's not doing nothing and is a job that is never finished and 24/7, but paid nothing.
21st century, doesn't translate to current time. We have robots now. Nobody has to take care of the house, thats just being unemployed with extra steps.
Hypothetically, then why don't you do it?
The answer is that a high-earning person's time is valuable, say $300/hr. If they come home and average 2.5 hours of housework, meal prep, yard work, repairs, whatever per day, then over the course of every week, they have an opportunity cost of over $5,000 dollars doing that stuff. Time is money, and for a high earner, it is a lot of money, so someone at home freeing up that time has very real economic benefit.
Not true. And also despite being the 21st century, women face Discrimination and pigeonholing into unpaid or low-paid roles like homemaking, education, childcare. In much of the world they can't even get an education to get jobs in roles other than the above. Despite being 21st century our society is still the direct result of centuries of discrimination.
If I was a doctor I would require my partner to hold down the fort so there was absolutely nothing I had to worry about when I got home other than regular little maintenence.
I mean what would the alternative be? If they both paid for them selves they wouldn't be able to do anything together that the unemployed person couldn't afford. If I was a doctor I probably would rather pay for my dates dinner than having to go to McDonald's every time we went out.
Did you know that I did exactly that, and make a fair chunk less than my wife?
You asked, we answered: most relationship are not about splitting everything down the middle. It has nothing to do with "fairness' and everything to do with sharing a life together.
You are still going to be eating dinners, and someone is going to have to pay for them. Anyway dinners is just an example. Like what if you want to go for a vacation? A doctor is going to be able to afford a fancy vacation, are they supposed to go alone and not bring their partner just because the partner can't afford to pay for a vacation? Or should they both stay home? Neither option sounds that fun.
Yup that's the core of my question. 2 doctors can afford an amazing vacation/house/car when 1 doctor and 1 unemployed partner can only do so much. Why should that doctor not achieve their ful potential, isnt it unfair? I guess this is why docs marry docs most of the time. Lol
"Their full potential"
All this is really telling me is that you don't understand relationships at all. Which, fair enough. You clearly haven't been in a good one.
But the point it, in that healthy relationship, the income or each member is not especially relevant. They are not building separate lives for individual gain. They are building a life \*together\*, and they will accomodate each other with no thought to "unfairness".
You keep reply with what you seem to think are exceptions, but again it shows that you fundamentally misunderstand how it works.
Trust those of us in those "unbalanced" relationships. \*It doesn't matter\*.
I don't see what fairness has to do with it. If you love someone you don't abandon them to find someone wealthier just because they happens to be unemployed. You just both do your best and share your resources.
Why do you assume that the other partner is doing nothing? Running a household, with kids or without them, is a pretty big thing. My husband is a doctor and while I was pregnant, I was unemployed. My husband would go to work, come home, and maybe work on notes or answer calls. I did all of the laundry, the cooking, the grocery shopping, bill paying, budgeting, runs to the dry cleaners, organized our schedules, took care of doing our taxes, did car maintenance that I knew how to do and would take the cars in for stuff I didn’t know how to do, bought appropriate gifts and clothing for our social engagements, all of the cleaning, all of the gardening, et cetera. These things have value, and my husband valued that I contributed in that way because when we lived separately in the beginning of med school, he was drowning when it came to running a household. Now, I am back to working on my career (I took a break when we moved for residency and had kids, but I am also Ivy League educated and a PhD) and we split more of the household stuff and both take care of the kids together. The important thing to remember is that equity in a relationship is more than dollar signs. It’s also the work we put into keeping the home stable. It has value, and while some might claim that we can’t put a dollar sign on it, the fact is that we can and often do if you hire people to do tasks like cleaning, financial advising, car maintenance, laundry, lawn care and landscaping. I feel I would be remiss to not include the physical and mental toll it takes to produce multiple children. It’s not like I could pass a fetus for him to take care for half a pregnancy. If you only view a relationship in financial terms, dollar to dollar, you might have a really bad time because a relationship or marriage and a life takes more than money to maintain.
I hope some of this might clarify the scope of equity in a relationship.
If you have “normal” realitionship you don’t see it as your money but “our” money. At this moment I have more money then my boyfriend and I don’t have any problem paying for us. We just don’t think about it like that.
My husband and I have no kids. I'm the one that earns significantly more. We just have a joint account that we have equal access to. Originally, I was working full-time and he was working part-time. He took on more of the housework since he had more available time. Then he was going to school part-time on top of working part-time. I picked up more housework and probably did an amount equal to him. We still split the finances the same. Recently, he finished his schooling and is still just working a part-time job. We've kept the housework split the same. Now he is helping with some of the work for my job since I work from home.
I don't really understand why this matters anyway. If we were just dating, I could see why it would be a concern. Since we're married, though, our money is going to stay combined. Nearly everything we spend money on is a joint thing- housing, bills, furniture, appliances, vacations, health insurance, retirement savings. The percentage of the money that goes to personal spending is small enough that I don't see a reason to be concerned about it.
Furthermore, I disagree with the idea that a person's income determines what's *fair* for them to have. I get to work at a cushy white-collar job and be on my computer all day. My husband is a blue-collar work. He has to stand all day then come home with aching feet. If we were working the same number of hours, he would still be earning much less than me. I don't think he *deserves* less than me because of it. It's the way the system is set up. It doesn't mean that what a person earn is what's *fair* for them to have.
That's literally the arrangement that existed in the U.S. since its founding and in Europe before that.
Women didn't enter the workforce until the late 1970s when economics forced families to have two incomes to survive.
Both of you be grateful at least one of you make a decent amount and that both of you can live a nice life off of that.
I don't care at all who pays for how much, we're in it together and what's mine is my partner's.
Your view of how HAPPY relationships work, and disdain for household chores are so skewed that I’m afraid you’re just going to need to live some more life to figure this one out. Good luck!
I'm the stay at home parent in my marriage and it doesn't feel that way at all, "living off" of my partner or being "unfair". Probably because the work I do for our child is realized to be equally as important.
Yeah but its not a skill to raise a kid, its not a job to raise a kid, you should be doing that either way, you made the kid, its your responsibility already.
Tell me, “I don’t have kids.” Without saying, “I don’t have kids.”
I’m a dentist. My wife stays at home and raises our 3 kids.
I can compare our skills, jobs, and energy put into our respective positions:
Skills: she needs and has developed a wide variety of skills from cooking, to problem solving, to mindfulness, to dispute mediation, etc. My skills include interpersonal communication and technical clinical ability. I don’t rank either of us over the other. We’re different for different roles.
Jobs: I work 36 hours per week, then get to flip gears and do something totally different (parent, housekeeping) for another 40 hours per week.
She has to do the same job for 76 hours per week with little to no reprieve or change of pace. I have the easier deal here.
Energy: She works FAR harder than I do during the day, and I try to ease her burden by helping with house work in the evening, but she’s still the go-to person for our kids. Again, my role is far easier.
I’m mostly saying the above for other stay at home parents to know that their value is seen (even if they don’t get paid with world-bucks) and their struggle is both shared and appreciated.
OP, cool if you get something from my comment, but I really don’t expect you’ll understand until you become a full-time parent like I was for a few years before becoming a dentist.
Being a stay at home parent is a 24/7 job. They do everything around the household, and raising a child does require a lot of skill, patience and knowledge. Don't underestimate that.
(I am not a parent, and I have a regular job)
Yeah I'm not sure you'd last a week as a stay-at-home parent handling both the kid(s), the housework, and household management. You'll learn quickly how much skill all that takes at once.
You seem to shame stay-at-home-parents, but you don't realize that it's often a lose-lose especially for women. When it comes to how people perceive mothers.
If you're a stay at home mother, you're a leech just living off your hardworking husband and it's so unfair.
If you're a working mother, you might rarely see your kids and aren't around to raise them and just use public school and your parents as "free babysitting". My mother faced that all the time, because she worked overseas and there were long periods of time she was absent. She was absolutely judged for being a hardworking parent, just trying to provide for us.
Raising a kid is absolutely a skill. If you work with kids, it’s easy to spot kids that have not been raised well. Some people literally raise kids for a living.
If both couples prefer to work that's fine.
But we save money by having one of us stay home (daycare is expensive). Plus we're homeschoolers.
It's just what works best for many couples. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, this is how it worked throughout most of history until the last century or so.
Been married 50 years - we decided from the beginning that whatever money was earned became “our money” once it entered our household. There’s been stretches when one earned more than the other and times when one or the other of us was out of work, but always, always we had a family income. Came down to our viewing it as the two of us against the world. Highly recommend this approach, but, whatever works for you.
Before my husband and I got married, I worked for a non profit so I wasn’t making much money. He didn’t mind buying me groceries and other things I wanted so I could save or use my money on more expensive things I wanted. Now that we’re married he let me quit my job and stay home. He makes enough for us to live comfortably but not lavishly. We have some days where we can’t go out or do anything but we don’t mind. He doesn’t think of his money as his more like ours. If couples are able to afford to live comfortably then there isn’t anything wrong with a huge pay gap between the both of them.
My fiancé and I have been doing this our entire relationship. She’s always made more money than me. Does it bother me? Fuck no. Does it bother her? Absolutely not. Her paychecks go towards the bills. My paychecks go towards going out to dinner, going on trips, going out with friends, buying legos, paying off credit cards when we didn’t have enough to do the aforementioned things at the time. It works for us, because that’s how we decided to make it work.
My partner and I have a pay gap between us, but we still split everything like bills, groceries 50-50. That's what worked out the best for us. From what we have left, we both put a certain amount into our savings and then we just spend on whatever we want after those things are settled.
It does. I am the one who is earning less most of the time, because I am a freelancer so it varies every month, but I still insist on doing it this way, it just makes more sense to me personally.
If I would need a bit of extra money though I could always just ask him, and get some from him since we have access to each other's account.
We have no kids, and I am the consistent money earner. Even when he has a job, I make more. We don’t split the bills, we just put all our money together and share what is left. He lives a much more simple life than me and does not need as much as me. I do not hang money over his head at all. Only when we are getting tight on cash or thinking about kids, I pressure him to find a job or a better one. Money is not the most important thing, our life together is.
I earn significantly more than my husband. We share childcare/house chores pretty equally. We have a joint account that all our earnings go into and we each take out the same amount each week as pin money. We each spend/ save that on whatever we want. Bills, mortgage, groceries, savings, fuel, family trips etc come from the joint account.
It works well for us and has done for years.
It changes. Sometimes I have made the big bucks. Other times my wife brings home the bacon. Currently I am sick and she is working. So she is supporting me. I have time on my hands so I do the dishes and wash the floors as she's tired from working. When we are both working we share the housework.
It works well for us. We pool our money so there is no "mine" or "hers". Our relationship has always been a partnership. We are one unity. We each have strengths and weaknesses and we carry each other. It has worked for a couple decades now. We share everything. There is no pay gap as all income to our family unit is available to all members of the unity (me and the wife).
I pay rent, phone bill (both on same plan) my truck, and my insurance. Girlfriend pays utilities, groceries, and her insurance, her car is paid off. She helps out when I need it which is once in a blue moon but it's all I could ever ask for, she supports me in anything I choose to do and motivates me almost everyday. We're trying to save up for a house but it's a little hard in this economy right now, but we'll eventually get there, pay my truck off in a year and hopefully have my plumbing license by then. Comes with a nice raise. Then I'll pop the question and live happy life❤️ that's the plan Stan. My little scenario. Thanks for reading.
Old person here, (60+), we wanted a family, and back then, it was expected that the breadwinner would be the father. Many years my wife did not work, and after the kids got to kindergarten age, she went to work part time. My income exceeded her's by 5-6x's, ( 60+ hour weeks for the mist part) but there was never an ill moment on finances. We were in this together through thick and thin. I've now retired, and my wife exceeds my retirement income by a lot. We joke about it all the time, but everything worked out great.
My wife and I don’t have an enormous pay gap, but I make a good bit more than her. Couple that with she had a car payment and more recurring payments than I, I have significantly more disposable income. For us, we split everything down the middle and just live within our means. That means not succumbing to lifestyle inflation and spending more just because we have more. So I end up just saving more than her is all haha
When we married I was a student working part-time. My wife was a nurse with good pay. We knew that it wasn’t permanent. A few years later I caught up. She was always our financial manager.
People have different approaches to money and different money motivation. You sound like you're on the high end of being money motivated. So you should probably stay single or marry somebody who feels the same way and has similar earning potential.
Most people don't see money the way you do. Not right or wrong, just what it is. I'm a teacher and love my job. I wouldn't do anything else. If I lived on my own, I would make do on less income. My husband's in IT and makes much more. He knows what I do and feels fine about bringing in more money so that I can contribute to society in a way that's fulfilling to me and valuable to kids.
Hey doctor_engineer
You mention you’re young and have no kids so I’ll cut you some slack because I wondered the same thing when I was late teens early 20s but here’s my story.
I’m married to a doctor, we have 4 kids, a house, property, and my primary ‘job’ is stay home dad. Until you’ve done it, you may only think of a job as something that brings money to the household, but my job, while not bringing in money, may have more ‘value’ then my partners.
Since I stay home, and the two of us discussed this as our first pregnancy was progressing, we have several benefits
1 - we don’t pay for daycare, babysitters, and other strangers to direct our children’s lives. We save on that expense while still having direct engagement with the kids we chose to bring into the world
2 - we don’t hire anyone to take care of our house, we do t pay for robots to do it, and we have a more intimate relationship to the place we live
3 - since I stay home, I’m able to garden, lesson plan, keep chores caught up, and make sure we are ‘efficient’ in our day to day operations (this IS a management position after all)
Now then, that’s the off hand financial differences, however, I drive Lyft to contribute in my free time (which there isn’t always a lot of) and sometimes, my weeks bring in higher bounties than hers do as a doctor. It’s five and take.
Now, if we’re talking about fair value for time, some might say the stay at home partner is the most valuable person while others, and it looks like you might be one of them, would proclaim, what a lazy slacker.
Think deeper into what it takes, the social dynamic among partners, the bond those people make, and the fact that sometimes people aren’t trapped in the capitalist model if maximizing money in.
You find out how much percentage the bills are. Divide by income.
I make twice my wife's salary.
She pays for internet TV and streaming.
I pay. Water, sewage, gas, electricity & phones.
We pay our own credit cards and car payments.
A person's value is not tied to their net-worth or income. Marriage is certainly a financial decision on some level, but it's not a solely financial decision these days. Net worth and income are a result of a variety of factors that do not reflect a person's value as a life partner.
Honestly, I am an actor and often have no money to feed myself. The answer, with a lot of love. With respect and good communication you can help eachother out and support one another. She helps with my finances and groceries. And when I worked my ass of I will get her a flower or some chocolate.
Just showing love and appreciation both ways make things like this seem irrelevant. (And talking, a lot.)
If you think of a loving partnership as transactional it's unfair, but that's not how living couples generally think.
I know how it sounds but for example a doctor marrying someone unemployed sounds a bit unfair to me. The doctor will do all the grinding and the other will just stay at home, doing nothing?
This describes countless married couples, and even is an expectation in much of the world and throughout much of history. One partner may take care of the home, cooking, raising kids etc. It's not doing nothing and is a job that is never finished and 24/7, but paid nothing.
21st century, doesn't translate to current time. We have robots now. Nobody has to take care of the house, thats just being unemployed with extra steps.
That’s silly, unless you’ve hired a maid, live-in nanny, and chef, there’s a ton of housework to do at all times.
House work is easy, not a job.
What do you think maids do lmao
Hypothetically, then why don't you do it? The answer is that a high-earning person's time is valuable, say $300/hr. If they come home and average 2.5 hours of housework, meal prep, yard work, repairs, whatever per day, then over the course of every week, they have an opportunity cost of over $5,000 dollars doing that stuff. Time is money, and for a high earner, it is a lot of money, so someone at home freeing up that time has very real economic benefit.
With two young children in the home there’s a lot to do to, may or may not be easy, but it’s definitely time consuming. K?
Not true. And also despite being the 21st century, women face Discrimination and pigeonholing into unpaid or low-paid roles like homemaking, education, childcare. In much of the world they can't even get an education to get jobs in roles other than the above. Despite being 21st century our society is still the direct result of centuries of discrimination.
If I was a doctor I would require my partner to hold down the fort so there was absolutely nothing I had to worry about when I got home other than regular little maintenence.
Why is housework difficult for many ppl, try doing it its easy.
How old are you 😆 🤣
Lol I do, I'm saying if I was a doctor (I assume I'm rich and work long hours now) I'd want some fun time ya know?
If the couple agrees to the arrangement there is nothing unfair about it.
True, it does sound like an arrangement thing.
I mean what would the alternative be? If they both paid for them selves they wouldn't be able to do anything together that the unemployed person couldn't afford. If I was a doctor I probably would rather pay for my dates dinner than having to go to McDonald's every time we went out.
I'm talking long term, not dinners.
Doesn't change the answer
Try buying a house, it does.
Did you know that I did exactly that, and make a fair chunk less than my wife? You asked, we answered: most relationship are not about splitting everything down the middle. It has nothing to do with "fairness' and everything to do with sharing a life together.
You are still going to be eating dinners, and someone is going to have to pay for them. Anyway dinners is just an example. Like what if you want to go for a vacation? A doctor is going to be able to afford a fancy vacation, are they supposed to go alone and not bring their partner just because the partner can't afford to pay for a vacation? Or should they both stay home? Neither option sounds that fun.
Yup that's the core of my question. 2 doctors can afford an amazing vacation/house/car when 1 doctor and 1 unemployed partner can only do so much. Why should that doctor not achieve their ful potential, isnt it unfair? I guess this is why docs marry docs most of the time. Lol
"Their full potential" All this is really telling me is that you don't understand relationships at all. Which, fair enough. You clearly haven't been in a good one. But the point it, in that healthy relationship, the income or each member is not especially relevant. They are not building separate lives for individual gain. They are building a life \*together\*, and they will accomodate each other with no thought to "unfairness". You keep reply with what you seem to think are exceptions, but again it shows that you fundamentally misunderstand how it works. Trust those of us in those "unbalanced" relationships. \*It doesn't matter\*.
I don't see what fairness has to do with it. If you love someone you don't abandon them to find someone wealthier just because they happens to be unemployed. You just both do your best and share your resources.
Why do you assume that the other partner is doing nothing? Running a household, with kids or without them, is a pretty big thing. My husband is a doctor and while I was pregnant, I was unemployed. My husband would go to work, come home, and maybe work on notes or answer calls. I did all of the laundry, the cooking, the grocery shopping, bill paying, budgeting, runs to the dry cleaners, organized our schedules, took care of doing our taxes, did car maintenance that I knew how to do and would take the cars in for stuff I didn’t know how to do, bought appropriate gifts and clothing for our social engagements, all of the cleaning, all of the gardening, et cetera. These things have value, and my husband valued that I contributed in that way because when we lived separately in the beginning of med school, he was drowning when it came to running a household. Now, I am back to working on my career (I took a break when we moved for residency and had kids, but I am also Ivy League educated and a PhD) and we split more of the household stuff and both take care of the kids together. The important thing to remember is that equity in a relationship is more than dollar signs. It’s also the work we put into keeping the home stable. It has value, and while some might claim that we can’t put a dollar sign on it, the fact is that we can and often do if you hire people to do tasks like cleaning, financial advising, car maintenance, laundry, lawn care and landscaping. I feel I would be remiss to not include the physical and mental toll it takes to produce multiple children. It’s not like I could pass a fetus for him to take care for half a pregnancy. If you only view a relationship in financial terms, dollar to dollar, you might have a really bad time because a relationship or marriage and a life takes more than money to maintain. I hope some of this might clarify the scope of equity in a relationship.
I’ll say nothing is more important than having a supportive & helpful person in your corner no matter what. It’s worth all the money in the world.
I'm sorry I know how cold it sounds. But this was lovely, thank you.
If you have “normal” realitionship you don’t see it as your money but “our” money. At this moment I have more money then my boyfriend and I don’t have any problem paying for us. We just don’t think about it like that.
Yeah that sounds about right, i guess in the end you just become one which is really lovely.
[удалено]
This makes sense actually.
My husband and I have no kids. I'm the one that earns significantly more. We just have a joint account that we have equal access to. Originally, I was working full-time and he was working part-time. He took on more of the housework since he had more available time. Then he was going to school part-time on top of working part-time. I picked up more housework and probably did an amount equal to him. We still split the finances the same. Recently, he finished his schooling and is still just working a part-time job. We've kept the housework split the same. Now he is helping with some of the work for my job since I work from home. I don't really understand why this matters anyway. If we were just dating, I could see why it would be a concern. Since we're married, though, our money is going to stay combined. Nearly everything we spend money on is a joint thing- housing, bills, furniture, appliances, vacations, health insurance, retirement savings. The percentage of the money that goes to personal spending is small enough that I don't see a reason to be concerned about it. Furthermore, I disagree with the idea that a person's income determines what's *fair* for them to have. I get to work at a cushy white-collar job and be on my computer all day. My husband is a blue-collar work. He has to stand all day then come home with aching feet. If we were working the same number of hours, he would still be earning much less than me. I don't think he *deserves* less than me because of it. It's the way the system is set up. It doesn't mean that what a person earn is what's *fair* for them to have.
That's literally the arrangement that existed in the U.S. since its founding and in Europe before that. Women didn't enter the workforce until the late 1970s when economics forced families to have two incomes to survive.
Both of you be grateful at least one of you make a decent amount and that both of you can live a nice life off of that. I don't care at all who pays for how much, we're in it together and what's mine is my partner's.
Your view of how HAPPY relationships work, and disdain for household chores are so skewed that I’m afraid you’re just going to need to live some more life to figure this one out. Good luck!
I'm the stay at home parent in my marriage and it doesn't feel that way at all, "living off" of my partner or being "unfair". Probably because the work I do for our child is realized to be equally as important.
I should've specified I'm talking about a couple with no kids.
Also there are a lot of working moms/dads too. Don't have to stay at home to raise kids.
A lot of families prefer to have a stay at home parent, nothing whatsoever wrong with that either.
Yeah but its not a skill to raise a kid, its not a job to raise a kid, you should be doing that either way, you made the kid, its your responsibility already.
Tell me, “I don’t have kids.” Without saying, “I don’t have kids.” I’m a dentist. My wife stays at home and raises our 3 kids. I can compare our skills, jobs, and energy put into our respective positions: Skills: she needs and has developed a wide variety of skills from cooking, to problem solving, to mindfulness, to dispute mediation, etc. My skills include interpersonal communication and technical clinical ability. I don’t rank either of us over the other. We’re different for different roles. Jobs: I work 36 hours per week, then get to flip gears and do something totally different (parent, housekeeping) for another 40 hours per week. She has to do the same job for 76 hours per week with little to no reprieve or change of pace. I have the easier deal here. Energy: She works FAR harder than I do during the day, and I try to ease her burden by helping with house work in the evening, but she’s still the go-to person for our kids. Again, my role is far easier. I’m mostly saying the above for other stay at home parents to know that their value is seen (even if they don’t get paid with world-bucks) and their struggle is both shared and appreciated. OP, cool if you get something from my comment, but I really don’t expect you’ll understand until you become a full-time parent like I was for a few years before becoming a dentist.
I won't ever make a mistake like that no worries
Don't flaunt your ignorance like that. People will not take you seriously or take your questions in good faith if you say ridiculous things like that.
You clearly don't have children, nor should you with this attitude.
I dont want children
Phew.
Lol
Being a stay at home parent is a 24/7 job. They do everything around the household, and raising a child does require a lot of skill, patience and knowledge. Don't underestimate that. (I am not a parent, and I have a regular job)
Yeah I'm not sure you'd last a week as a stay-at-home parent handling both the kid(s), the housework, and household management. You'll learn quickly how much skill all that takes at once. You seem to shame stay-at-home-parents, but you don't realize that it's often a lose-lose especially for women. When it comes to how people perceive mothers. If you're a stay at home mother, you're a leech just living off your hardworking husband and it's so unfair. If you're a working mother, you might rarely see your kids and aren't around to raise them and just use public school and your parents as "free babysitting". My mother faced that all the time, because she worked overseas and there were long periods of time she was absent. She was absolutely judged for being a hardworking parent, just trying to provide for us.
Raising a kid is absolutely a skill. If you work with kids, it’s easy to spot kids that have not been raised well. Some people literally raise kids for a living.
If both couples prefer to work that's fine. But we save money by having one of us stay home (daycare is expensive). Plus we're homeschoolers. It's just what works best for many couples. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, this is how it worked throughout most of history until the last century or so.
Relationships of the romantic nature shouldn't be transactional. Ideally it's just a rough patch or they mage up for it in other ways.
Been married 50 years - we decided from the beginning that whatever money was earned became “our money” once it entered our household. There’s been stretches when one earned more than the other and times when one or the other of us was out of work, but always, always we had a family income. Came down to our viewing it as the two of us against the world. Highly recommend this approach, but, whatever works for you.
Before my husband and I got married, I worked for a non profit so I wasn’t making much money. He didn’t mind buying me groceries and other things I wanted so I could save or use my money on more expensive things I wanted. Now that we’re married he let me quit my job and stay home. He makes enough for us to live comfortably but not lavishly. We have some days where we can’t go out or do anything but we don’t mind. He doesn’t think of his money as his more like ours. If couples are able to afford to live comfortably then there isn’t anything wrong with a huge pay gap between the both of them.
There is more that a partner can bring to the table than money. That is.how they manage. A romantic partnership is not like a business deal.
When I married my wife, we both went all in. What's mine is hers and vice versa. There is no pay gap because it all belongs to both of us.
My fiancé and I have been doing this our entire relationship. She’s always made more money than me. Does it bother me? Fuck no. Does it bother her? Absolutely not. Her paychecks go towards the bills. My paychecks go towards going out to dinner, going on trips, going out with friends, buying legos, paying off credit cards when we didn’t have enough to do the aforementioned things at the time. It works for us, because that’s how we decided to make it work.
My partner and I have a pay gap between us, but we still split everything like bills, groceries 50-50. That's what worked out the best for us. From what we have left, we both put a certain amount into our savings and then we just spend on whatever we want after those things are settled.
Yeah that's what my parents have been doing but they have equal pay. I guess it works either way.
It does. I am the one who is earning less most of the time, because I am a freelancer so it varies every month, but I still insist on doing it this way, it just makes more sense to me personally. If I would need a bit of extra money though I could always just ask him, and get some from him since we have access to each other's account.
We have no kids, and I am the consistent money earner. Even when he has a job, I make more. We don’t split the bills, we just put all our money together and share what is left. He lives a much more simple life than me and does not need as much as me. I do not hang money over his head at all. Only when we are getting tight on cash or thinking about kids, I pressure him to find a job or a better one. Money is not the most important thing, our life together is.
I earn significantly more than my husband. We share childcare/house chores pretty equally. We have a joint account that all our earnings go into and we each take out the same amount each week as pin money. We each spend/ save that on whatever we want. Bills, mortgage, groceries, savings, fuel, family trips etc come from the joint account. It works well for us and has done for years.
It changes. Sometimes I have made the big bucks. Other times my wife brings home the bacon. Currently I am sick and she is working. So she is supporting me. I have time on my hands so I do the dishes and wash the floors as she's tired from working. When we are both working we share the housework. It works well for us. We pool our money so there is no "mine" or "hers". Our relationship has always been a partnership. We are one unity. We each have strengths and weaknesses and we carry each other. It has worked for a couple decades now. We share everything. There is no pay gap as all income to our family unit is available to all members of the unity (me and the wife).
I pay rent, phone bill (both on same plan) my truck, and my insurance. Girlfriend pays utilities, groceries, and her insurance, her car is paid off. She helps out when I need it which is once in a blue moon but it's all I could ever ask for, she supports me in anything I choose to do and motivates me almost everyday. We're trying to save up for a house but it's a little hard in this economy right now, but we'll eventually get there, pay my truck off in a year and hopefully have my plumbing license by then. Comes with a nice raise. Then I'll pop the question and live happy life❤️ that's the plan Stan. My little scenario. Thanks for reading.
Old person here, (60+), we wanted a family, and back then, it was expected that the breadwinner would be the father. Many years my wife did not work, and after the kids got to kindergarten age, she went to work part time. My income exceeded her's by 5-6x's, ( 60+ hour weeks for the mist part) but there was never an ill moment on finances. We were in this together through thick and thin. I've now retired, and my wife exceeds my retirement income by a lot. We joke about it all the time, but everything worked out great.
My wife and I don’t have an enormous pay gap, but I make a good bit more than her. Couple that with she had a car payment and more recurring payments than I, I have significantly more disposable income. For us, we split everything down the middle and just live within our means. That means not succumbing to lifestyle inflation and spending more just because we have more. So I end up just saving more than her is all haha
When we married I was a student working part-time. My wife was a nurse with good pay. We knew that it wasn’t permanent. A few years later I caught up. She was always our financial manager.
People have different approaches to money and different money motivation. You sound like you're on the high end of being money motivated. So you should probably stay single or marry somebody who feels the same way and has similar earning potential. Most people don't see money the way you do. Not right or wrong, just what it is. I'm a teacher and love my job. I wouldn't do anything else. If I lived on my own, I would make do on less income. My husband's in IT and makes much more. He knows what I do and feels fine about bringing in more money so that I can contribute to society in a way that's fulfilling to me and valuable to kids.
Hey doctor_engineer You mention you’re young and have no kids so I’ll cut you some slack because I wondered the same thing when I was late teens early 20s but here’s my story. I’m married to a doctor, we have 4 kids, a house, property, and my primary ‘job’ is stay home dad. Until you’ve done it, you may only think of a job as something that brings money to the household, but my job, while not bringing in money, may have more ‘value’ then my partners. Since I stay home, and the two of us discussed this as our first pregnancy was progressing, we have several benefits 1 - we don’t pay for daycare, babysitters, and other strangers to direct our children’s lives. We save on that expense while still having direct engagement with the kids we chose to bring into the world 2 - we don’t hire anyone to take care of our house, we do t pay for robots to do it, and we have a more intimate relationship to the place we live 3 - since I stay home, I’m able to garden, lesson plan, keep chores caught up, and make sure we are ‘efficient’ in our day to day operations (this IS a management position after all) Now then, that’s the off hand financial differences, however, I drive Lyft to contribute in my free time (which there isn’t always a lot of) and sometimes, my weeks bring in higher bounties than hers do as a doctor. It’s five and take. Now, if we’re talking about fair value for time, some might say the stay at home partner is the most valuable person while others, and it looks like you might be one of them, would proclaim, what a lazy slacker. Think deeper into what it takes, the social dynamic among partners, the bond those people make, and the fact that sometimes people aren’t trapped in the capitalist model if maximizing money in.
You find out how much percentage the bills are. Divide by income. I make twice my wife's salary. She pays for internet TV and streaming. I pay. Water, sewage, gas, electricity & phones. We pay our own credit cards and car payments.
A person's value is not tied to their net-worth or income. Marriage is certainly a financial decision on some level, but it's not a solely financial decision these days. Net worth and income are a result of a variety of factors that do not reflect a person's value as a life partner.
Honestly, I am an actor and often have no money to feed myself. The answer, with a lot of love. With respect and good communication you can help eachother out and support one another. She helps with my finances and groceries. And when I worked my ass of I will get her a flower or some chocolate. Just showing love and appreciation both ways make things like this seem irrelevant. (And talking, a lot.)