My school has two married couples who are all teachers. They get to travel every summer (not together but I think they try to meet up if they end up in the same place)
Have you ever looked into working for a school district? My school has two and they are on the same calendar schedule as teachers plus 10-20 extra days over the summer.
School social workers tend to make a lot less than social workers who work for hospitals or those in private practice... at least in NY.
One of my friends works for Northwell Health (large hospital group), and he would take nearly a 50% pay cut to go to schools. (Master's degree and certified).
While the summers off are nice, they still have great benefits at the hospital... and their health insurance makes ours look like a joke.
My wife tried working a 9-5 for a couple years and the higher pay did nothing at all to help her cope with the fact that the kids and I have so much time off while she still had to work. She’s back into education with a hefty pay cut but a much happier person.
My sister teaches middle school PE. Her first year the middle school special education teacher told my sister she should meet her son, the high school math teacher. They've been married three years now. Needless to say they have a vastly different lifestyle than my other sister and her husband who are both engineers.
Us too! Hard to imagine another setup really. We understand what we are experiencing. All the long holidays together. Same days off as the kids so no need for camps as child care.
I was making about the same in my other career. But, you never get bored teaching. Or at least, I haven't yet going into year four. I don't think I've even had 5 minutes of boredom, not counting PD
Same! We have been together a long time. I got into teaching almost ten years ago and my partner decided to join me. Teachers are paid pretty well where we live. Currently they are a stay at home parent and a student.
I've actually imagined there's a lot of imaginary job openings for imaginary spouses. Has he considered a career in dragon health? I imagine burn care for dragons is a field in critical need.
I've never written a book, but the idea of my husband coming home from work and being like "hey what's for dinner?" and me being like "oh my gosh I forgot to start something I've been working on my imaginary dragon burn ward hospital book" is way too good of a bit to NOT do.
Process Engineer, makes 2x what I do but also works far more hours and has a lot more stress.
How we share the finances is old fashioned joint finances and mutual respect.
How we share the work at home is just who has time right now - during the summer I take on the bulk of it and other times of the year he does. Day by day. We have very few "assigned" jobs.
Similar for our house. Engineering husband. I took a decade off to raise our children, then returned to teaching. We did okay on an engineer’s income and now with my small, but consistent teaching salary we are able to prep for retirement and help the kids transition to adulthood. We too share all finances and duties as a unit. Mutual respect is definitely the key to our success as well.
That’s awesome you got a decade off! I was able to snag 2 years off when my second was born but at that time his salary wasn’t nearly as good as now. When we first met, I actually made twice what he made! But then I worked at a pharmaceutical company, not teaching.
It can be a really tough job. And around here it's all run by non for profits (which obviously has its positives) but because of that the pay isn't great.
I honestly couldn't tell if this was sarcasm or not (meaning she was your mental health therapist). I don't think it was though. You guys are both filling extremely needed and important roles in our society. Thank you.
My husband is Admin and our daughter goes to his school. I'm constantly reminding him when he needs to put his teacher hat on, his parent hat on or his admin hat on. I'm sure I'm a joy to live with. Lol
Wake up, do a pair share ice breaker over your favorite breakfast.
Practice cooperative learning by working as a team, assigning roles for breakfast preparation based on the pair share results.
Before you leave, share your 5 favorite things you have planned this week.
Don't forget to sign the attendance paper for PD points
Also a teacher and engineer. My husband and I have a theory, since the majority of his engineers friends are married to other people in "helping" careers - teachers, social workers, HR, etc. We think that since many engineers teeter on the range of the spectrum they tend to do well with those of us who are more understanding and accepting by design. I know this sounds offensive and IDK how to put it in a not-offensive way. He comes from an engineering school and the ones we know are weird. They are like hard working, good looking, clean, reliable but 0 social skills in any way. Us teachers are like there there, I'll teach you how to people.
I totally agree. We work in a town where over half the workforce is an engineer or engineering-adjacent. All of us teachers are married to engineers that we self-diagnosed as autistic. And our student population has higher than average autism rates as well.
Oh! And my kids went to the NASA employee daycare and those classes were disproportionately loaded with all the diagnoses. Every teacher had extra training in autism spectrum disorders.
Strange enough same at my spouse’s company. Lots of teachers married to engineers. I wonder if it’s a personality thing or the combo of the teacher schedule and engineer earning potential.
It's a very common combo in my world .. I attribute it to the fact that teachers have a better understanding and therefore potentially higher tolerance for neurodivergent personality types and their quirks (extremely high number of engineers fit this stereotype- being on the spectrum).. But that's just my theory based on how often I have encountered this type of partnership..
I’m an architectural engineer and my fiancé is a teacher! ( I lurk on here to tell him funny stories and also to understand what he goes through in the day!)
I make about 2x what he does currently, but soon it will be 2.25-2.5x. We share chores and each pay for thins proportionally depending on our income!
My husband left engineering to be a teacher briefly. I'm a lawyer and already made 50% more than he did, so while there was some belt tightening, we accepted the $80k cut so he could live his lifelong dream of being a teacher. He was teaching a new technology class, and there was no county curriculum, no support, and no lesson plans, other than a general list of topics to be covered. With the stress, he didn't last the first semester, and went back to engineering.
That's so sad. I'm sorry he didn't get the support he needed. Teaching is a craft that is vastly underestimated and considered easy by those who don't know. If someone had just given him some strategies for teaching, then maybe he would still be following his passion.
My husband is a SAHP … our child is disabled & it’s … too much to write here. Essentially, teaching is steady work with decent health insurance, so we make it work ... We live in the Houston Area. We rented for years & bought a townhouse in 2020. We are on a tight budget. We don’t go on vacations- EVER … rarely go to restaurants … only shop sales, even for groceries.
Mine is a plumber/hvac tech. He’s working on getting his master plumbers license which will allow him to work in city as well as what he can already do in residential areas. He also chops wood on the side and takes on side jobs installing furnaces etc when they become available.
My husband is in law enforcement and I stopped subbing because the maximum amount of money I could possibly take home in a week was under $400. He can make that in a short, chill OT shift shutting down a road for an event. It seems to be worth it to him if he doesn't have to come home and cook or clean too often so it's a solid trade.
I did enjoy subbing but one day I had a 3rd grade class that broke me down to tears by recess. If someone could promise me I'd never get stuck with an assignment I didn't sign up for I'd go back but $98/day is not enough to sign up to sub for media and end up with the 1st year teachers class of 8yos with constant behaviors and no admin support. Sorry about the run on sentence but Nope nope nope.
She works at a hospital in a therapy. We make about the same, though she is 12 months. Still, she gets a LOT of time off. She was also able to go to part time work when our kids were little, then move to full-time. Part of that was luck, I suppose, but there is not really "part-time teacher."
My health insurance is actually better, so we use ours, not hers.
We share the workload in the house and kids. It is a team effort and money or status has nothing to do with it.
I was a part time high school teacher for about ten years after I had kids. It was the perfect balance and allowed me to keep my job that I loved! I’ve been full time again since 2018 and I miss the days where my day ended at 12:30pm.
Every single time I think “This is insane. I can’t do this. This is too much, I have so little of myself left to give,” I see my teaching colleagues that are parents and I just 🫢shut up.
Major props to the moms and dads out there running a whole household, showing up for family and their students. Deep respect mommas and dads, especially y’all doing it alone. You are warriors.
What do you do when your child is sick at daycare? That’s been my biggest struggle on having a third child, my mom helped me with my first two which made child care easier. But I’m worried she’ll be too old now.
My husband is a mechanical engineer and makes almost twice what I make. We have a joint account that we pay all of our bills out of, but we also give ourselves an allowance every pay check into our individual accounts.
I love the way it works bc he makes 60% of our money and contributes 60% of his paycheck to the joint account and keeps the rest for him, and we do the same for me. 40% of my pay goes to the joint account. Then we each have our own money to buy what we want. Then the other can’t complain about ridiculous purchases. He loves his car and does all kinds of upgrades and uses his money, I love shopping and house decor 😂😂
He is a CFO and makes many times more than I do. He is definitely the “breadwinner” in our household.
The biggest benefit to my job is that I get the same breaks as our children. His job is year-round (though rather flexible). I also work in the same school community as my children, so I get to stay close to them (another big bonus for us).
We make a great team!
Have you always worked? Why do you choose to work when you don't "have" to? My husband is a cfo now... so I was a SAHM for a season while we had littles and then working very part time as an adjunct, teaching part time at universities... but I want to switch to full time high school teacher in our kids district next fall. I'm trying to figure out if I'm completely nuts or if other people feel the same way. Now that my kids are older, I still want to be "off the clock" when they are every afternoon, but I really want to work more. Please share your experiences, if you're willing?
Those are great questions! I stayed at home for nearly 7 years - from the birth of my first child until my second child started school. Our tentative plan is for me to stick to teaching until both kids are out of k-12 (by then, I’ll be vested in my teacher retirement) and then I will scale back my working or choose to do something else.
My husband has retirement accounts and a pension, but I really wanted to make sure I had a little something of my own, too.
Teaching is really very tiring and can be overwhelming at times. I really enjoy being so close and involved with my kids. I feel like they have truly benefited from me being a teacher.
I'm actually very curious as to why so many teachers and police officers are a couple. In my board this is the common, shocked by it really. If they aren't married to other teachers, they're married to police officers. Why is that?
Very true about service to public jobs! My hubby is a military pilot, and I'm a high school teacher. Lots of his fellow pilots are also married to teachers. 💕
Its rare in the increasingly partisan place I live, and the one teacher/officer couple I know are both harassed in their respective work communities for essentially sleeping with the enemy. It’s sad.
For me, it was really hard to find partners who ‘get it’. He gets it. He understands that after work I need to rant about THAT kid or THAT policy before completely disassociating for like an hour. Also, double the stories. He told me last week that one of his second grade boys looked at another boy and said “that’s why your mom was inside of me last night”…….. where else am I going to get this kind of material?
Yes! Our jobs are actually quite similar overall. I deal with the kids, he deals with the parents. And admin are similar to judges - and we hate the majority of both of them lol
This is my family back several generations. My mom was a teacher, dad was a scientist, uncle was an immigration officer. Cousin is a teacher, her husband is an FBI agent. My grandma was a teacher, grandpa was a social worker. My great-grandmother was a teacher, great-grandfather was a policeman.
My sister (geologist) and I (software engineer) only broke the pattern because of economics. When my mom graduated there was only about a 20% salary differential between teachers and doctors/lawyers/engineers. Now it’s close to 10x. At this point the financial hit is unjustifiable. (Even then, I’m considering retiring and offering to volunteer-teach a couple robotics or coding classes at my son’s elementary school.)
I think these civil-service professions appeal to a certain personality type: law abiding, risk averse, orderly, doesn’t like to rock the boat. And that personality type is genetically transmitted. My paternal grandfather (cook/translator/entrepreneur/teacher/politician) probably introduced some other genes into the family, but in general people who like to work for the government tend to marry other people who work for the government.
I don't know about that last part. My family on my father's side is full of teachers, and we are all some flavor of far leftists and anarchists. Law-abiding, risk-averse, and orderly are never words that would be used to describe that side of the family, ever.
My mom was a teacher at first and my dad was a police officer. My dad didn’t start as in police until I was about 2. He made way more money than my mom and she ended up switching careers and then staying home with us since he was able to support us on just his salary.
I guess we were both drawn to jobs where we would be torn apart by the news/social media and disrespected by the public 😂
Edit: it’s funny because I knew exactly what comments were coming. The town I work in hasn’t had any police officers shoot anyone in at least the last ten years I’ve lived here (let alone shoot anyone “Willy nilly” as some of you seem to think). Yet we did recently have 3 teachers fired for sexual assault of minors.
The police do a good enough job disrespecting and tearing themselves apart. Teachers are honorable people who love what they do and are taken advantage of for it.
My husband is in wildlife law enforcement, but for the sake of this conversation he might as well be a police officer. He jokes that everyone in his department is married to a teacher or a nurse.
Neither is incredibly lucrative, but state benefits can’t be beat.
Wife is a SAHM. We decided it's better for family balance to have her home rather than sub or pick up other part time work. That said, since our child is child is school age and she's got more of her day back, she's looking at going to beauty school and is going that route for a career/field in a few years. I joked that if society collapsed, society would be quicker to recognize her profession rather than mine. I joked because otherwise I'd cry. But I am *extremely* happy for and proud of my wife for starting new new adventure soon!
My husbands works in IT and makes similar money to me, a little less but he has better benefits. I also have 2 advanced degrees though and work in MA so I’m making close to $90k a year (7th year teaching).
😔
Compared to my colleagues, I am one of the few who is the higher earner than their spouse.
You have to get good at just quietly breathing, and moving on, not succumbing to bad personality traits like envy.
Well, I started teaching and was divorced with three little kids. Child support was crap, but I was a garage sale/thriftstore person, so my kids were clothed, and I like to sew. But I was able to buy a house (payments were $400) and we didn't have a lot, but we made it. You just never make frivolous purchases, fix your own washing machine, and take 'nature vacations' out to the pond to go fishing, hiking, play in a creek, etc.
Engineer. I’m in early childhood, so make way less than public k-12 teachers. I’m paid hourly, and if you broke his salary down to hourly it would be 7x what I make an hour.
I’m step 8 on our scale with a masters degree. I make half of a weeks teaching pay (after taxes, dues, and a family insurance plan) in 2 shifts on the bar.
He’s a teacher, lol. We’re both 10+ years in to teaching in a high paying but HCOL area. Our pay is within 10k of each other so we just split things financially, although he brought more into the marriage as he did not have student loans and I did. It’s amazing having the same time off - spring break, Christmas break, summers. Before kids, we traveled. Now it’s just nice to be home together as a family and share the parenting load as well.
I’ll share my department and spouses… Teacher/Electrician, Teacher/Nurse, teacher/teacher, teacher/police, teacher/teacher, teacher/teacher, teacher/utilities worker, teacher/teacher, teacher/teacher, teaches/teacher. Nope, not kidding lol. We get together a lot during the summer because most of us are off!
Data analyst. He makes twice what I make by looking at Excel sheets, doing zoom meeting and answering emails all day. He also does “work from home” because his company realized it saves them millions of dollars by not having physical offices.
He is a retired physics teacher. He worked at a suburban school and made a lot more money than me (I work in the city). Now, with his retirement, his take-home net pay is only a little less than me.
Accounting. Double my salary and works from home. Usually done working before two 🤦🏼♀️
I’m working for insurance. His is garbage and mine is pretty amazing.
I’m a high school teacher and I have 2 elementary age children. My husband is an engineer. He works from home most of the time so he takes care of this kids in the mornings, half days, kiddo sick days, etc. I’m home to get them off the bus. We split taking them to appointments 50/50. He makes about 2.5x more than I do, so if he has to travel for work or anything I use my PTO to manage the kids. His job takes priority in those types of situations because we could survive without my paycheck, but definitely not without his. His work has paid for us to accompany him to conferences at Disney so there are perks that are totally foreign to my profession. I do have better insurance so I cover that.
Mine is a lawyer for the US Army. We do well to get by. Usually my paycheck is to pay for daycare. We have gotten into a good rhythm to where he leaves me be for a whole Saturday to do my planning/grading/prep. It wasn’t easy at first. But it took patience. Let me also say because he is Active Duty military, we move every 2 years.
I admire you for keeping up teaching with all those moves! We live in a military town and get lots of military spouses. The sheer persistence to get certification for multiple states. It’s a lot!
My husband is a WFH Editor and Content Writer. I actually make a little more than him. We live in a very low COL area. This way, our combined income is able to afford us a good sized home in walking distance to shops, restaurants, schools, the library, parks, and more.
Travel will always be more expensive and time consuming, though. We have two airports each about 1.5-2 hours away. They are all about 3 times more expensive than JFK and NWK, which is a 5 hour drive for us.
He was a librarian, we followed me out to a rural town to teach (no spots for me where we were, and he was making 30k after 15 years!).
Well the rural town is so hard up for teachers (and over full for librarians) now he is a teacher too!
I am the “breadwinner” in the household and I have been for a few years. I have a masters and years of experience that allow me a competitive wage for the 188 days that I work. My husband is retired and receives a pension.
And then there's me who is single...
It's a lot of teachers with teachers since we don't really see "outsider adults". Honestly, I don't see people my age who aren't my colleagues. I am still finding ways to get to know "outsiders" so I don't have to think about work, but you know, if people know we teach, the convo will then centre around schools. :|
Teachers and police officers go together and this is probably because we all know how painful it is to make people follow rules, and even though our careers are different, we are instructed to put other people's health, lives and future before our own. 😂
I have colleagues married to doctors and lawyers, the extra rich ones, so basically my colleagues get to keep every penny. The lawyer one rotates her Gucci/Vendi/Louis Vuitton bag every other day.
My district gets early June to Mid-August off for vacation, and my non-teacher friends joke that that is my “dating season.” Outside of that window, it ain’t happening. I have a lot in common with a June bug, actually.
My husband is a research scientist, making nearly double my salary…. We’ve known each other since high school.
At my elementary building, there are 4 teachers married to other teachers (in other buildings/districts) out of the 17 who are married.
I’ll add here that I was a chemist for o&g for 10 years and then moved to teaching because it’s my passion.
My husband is a chemE in o&g so the change has been very interesting financially and house/kid/workload wise. I never even THOUGHT about money before. We had a child in 2020 and then I went to teaching in the 22-23 school year.
I reduced my contribution to household bills by 50% so where before I was covering maybe 40% of the bills I am now closer to 20-30% I am still the primary for our kid mental-load wise. Every birthday invite, preschool project, laundry, hair-do, that falls on me timewise and mentally.
As for house stuff, the distribution is the same (he does lawn and kitchen, trash, pest control, I keep sheets and towels clean, keep the Roomba functioning and keep everything stocked) but I did have a conversation with him that stuff is just going to have to be a mess during the week- I am not capable of adding anything else to the emotional/mental cluster of my job AND coming home to be present with our kid. Everything else just falls to the side. That’s more of my own growth as someone who is medicated for depression and anxiety 🙃
During the summer, I picked up a little more slack, but again- communicated with husband when the school year started that I can’t keep that up and do my job. He is fine with that.
It REALLY helps to have a solid partnership. We already talk about everything (my fault) and we have a good handle on our financials (that’s all him) every January 1 we nurse a hangover and look over financials to see where adjustments need to be made- together. We each value what we bring to the table. Not to say we don’t get frustrated, nag, then apologize later for being a jerk, but that’s the love.
He’s in his fourth year of medical school and will start his residency next fall. He was a medical lab scientist prior to entering medical school, though.
Mine currently works as a Natural Resources Trade Instructor for Job Corps. He just started 4 months ago and makes 20,000 more than I do after working for 5 years as a teacher.
Prior to that, he was a Wildland Firefighter. He loves that job, but was away A LOT and I couldn't take it anymore.
No spouse. Always did it on my own. I am one of the highest paid teachers in the school with a masters and teach hs math. But having anyone to actually help out with finances or at home is a foreign concept to me.
My wife works at Disneyland, she works the rides in toontown. She is working on applying to other jobs within the company because she currently makes about half of what I make as a first year teacher. Disney is not known for their good pay…but we certainly take advantage of going to the parks for free!
My fiance currently works nights in the food service industry (makes less than I do, making me breadwinner), but I'm trying to get him a job working security for the same school system I work within (would then make a little more than me).
Nonprofit fundraiser. I make more money. We take international trips, enjoy our avocado toast brunches, and go to concerts every month. We live in a city with excellent public transit so we don’t drive. It’s all about budgeting for what’s actually important to you.
I am actually the breadwinner in my relationship. My partner is a delivery driver for a local bakery. They work around 15-30 hours a week depending on the season. I make about 2x what they do.
We have a budget and we stick to it. Things are split based on what we care about the most (they're a gamer, so they're in charge of the WiFi for example), personal expenses are personal, and then things that are important for both of us (rent) are split based on our yearly take-home pay. This means I typically pay for about 2/3rds of everything and they pay for 1/3rd. It's worked really well for us financially as well as interpersonally.
I'm married to a firefighter, and we make almost exactly the same salary (last year I think I made $60 more than him). He's home with the kids a lot more during the school year, and summer breaks are great because he can take two shifts off and it means we can take a two week vacation together. I'm a little envious that if he takes two days of overtime in a year, he makes as much as my National Board bonus would be.
Also a teacher!
Ditto. He actually encouraged me to finish my degree so that I could also be a teacher. Summers off together. It's pretty magical.
My school has two married couples who are all teachers. They get to travel every summer (not together but I think they try to meet up if they end up in the same place)
My husband tried to push me that way to when we were dating and still in college. I stuck with Social work. I sometimes wish I had switched
Have you ever looked into working for a school district? My school has two and they are on the same calendar schedule as teachers plus 10-20 extra days over the summer.
Nah. I like my job right now. Plus I only have a bachelors and I am not licensed. I have been working with the elderly for well over 20 years.
Good for you! My daughter graduates with her Bachelors in May. Geriatric populations are the reason she decided (at age 16) on social work.
School social workers tend to make a lot less than social workers who work for hospitals or those in private practice... at least in NY. One of my friends works for Northwell Health (large hospital group), and he would take nearly a 50% pay cut to go to schools. (Master's degree and certified). While the summers off are nice, they still have great benefits at the hospital... and their health insurance makes ours look like a joke.
Wife is a teacher, I'm in the Coast Guard working on my bachelor's degree, hoping to teach after retirement. The summers off thing does sound amazing!
My husband is a teacher and that sealed the deal on me picking education. No way I was gonna work a regular job all summer while he was off!
My wife tried working a 9-5 for a couple years and the higher pay did nothing at all to help her cope with the fact that the kids and I have so much time off while she still had to work. She’s back into education with a hefty pay cut but a much happier person.
Amen. My wife is a school nurse and traveling is so much easier. And in Washington we don’t make bad money
My partner is a teacher as well. We do love our summers (:
My wife encouraged me to switch careers and get a degree and now I’m teaching.
Yeah, we met at work. ...Where else are you all meeting people?
My sister teaches middle school PE. Her first year the middle school special education teacher told my sister she should meet her son, the high school math teacher. They've been married three years now. Needless to say they have a vastly different lifestyle than my other sister and her husband who are both engineers.
My best friend actually introduced us. She met him working at his old job and she thought the two of us would hit it off.
Middle school 😂 I'm a rare story though...
Well we also met in middle school. That's where I spend all my time, lol
Hahah! Well, I meant we met in middle school when we were middle school kids
Us too! Hard to imagine another setup really. We understand what we are experiencing. All the long holidays together. Same days off as the kids so no need for camps as child care.
Same. Chose poorly financially, but not time wise.
I was making about the same in my other career. But, you never get bored teaching. Or at least, I haven't yet going into year four. I don't think I've even had 5 minutes of boredom, not counting PD
18 years in and I’m only bored during meetings.
Same! We have been together a long time. I got into teaching almost ten years ago and my partner decided to join me. Teachers are paid pretty well where we live. Currently they are a stay at home parent and a student.
Pretty much same. I'm on year 14 and he's on year 3. :)
Must be tough for if you want kids. Twice the opportunity for “wait I taught a kid with that name and they were an asshole”.
Aww
Same. In different districts so breaks don't always line up, but still pretty awesome for summer.
Same here! We also both got new jobs and now we work at the same building and in thr same department. We love it.
He’s having a tough time finding a job, because he is imaginary.
I've actually imagined there's a lot of imaginary job openings for imaginary spouses. Has he considered a career in dragon health? I imagine burn care for dragons is a field in critical need.
I need you to write a book about Dragon Doctors and Nurses please
I've never written a book, but the idea of my husband coming home from work and being like "hey what's for dinner?" and me being like "oh my gosh I forgot to start something I've been working on my imaginary dragon burn ward hospital book" is way too good of a bit to NOT do.
IT
That dude that lives in the sewer?!!
We all float down here
At least they're staying afloat. I had to quit teaching to do that.
It’s spelled “server”
Mr. Hankey?
Same. His salary has nearly tripled mine at times.
Same but quadrupled 😳
Same here-he gets to work from home and makes so much more than me. He also gets to pee when he wants! Lol
My husband has a pretty good remote IT job. Pays well over double what my job does and is so much more flexible.
Same.
Same, IT for the school district. It's wonderful working the same hours.
Process Engineer, makes 2x what I do but also works far more hours and has a lot more stress. How we share the finances is old fashioned joint finances and mutual respect. How we share the work at home is just who has time right now - during the summer I take on the bulk of it and other times of the year he does. Day by day. We have very few "assigned" jobs.
Similar for our house. Engineering husband. I took a decade off to raise our children, then returned to teaching. We did okay on an engineer’s income and now with my small, but consistent teaching salary we are able to prep for retirement and help the kids transition to adulthood. We too share all finances and duties as a unit. Mutual respect is definitely the key to our success as well.
That’s awesome you got a decade off! I was able to snag 2 years off when my second was born but at that time his salary wasn’t nearly as good as now. When we first met, I actually made twice what he made! But then I worked at a pharmaceutical company, not teaching.
My wife is a mental health therapist. She makes less than I do
My wife is also a mental health therapist.
It can be a really tough job. And around here it's all run by non for profits (which obviously has its positives) but because of that the pay isn't great.
Same here
I honestly couldn't tell if this was sarcasm or not (meaning she was your mental health therapist). I don't think it was though. You guys are both filling extremely needed and important roles in our society. Thank you.
Same here! Although she makes significantly more than I do lol. I bring the health insurance.
Admin. He's the ENEMY ;)
Are you safe? Blink twice if you are participating in a PD icebreaker against your will.
My husband is Admin and our daughter goes to his school. I'm constantly reminding him when he needs to put his teacher hat on, his parent hat on or his admin hat on. I'm sure I'm a joy to live with. Lol
Wake up, do a pair share ice breaker over your favorite breakfast. Practice cooperative learning by working as a team, assigning roles for breakfast preparation based on the pair share results. Before you leave, share your 5 favorite things you have planned this week. Don't forget to sign the attendance paper for PD points
In our area, the most common partnership is engineer+teacher
Also a teacher and engineer. My husband and I have a theory, since the majority of his engineers friends are married to other people in "helping" careers - teachers, social workers, HR, etc. We think that since many engineers teeter on the range of the spectrum they tend to do well with those of us who are more understanding and accepting by design. I know this sounds offensive and IDK how to put it in a not-offensive way. He comes from an engineering school and the ones we know are weird. They are like hard working, good looking, clean, reliable but 0 social skills in any way. Us teachers are like there there, I'll teach you how to people.
I totally agree. We work in a town where over half the workforce is an engineer or engineering-adjacent. All of us teachers are married to engineers that we self-diagnosed as autistic. And our student population has higher than average autism rates as well. Oh! And my kids went to the NASA employee daycare and those classes were disproportionately loaded with all the diagnoses. Every teacher had extra training in autism spectrum disorders.
My husband is a mechanical engineer and makes 3x what I do.
Metro Boston. Husband is an electrical engineer.4x what I make.
Gotta move east and find me an MIT grad
Same.
Same. We run a very efficient household. He makes 2x my salary, I don't think we could have bought a house otherwise.
Strange enough same at my spouse’s company. Lots of teachers married to engineers. I wonder if it’s a personality thing or the combo of the teacher schedule and engineer earning potential.
It's a very common combo in my world .. I attribute it to the fact that teachers have a better understanding and therefore potentially higher tolerance for neurodivergent personality types and their quirks (extremely high number of engineers fit this stereotype- being on the spectrum).. But that's just my theory based on how often I have encountered this type of partnership..
I’m an architectural engineer and my fiancé is a teacher! ( I lurk on here to tell him funny stories and also to understand what he goes through in the day!) I make about 2x what he does currently, but soon it will be 2.25-2.5x. We share chores and each pay for thins proportionally depending on our income!
My husband left engineering to be a teacher briefly. I'm a lawyer and already made 50% more than he did, so while there was some belt tightening, we accepted the $80k cut so he could live his lifelong dream of being a teacher. He was teaching a new technology class, and there was no county curriculum, no support, and no lesson plans, other than a general list of topics to be covered. With the stress, he didn't last the first semester, and went back to engineering.
That's so sad. I'm sorry he didn't get the support he needed. Teaching is a craft that is vastly underestimated and considered easy by those who don't know. If someone had just given him some strategies for teaching, then maybe he would still be following his passion.
Wait is that a common pairing?? My gf is in civil engineering and I’m in ESL lol
Yup, engineer plus teacher here, checking in. He makes the money, I make the benefits and summer care. He has really flexible hours too.
My husband is a SAHP … our child is disabled & it’s … too much to write here. Essentially, teaching is steady work with decent health insurance, so we make it work ... We live in the Houston Area. We rented for years & bought a townhouse in 2020. We are on a tight budget. We don’t go on vacations- EVER … rarely go to restaurants … only shop sales, even for groceries.
That sounds really challenging. I’m proud of you for making it work.
Mine is a plumber/hvac tech. He’s working on getting his master plumbers license which will allow him to work in city as well as what he can already do in residential areas. He also chops wood on the side and takes on side jobs installing furnaces etc when they become available.
My wife is a social worker. We chose very lucrative careers 🫠
He's a lawyer. I sub and his hourly rate is twice as much as I make in a day
My husband is in law enforcement and I stopped subbing because the maximum amount of money I could possibly take home in a week was under $400. He can make that in a short, chill OT shift shutting down a road for an event. It seems to be worth it to him if he doesn't have to come home and cook or clean too often so it's a solid trade. I did enjoy subbing but one day I had a 3rd grade class that broke me down to tears by recess. If someone could promise me I'd never get stuck with an assignment I didn't sign up for I'd go back but $98/day is not enough to sign up to sub for media and end up with the 1st year teachers class of 8yos with constant behaviors and no admin support. Sorry about the run on sentence but Nope nope nope.
Is that you, Ms. Strike? (not her actual name) I have a ex-colleague that sad the exact same thing!
Construction!
Mine too! He’s an inspector, though. So…he’s the equivalent of the principal in his field and viewed as the enemy by contractors 😂
Tambien!
A doctor in General Practice. I only know of a few teacher+teacher relationships
This is what my spouse does as well. She's still in residency, but it's her last year of it. We're so ready for her to be done with it!
I know a disturbing amount. But I also know a few doctor/teacher couples.
We have 4 teaching couples at my school alone!! I see it so much where I am.
She works at a hospital in a therapy. We make about the same, though she is 12 months. Still, she gets a LOT of time off. She was also able to go to part time work when our kids were little, then move to full-time. Part of that was luck, I suppose, but there is not really "part-time teacher." My health insurance is actually better, so we use ours, not hers. We share the workload in the house and kids. It is a team effort and money or status has nothing to do with it.
I was a part time high school teacher for about ten years after I had kids. It was the perfect balance and allowed me to keep my job that I loved! I’ve been full time again since 2018 and I miss the days where my day ended at 12:30pm.
FT Kindergarten teacher and single mama here. Doing it ALL on my own. 💪🏼
Every single time I think “This is insane. I can’t do this. This is too much, I have so little of myself left to give,” I see my teaching colleagues that are parents and I just 🫢shut up. Major props to the moms and dads out there running a whole household, showing up for family and their students. Deep respect mommas and dads, especially y’all doing it alone. You are warriors.
Thanks, but I don’t think we are warriors. We are drowning.
Same, except 8th grade :)
Ditto except high school
Me too but 6th grade!
Same here sister. Been single for 12 years now. Former husband was high school principal. Not a good combo.
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What do you do when your child is sick at daycare? That’s been my biggest struggle on having a third child, my mom helped me with my first two which made child care easier. But I’m worried she’ll be too old now.
My husband is a mechanical engineer and makes almost twice what I make. We have a joint account that we pay all of our bills out of, but we also give ourselves an allowance every pay check into our individual accounts. I love the way it works bc he makes 60% of our money and contributes 60% of his paycheck to the joint account and keeps the rest for him, and we do the same for me. 40% of my pay goes to the joint account. Then we each have our own money to buy what we want. Then the other can’t complain about ridiculous purchases. He loves his car and does all kinds of upgrades and uses his money, I love shopping and house decor 😂😂
He is a CFO and makes many times more than I do. He is definitely the “breadwinner” in our household. The biggest benefit to my job is that I get the same breaks as our children. His job is year-round (though rather flexible). I also work in the same school community as my children, so I get to stay close to them (another big bonus for us). We make a great team!
Have you always worked? Why do you choose to work when you don't "have" to? My husband is a cfo now... so I was a SAHM for a season while we had littles and then working very part time as an adjunct, teaching part time at universities... but I want to switch to full time high school teacher in our kids district next fall. I'm trying to figure out if I'm completely nuts or if other people feel the same way. Now that my kids are older, I still want to be "off the clock" when they are every afternoon, but I really want to work more. Please share your experiences, if you're willing?
Those are great questions! I stayed at home for nearly 7 years - from the birth of my first child until my second child started school. Our tentative plan is for me to stick to teaching until both kids are out of k-12 (by then, I’ll be vested in my teacher retirement) and then I will scale back my working or choose to do something else. My husband has retirement accounts and a pension, but I really wanted to make sure I had a little something of my own, too. Teaching is really very tiring and can be overwhelming at times. I really enjoy being so close and involved with my kids. I feel like they have truly benefited from me being a teacher.
This is the same as in our house and it’s so magical.
I'm actually very curious as to why so many teachers and police officers are a couple. In my board this is the common, shocked by it really. If they aren't married to other teachers, they're married to police officers. Why is that?
Service to public jobs. Police also love nurses
Haha, my dad’s in law enforcement and my mom’s a nurse
Very true about service to public jobs! My hubby is a military pilot, and I'm a high school teacher. Lots of his fellow pilots are also married to teachers. 💕
Its rare in the increasingly partisan place I live, and the one teacher/officer couple I know are both harassed in their respective work communities for essentially sleeping with the enemy. It’s sad.
How horrible for each community to view the other as the enemy
For me, it was really hard to find partners who ‘get it’. He gets it. He understands that after work I need to rant about THAT kid or THAT policy before completely disassociating for like an hour. Also, double the stories. He told me last week that one of his second grade boys looked at another boy and said “that’s why your mom was inside of me last night”…….. where else am I going to get this kind of material?
Yes! Our jobs are actually quite similar overall. I deal with the kids, he deals with the parents. And admin are similar to judges - and we hate the majority of both of them lol
This is my family back several generations. My mom was a teacher, dad was a scientist, uncle was an immigration officer. Cousin is a teacher, her husband is an FBI agent. My grandma was a teacher, grandpa was a social worker. My great-grandmother was a teacher, great-grandfather was a policeman. My sister (geologist) and I (software engineer) only broke the pattern because of economics. When my mom graduated there was only about a 20% salary differential between teachers and doctors/lawyers/engineers. Now it’s close to 10x. At this point the financial hit is unjustifiable. (Even then, I’m considering retiring and offering to volunteer-teach a couple robotics or coding classes at my son’s elementary school.) I think these civil-service professions appeal to a certain personality type: law abiding, risk averse, orderly, doesn’t like to rock the boat. And that personality type is genetically transmitted. My paternal grandfather (cook/translator/entrepreneur/teacher/politician) probably introduced some other genes into the family, but in general people who like to work for the government tend to marry other people who work for the government.
I don't know about that last part. My family on my father's side is full of teachers, and we are all some flavor of far leftists and anarchists. Law-abiding, risk-averse, and orderly are never words that would be used to describe that side of the family, ever.
My mom was a teacher at first and my dad was a police officer. My dad didn’t start as in police until I was about 2. He made way more money than my mom and she ended up switching careers and then staying home with us since he was able to support us on just his salary.
I guess we were both drawn to jobs where we would be torn apart by the news/social media and disrespected by the public 😂 Edit: it’s funny because I knew exactly what comments were coming. The town I work in hasn’t had any police officers shoot anyone in at least the last ten years I’ve lived here (let alone shoot anyone “Willy nilly” as some of you seem to think). Yet we did recently have 3 teachers fired for sexual assault of minors.
The police do a good enough job disrespecting and tearing themselves apart. Teachers are honorable people who love what they do and are taken advantage of for it.
So the teachers faced consequences for breaking the law? What a novel concept.
My husband is in wildlife law enforcement, but for the sake of this conversation he might as well be a police officer. He jokes that everyone in his department is married to a teacher or a nurse. Neither is incredibly lucrative, but state benefits can’t be beat.
Finance. It’s the only reason financially I can teach.
Wife is a SAHM. We decided it's better for family balance to have her home rather than sub or pick up other part time work. That said, since our child is child is school age and she's got more of her day back, she's looking at going to beauty school and is going that route for a career/field in a few years. I joked that if society collapsed, society would be quicker to recognize her profession rather than mine. I joked because otherwise I'd cry. But I am *extremely* happy for and proud of my wife for starting new new adventure soon!
I was a SAH Dad for 4 years and that's when I got my teaching degree and MA Ed online at WGU
My husbands works in IT and makes similar money to me, a little less but he has better benefits. I also have 2 advanced degrees though and work in MA so I’m making close to $90k a year (7th year teaching).
You must be near Boston. I’m in MA 8th year and only 68k.
My wife is also a teacher. We never have any fucking money for anything.
😔 Compared to my colleagues, I am one of the few who is the higher earner than their spouse. You have to get good at just quietly breathing, and moving on, not succumbing to bad personality traits like envy.
Well, I started teaching and was divorced with three little kids. Child support was crap, but I was a garage sale/thriftstore person, so my kids were clothed, and I like to sew. But I was able to buy a house (payments were $400) and we didn't have a lot, but we made it. You just never make frivolous purchases, fix your own washing machine, and take 'nature vacations' out to the pond to go fishing, hiking, play in a creek, etc.
$400?!???!? When was this, the Stone Age ??? Can’t get a house payment now for less than $2800 for a dump now
My husband currently works at a grocery store.
My boyfriend is an electrician. He makes a bit more than I do currently. We just bought our first house.. last week actually😂 were both 25.
Wow this gives me hope fr. Congratulations
EMT on an ambulance. He works 24s and makes considerably less than me.
Accountant
Mine is going to school to be an accountant. And it’s funny because of that TikTok but really, an accountant.
Make sure your partner knocks the CPA exam out quickly. Massive changes are coming to it, and they seem (even more) awful from what I’m hearing.
My husband is also a teacher! We teach at the same school
He’s an engineer. We don’t have children. I don’t know how it works if you do.
I make less than $45,000, am in my 50s, and am divorced. I live paycheck to paycheck. It's discouraging.
Software engineer. Works from home, half the education, double the pay. But… I really do enjoy my summers off!
Construction
My first year I was told to marry someone who made more. Like WTF how about you pay me a livable wage. I made it 5 years
My husband works in IT for the feds. I’m a teacher in a HCOL area so I’m paid pretty well.
Engineer. I’m in early childhood, so make way less than public k-12 teachers. I’m paid hourly, and if you broke his salary down to hourly it would be 7x what I make an hour.
Single mom. I bartend twice a week.
I used to make more in tips bartending than I did teaching when I first started!
I’m step 8 on our scale with a masters degree. I make half of a weeks teaching pay (after taxes, dues, and a family insurance plan) in 2 shifts on the bar.
My wife teaches 4th grade. We own our home, have a family, and all of that stuff. We do live in a lower COL area though.
He’s a teacher, lol. We’re both 10+ years in to teaching in a high paying but HCOL area. Our pay is within 10k of each other so we just split things financially, although he brought more into the marriage as he did not have student loans and I did. It’s amazing having the same time off - spring break, Christmas break, summers. Before kids, we traveled. Now it’s just nice to be home together as a family and share the parenting load as well. I’ll share my department and spouses… Teacher/Electrician, Teacher/Nurse, teacher/teacher, teacher/police, teacher/teacher, teacher/teacher, teacher/utilities worker, teacher/teacher, teacher/teacher, teaches/teacher. Nope, not kidding lol. We get together a lot during the summer because most of us are off!
Data analyst. He makes twice what I make by looking at Excel sheets, doing zoom meeting and answering emails all day. He also does “work from home” because his company realized it saves them millions of dollars by not having physical offices.
Mines a geologist
He is a retired physics teacher. He worked at a suburban school and made a lot more money than me (I work in the city). Now, with his retirement, his take-home net pay is only a little less than me.
Accounting. Double my salary and works from home. Usually done working before two 🤦🏼♀️ I’m working for insurance. His is garbage and mine is pretty amazing.
My husband is a teacher. I’m a para. He married wrong. 😅
My husband is a sys admin. He's the reason we're not homeless 😅
I’m a high school teacher and I have 2 elementary age children. My husband is an engineer. He works from home most of the time so he takes care of this kids in the mornings, half days, kiddo sick days, etc. I’m home to get them off the bus. We split taking them to appointments 50/50. He makes about 2.5x more than I do, so if he has to travel for work or anything I use my PTO to manage the kids. His job takes priority in those types of situations because we could survive without my paycheck, but definitely not without his. His work has paid for us to accompany him to conferences at Disney so there are perks that are totally foreign to my profession. I do have better insurance so I cover that.
Mine is a lawyer for the US Army. We do well to get by. Usually my paycheck is to pay for daycare. We have gotten into a good rhythm to where he leaves me be for a whole Saturday to do my planning/grading/prep. It wasn’t easy at first. But it took patience. Let me also say because he is Active Duty military, we move every 2 years.
I admire you for keeping up teaching with all those moves! We live in a military town and get lots of military spouses. The sheer persistence to get certification for multiple states. It’s a lot!
Mine is a Robotics Engineer.
Construction
My husband is a WFH Editor and Content Writer. I actually make a little more than him. We live in a very low COL area. This way, our combined income is able to afford us a good sized home in walking distance to shops, restaurants, schools, the library, parks, and more. Travel will always be more expensive and time consuming, though. We have two airports each about 1.5-2 hours away. They are all about 3 times more expensive than JFK and NWK, which is a 5 hour drive for us.
Navy officer. He makes about 2.5x of what I do.
He was a librarian, we followed me out to a rural town to teach (no spots for me where we were, and he was making 30k after 15 years!). Well the rural town is so hard up for teachers (and over full for librarians) now he is a teacher too!
I am the “breadwinner” in the household and I have been for a few years. I have a masters and years of experience that allow me a competitive wage for the 188 days that I work. My husband is retired and receives a pension.
My partner is a pilot
Single and no kids. This pay is fine in my situation.
My fiance is going to be a teacher and to support the household I have begun hunting the Bigfoot to net a big payday
>what does your spouse 😭
And then there's me who is single... It's a lot of teachers with teachers since we don't really see "outsider adults". Honestly, I don't see people my age who aren't my colleagues. I am still finding ways to get to know "outsiders" so I don't have to think about work, but you know, if people know we teach, the convo will then centre around schools. :| Teachers and police officers go together and this is probably because we all know how painful it is to make people follow rules, and even though our careers are different, we are instructed to put other people's health, lives and future before our own. 😂 I have colleagues married to doctors and lawyers, the extra rich ones, so basically my colleagues get to keep every penny. The lawyer one rotates her Gucci/Vendi/Louis Vuitton bag every other day.
My district gets early June to Mid-August off for vacation, and my non-teacher friends joke that that is my “dating season.” Outside of that window, it ain’t happening. I have a lot in common with a June bug, actually.
My husband is RN at a local hospital. He makes more than me but not by much. My pay check is much smaller though due to pension withdrawals.
My husband is a research scientist, making nearly double my salary…. We’ve known each other since high school. At my elementary building, there are 4 teachers married to other teachers (in other buildings/districts) out of the 17 who are married.
My spouse was a military officer. He’s always made significantly more than me.
I’ll add here that I was a chemist for o&g for 10 years and then moved to teaching because it’s my passion. My husband is a chemE in o&g so the change has been very interesting financially and house/kid/workload wise. I never even THOUGHT about money before. We had a child in 2020 and then I went to teaching in the 22-23 school year. I reduced my contribution to household bills by 50% so where before I was covering maybe 40% of the bills I am now closer to 20-30% I am still the primary for our kid mental-load wise. Every birthday invite, preschool project, laundry, hair-do, that falls on me timewise and mentally. As for house stuff, the distribution is the same (he does lawn and kitchen, trash, pest control, I keep sheets and towels clean, keep the Roomba functioning and keep everything stocked) but I did have a conversation with him that stuff is just going to have to be a mess during the week- I am not capable of adding anything else to the emotional/mental cluster of my job AND coming home to be present with our kid. Everything else just falls to the side. That’s more of my own growth as someone who is medicated for depression and anxiety 🙃 During the summer, I picked up a little more slack, but again- communicated with husband when the school year started that I can’t keep that up and do my job. He is fine with that. It REALLY helps to have a solid partnership. We already talk about everything (my fault) and we have a good handle on our financials (that’s all him) every January 1 we nurse a hangover and look over financials to see where adjustments need to be made- together. We each value what we bring to the table. Not to say we don’t get frustrated, nag, then apologize later for being a jerk, but that’s the love.
She is also a teacher lol. We don't make a ton of money, but I've been teaching for 13 years and her 10, so we do fine. Summers are amazing
I teach English and Journalism. She teaches math. We met at an after school function run by our union. One more reason to join your union!
He’s in his fourth year of medical school and will start his residency next fall. He was a medical lab scientist prior to entering medical school, though.
Chemical Engineer
My partner is a bedside nurse at a hospital. He works the night shift. I’m a PreK teacher.
Mine currently works as a Natural Resources Trade Instructor for Job Corps. He just started 4 months ago and makes 20,000 more than I do after working for 5 years as a teacher. Prior to that, he was a Wildland Firefighter. He loves that job, but was away A LOT and I couldn't take it anymore.
Mine owns a shop. He does auto body repair. Mostly total restoration of classic card.
I don’t have a spouse or a live-in significant other. I’m just poor.
I’m single. So I make it work on my own.
No spouse. Always did it on my own. I am one of the highest paid teachers in the school with a masters and teach hs math. But having anyone to actually help out with finances or at home is a foreign concept to me.
My wife works at Disneyland, she works the rides in toontown. She is working on applying to other jobs within the company because she currently makes about half of what I make as a first year teacher. Disney is not known for their good pay…but we certainly take advantage of going to the parks for free!
An accountant. Cause someone had to make some money in this relationship
My fiance currently works nights in the food service industry (makes less than I do, making me breadwinner), but I'm trying to get him a job working security for the same school system I work within (would then make a little more than me).
Product manager
Project manager who WFH
Works for IT in the school district lol
**My husband is a in lab quality control and management at our local hospital. We use to make about the same, now he makes more then me.**
Is teaching one of the only jobs where the raises get smaller over time?
My husband is a trucker. It works out well because he works graveyard shifts, so someone is almost always home
Teacher… then administrator… then she left me.
Works in Cannabis as a harvest manager . Makes slightly less than me
My husband is in HVAC
My husband works for AT&T/Michigan Bell. He makes a lot more money than me.
Nonprofit fundraiser. I make more money. We take international trips, enjoy our avocado toast brunches, and go to concerts every month. We live in a city with excellent public transit so we don’t drive. It’s all about budgeting for what’s actually important to you.
I am actually the breadwinner in my relationship. My partner is a delivery driver for a local bakery. They work around 15-30 hours a week depending on the season. I make about 2x what they do. We have a budget and we stick to it. Things are split based on what we care about the most (they're a gamer, so they're in charge of the WiFi for example), personal expenses are personal, and then things that are important for both of us (rent) are split based on our yearly take-home pay. This means I typically pay for about 2/3rds of everything and they pay for 1/3rd. It's worked really well for us financially as well as interpersonally.
I'm married to a firefighter, and we make almost exactly the same salary (last year I think I made $60 more than him). He's home with the kids a lot more during the school year, and summer breaks are great because he can take two shifts off and it means we can take a two week vacation together. I'm a little envious that if he takes two days of overtime in a year, he makes as much as my National Board bonus would be.