I suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a discussion about women, men, and money that includes the authors of Unhooked Generation: The Truth About Why We’re Still Single and Smart Man Hunting: A Fast-Track Dating Guide for Finding Mr. Right.
Correction: I shouldn’t expect much more than consternation and forehead-slapping. Because that’s exactly what I got.
This article, Does a man’s salary matter?, is barely worth reading, let alone shredding, but the topic is worth discussing in a feminist space. I’ll admit that money is a sensitive topic for me (that happens when you don’t have much), and one that is looming larger than usual these days, given my underemployed state. Love and money are often fraught, even when they’re not all mixed up together. And when they are? Hoo-doggie.
I have multiple specialized degrees, and currently am unable to support myself in the field of my training. (Or, it seems, any other field.) The Dude has one specialized degree (a BFA), and has been consistently employed, and consistently better paid than me, in a small number of jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with his training.
While I’m mostly pissed that I a) was horribly duped about my prospects or b) am utterly worthless, professionally speaking, I’m also really troubled about being dead weight to this guy who threw in his lot with me lo these many years ago, when we both thought that at some point in the not-too-distant future I would be the steady one, earning enough that he could go and pursue his risky dream profession. I appear to be, most unhappily, unable to make good on my plans. We used to split everything 50-50, now I am in growing debt to him. He doesn’t complain, but we can’t live in New York without a second income.
Even as I am deeply grateful to the Dude for supporting me with health insurance, and now subsidizing my very existence, I fucking.hate.it. I’m not going anywhere, but having my own money is crucial to my sense of well-being, and not being self-sufficient is doing a serious number on my ego, if not my relationship. I want to be cared for, sure, but not “taken care of.” So I guess I don’t understand the bean-counting stuff the article mentions, or any major concern with how much a prospective partner (regardless of hir gender) earns. I mean, I get that you can’t eat love (boy do I), and that money does buy comforts. And I know that partnering with someone who can’t hold a job, budget, or live within hir means is inviting grief.
But straight women not accepting a partner because he doesn’t pull down more than they do? The more I think about it, the more I think that’s some kind of weird, internalized misogyny. If a man doesn’t earn more than a woman, he must be some kind of failure? If he works in a field that isn’t well-remunerated (keeping in mind that many such jobs in the caring professions and the service industry are/were considered “women’s work”), he’s not attractive or sufficiently manly?
Of course, if you want kids, and you plan to take a break from paid work to do focus on them for whatever length of time, these considerations get a bit more complicated, but I think the point remains: if earning power is one way we assess gender-compliance, and if women don’t buck the find-a-man-who-can-support-you bullshit they’re fed with their zweiback, it seems like we’re adding to the inequities that are built into our heartless, fucked-up, kyriarchal-capitalist system, rather than questioning the system itself. (Poverty is radicalizing me, yo!)
So, commenters, tell me about your experiences. When dating, how much do/did you take your honeypie’s earning power into consideration? (Do/did you even think about it? I never did, although that could have been because I was young and idealistic.) Do you expect–or even hope–that he’ll outearn you? And if so: why? Because you’re a public school teacher, or a freelancer, or are some other ill-paid or financially risky job? Or is there something else? If you out-earn your partner, how do you think that affects your relationship? What’s the financial dynamic in your household?
I’ve been with with the Dude for most of my adult life, and I only know what I know. Please explode my brain with your anecdata.
“I want to be cared for, sure, but not ‘taken care of.’”
This is a mantra for the ages.
I never considered it. Then again I married a man I had dated for three months after we’d won a fortune gambling at the horses, which possibly says a lot about our relationship.
It’s fair to say that my husband earns more steadily than me, although there are months when I earn far more (i’m a freelance journalist though so there are months when I earn sweet fa) and yes there are definitely times when I get worked up about the idea that I’m not contributing. Balancing this however is the fact that my husband has more debt than I do and that my salary being paid in pounds is busy reducing his English debt while we live off his American salary.
Which given that we have two kids and live in New York by and large means that we are really short of cash at the end of every month (as in changing all our spare coins in the local bank short) and tend to lurch from pay check to pay check.
That said I do believe that one day this will be different because I am incurably optimistic and because ultimately my husband earns a good solid salary and I earn a good if erratic wage meaning if we could just get rid of our debt life would improve.
I can’t imagine we’ll ever be able to buy a house though. Not unless the right horse comes in again.
I never thought about it either. When we met, my husband and I were working the same crappy service jobs and probably made about the same. Neither of us expected to remain there very long and fortunately it’s been four years since I’ve had to unfold a napkin in someone else’s lap.
Now he definitely makes more than megiven the industries we’ve chosen. He works in for-profit and I’ve kind of found my niche working for a non-profit health charity. It bothers me a little bit but I still pay my share of the bills. Besides, the amount of work I do at home more than makes up for whatever gap there is financially.
Hopefully one day he’ll earn enough so I can return to school full-time. Perhaps then the difference in our earnings will even out a little.
I earn more than my husband. I don’t think anything of it, really. It all goes in one pot and we use it to live off of, try to save for the future, and have fun from time to time.
I do understand wanting a partner to be steadily working at something, whether it’s remunerative or not, and wanting a partner to want to contribute. The numbers don’t matter, the spirit does.
A person who makes millions but who puts a partner on a tight allowance has a miserly spirit, which is never expressed only monetarily.
A person who makes small change, but puts what s/he can in the communal pot without cavil, is generous of spirit, and that again is never expressed only monetarily.
And it’s interesting that a guy who notes how much money is going where is thought of as just being careful with money, while a woman who notes how much money is going where is grasping and a golddigger.
Just as a man who puts his wife on an allowance is taking care of her; a woman who puts her husband on an allowance is a controlling shrew.
Because all the money is his to dispense.
My mother has recently taken to advising me to marry rich. Unironically. Despite the fact that she was only married for 5 years of her life and has very successfully supported herself the rest of the time – I think she wishes she had the ‘easier’ life that her well-married, stay-at-home mother sisters have. It doesn’t really fit with my Weltbild at all though.
Not that I’d turn down a man based on him being too rich – it just isn’t a part of my calculations at all. What is important to me is a good work ethic and a desire to be independent (i.e. not living off the parents for years and years), a commitment to avoiding debt – but that’s not the same as being rich.
And one of my great goals is to never have to depend on anyone else for my existence – I have been financially independent since leaving university and plan to keep it that way for the rest of my life.
(That last comment, by the way, is obviously not meant to downplay the extent to which such matters are not in one’s own hands – cf. PhDork’s example of unexpected semi-dependence), but that’s definitely what I’m going to aim for.
I did not consider it first but we have talked about it now. Although I currently earn less than my partner, it is likely that in the next few years that will change. Currently, we both have no issue with this but I can’t help but wonder if the reality will be different than the idea for either one of us. I am the more financially prudent one so that may be the factor at play. That said, the ability to earn my own keep is very important to me and since my partner and I currently live separately, it’s essential. I can very much understand how struggling in that domain would affect my own sense of well-being.
As an aside, did anyone see that NPR news coverage of a study which said that men who make less than their female partners are more likely to cheat?
me 3, I didn’t think about this when I dated my husband since we had that fairy tale romance, and, it was pretty clear from the start that we would both pursue well paid professional careers.
BUT…Dork your current experiences echo mine very much. I could have written whole paragraphs that you write up there. Underemployment and not being able to pursue the career I imagined for myself are deeply upsetting things. It’s a struggle to hang on to a healthy attitude at times.
In some other thread we might talk about this in detail just for catharsis or something.
Over the course of a lifetime it is so up and down. My partner and I have gone through different periods of being in school, under or un employed, in which the other was the primary earner. We are currently in a long cycle of me supporting him, but if things work out in the end he might end up a doctor which in a shocking turn of events would make us able to buy groceries the last week of the month (a feat we have not had enough cash to do in ages).
I get frustrated with us not being financially secure and once in a while if he is unemployed I get frustrated, but most of the time I just think I am underpaid and try to scheme ways to make myself richer (understanding that all our finances are completely mixed — no independent accounts).
It is getting more complicated now as we are planning for upcoming kids and with parental leave laws so unequal in the country where I live, me being the breadwinner is becoming more of a practical problem. But still, I blame the laws, not my partner for not earning enough.
Money is unpredictable. People come into unexpected inheritances, change career paths, lose or win a ton of money gambling. Anything can happen; it seems dicey to base a lifelong relationship on it.
In our marriage, we’ve alternated the “bread winner” role. Right now, my husband makes a good living after many years of training (supported in no small part by me), so now he’s supporting us while I try to become a comic artist.
It’s been my life-long dream, but unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills until years down the road, if I’m lucky! But we’ve always been a team like that.
If I were single, I would definitely look for a man who 1)is gainfully employed or trying to be 2)doesn’t job-hop or doesn’t show unwillingness to stick anything out if it gets the tiniest bit unpleasant 3) doesn’t live with his parents and/or continually subsidized by them 4)doesn’t make disastrous financial decisions like racking up mondo debt, living beyond his means or spending money on trivialities (cars, video games, gambling) while he has to bum money for necessities like groceries.
I’m beyond my 20s and would be unwilling to put up with this. I want an adult and a team player, even though I understand that sometimes things fluctuate within a relationship or bad things happen and one partner ends up doing more. I’m talking more of an overall unwillingness to be a team; for example, if my husband lost his lucrative job, you’d better believe I’d look for work and put my plans on hold, because we have to eat. I wouldn’t just lay back while he spun his wheels. And even if looking for work is unsuccessful, I would do everything I could to try. I’d expect the same from him.
A major pet peeve is when a man hears ANY standards at all (like the reasonable ones for anyone over 30 I’ve outlined above) and takes that as “evidence” that I or any other woman only cares about his money. Wanting you to be basically an adult does NOT mean I am a golddigger!
Like JD, I’ve found it to be up and down, and I think it would be emotionally more complicated for me if this weren’t true.
When we started dating, we were earning the same grad school pittance in the same program. We moved in together because it was the only way we could afford to rent a house and get a dog. After I dropped out of grad school, he supported me while I looked for a job that didn’t laugh at the girl with the chemistry degree trying to find office work.
Once I was working steadily, I wasn’t making a lot, but it was more than the grad school pittance. I was definitely paying more of the bills and for more of the fun stuff.
Once he got his degree and went to work, he was immediately earning more than I ever will. I kept working for five more years, and my salary went entirely to debt reduction – we put no money down on our house, and I paid twenty percent in the first three years. Additionally, I’ve paid off significant amounts of his student loans.
Which is what allows me to feel ok about being a stay-at-home mom. I contributed a lot monetarily when we were starting out and struggling. And I do believe I’m saving us a fair bit of money now.
I’m never going to earn nearly as much as my husband. Personal chefs just don’t make as much as research chemists. But I’ve never doubted my own contribution to our family. Of course, it helps that my husband has also never doubted, so has never made me feel bad about it.
*Important: if you do stay home with your kids, your spouse can still contribute to your retirement account so you aren’t falling behind for those years.
I def agree that RELATIONSHIP with money and earning and spending is important, even if actual earnings aren’t as much.
I don’t think about it in the sense of ‘looking for a guy with money’ – I work to support myself and I expect to find someone who does the same at whatever standard of living they’re comfortable. But I do confess to having my parents as a safety net, but I don’t mind being dependent on them as much as I mind being dependent on a partner.
During the brief interval I did live with a partner, even though we both made about the same I wound up paying for everything which wasn’t cool – if he /couldn’t/ support himself or afford to do the things I wanted to do with me, I’d have understood, but he just wouldn’t get it together enough to even get himself paid for all the hours he worked.
Oh man. Money and relationships. That’s a doozy.
Ok- my story, briefly: My Spouse and I got hitched so that he could finish his (unpaid) nutrition intership without going into MORE student loan debt. So, we lived on my income the first year- I was busting my ass working 3 jobs- in academia, non-profit and waiting table. It was miserable.
He got a job at $20/hr in his old field (computer programming) and I went full-time at the nonprofit. We were “even” for about a year, income wise and started making progress on our debt load (40K of which was for his Masters degree in nutrition, which he is NOT using or anything). In March of this year he took a job at DOUBLE what either of us were making, I lost mine and then 3 months later got a new nonprofit gig, at a slight step down in PAY, although with great potential (Development Director at small org).
So we’re trying to live on one salary, and using the other one to pay down debt.
Honestly, it REALLY rankles me that he’s not a) using his degree which I now have to help pay the loan on and b) he makes fucking double what I do, just because of industry.
On the other hand though, I really like the fact that we’ve paid off 15K in debt in the first 2 years of our marriage and that although its been a rough go, we’ve worked together and are on the same page financially- since that can be a major bone of contention in many relationships- I’m hoping we can continue to make progress and that when the time comes, his fancy job will let me stay home for a bit with kids, before returning to rule the nonprofit world.
Before marrying the Geek Husband What Rules, I dated a guy whose Dad was a VP in BP Canada. What I learned from this dude, was that when someone has access to that kind of money, and you’re poor, they will frequently expect to be able to exert control over your life.
I am not ok with that.
So, I married a guy I had way more in common with, who was just as poor as me, and I’ve consistently earned more than him in this relationship. The only people that seems to bug is his family, and them not that much.
Every once in a while he feels bad because after he dropped out of school, I was making enough that we could afford for him to take a year off to write, figure shit out, whatever, and he’s never made enough to do that for me. But that’s ok, I’ll live. I’m not sure I’d be ok with not earning money anyway.
The people it seems to bug the most are several of my female friends, who, when he got let go from his job a couple of weeks ago, said, “Wasn’t it your turn to quit a shitty job?”
First, he didn’t quit, he got let go.
Second, the last shitty job he quit, he had something else lined up first, so it wasn’t like he just fucked off.
Third, that year he did fuck off, I GAVE that to him. I told him to do it.
Agh!
Sorry, I haven’t really been able to vent about that anywhere else and it’s kind of pissing me off.
I’ve never considered a guy’s income when it came to dating. With my husband, we’ve been up and down on the “who makes more” front all throughout our dating relationship and it never bothered either of us when the other had to carry more of the load.
I’m currently supporting us while he finishes college and since I am a teacher, and we all know that education pays blessed little, I hope to high heaven he can start pulling in more than I am once he’s done! But it’s never had anything to do with who’s the man or woman. It’s just that in my current profession, things are tight and it would be nice to be able to buy nice things for once.
Oh man, GeekGirlsRule, your first story brought back memories of a guy I dated for like FIVE MINUTES whose extreme wealth was only overshadowed by his extreme douchiness when it came to WHEN we would eat and WHERE we would eat and WHO would be allowed to join us and every other aspect of our time. Because, obviously he was picking up the tab so why should I have any say?
My marriage is extremely unbalanced financially – I have never and will never earn nearly as much as my husband does, despite having a higher level of education. He was in the Navy when we met and as his career has moved us all over the country I’ve gone from a job where I could have supported myself to a part-time job I liked to a very very part time job I sort of liked to unemployed to stay-at-home-mom. His job always ALWAYS takes priority, at least for another 10 years or so (because although my boss at the real estate company got really mad if I called in sick, you can’t go to jail for missing a day).
But when he retires at 40 with a pension and our kids are in school I plan to go back to work at…something and let him explore whatever crazy career path he wants.
I will admit that this is also the model I grew up with, so falling into being “taken care of” was pretty easy. It also helps that my husband is TERRIBLE with money and is happy to let me be CFO of our marriage and that all financial decisions are made from an OUR MONEY standpoint. We’re poor together and enjoy windfalls together and blow our credit card limit at Target together.
But it is so much harder when you’re poor, isn’t it?
Partner makes a lot more than me. Probably always will. I really don’t like being financially dependent, and I feel bad about the pressure it puts on him. We each took out life insurance policies recently, and one company’s formula told me that I’m essentially worthless. (Of course, it didn’t factor in the colossal amount of unpaid childcare I’m about to provide.) We could probably get by on his income alone, but a) it’s too risky and b) I need to feel like I’m making a financial contribution to our life.
Important: if you do stay home with your kids, your spouse can still contribute to your retirement account so you aren’t falling behind for those years.
I’ve been joking that I want money for my retirement account for my “push present.” Well, the “push present” part is a joke.
I’ve been on both sides of that dynamic – in my first long-term relationship I was unemployed and dependent upon my live-in partner through the early part of our relationship. I’m a very independent person, and found it really hard to be dependent upon someone else, not to mention feeling trapped within the patriarchal system, being the good stay-at-home woman baking bread and so on. Definitely brought that relationship to an end sooner than it otherwise might have.
Then, in my longest relationship, I out-earned him the majority of the time. He was making far more than I when we first met, then he would occasionally bring in large sums of money (doing freelance work), but during most of our 6-year relationship he was under- or un-employed. This, too, was harmful both to his ego and our relationship as a whole, greatly compounded by the fact that he was a big spender (even when unemployed). I would have been okay with his limited financial contribution – money has never been important to me, beyond the bare essentials (housing, food, etc) – if only his spending was equally limited. Instead we ended up fighting about money continuously.
Now, I’m in a relationship with someone who makes twice as much as I do. This will/should change in the long run, I hope, but now I’m beginning to fear things will get worse before they get better. I’m finishing up my PhD program and being pushed out before I’d anticipated, and post-doc opportunities are pretty limited right now. With any luck I’ll land something that will pay better than I’m making now, and eventually I expect to make a decent/livable salary in my field, but there’s a chance that I may be unemployed for a while, forcing me to either move in with him (something neither of us want now, for our own reasons) or leave the area. I hope it doesn’t come to that…
My soon-to-be-legal-partner was in law school when we met, about to graduate at 24 (that is very young). The check that that got him on my checklist was “moves forward with plans.” It wasn’t about the hypothetical large sums of money that lawyers stereotypically make, it’s about him having the drive to make things happen. When his job prospects dissolved, he started his own law firm -which is apparently the hard way- but he has a plan for his career and I think it’s a good one. I can keep us in groceries and health care for at least a while longer while we see how it pans out.
BTW, talk to a lawyer before you get married to see if you should have a pre-nup. Things like home equity, savings, retirement plans, existing children, and possible/probable inheritance are all important to your future. Practicality is super romantic, right?
My previous long term relationship was with a guy who hated his decent-paying job and had hated it immediately after starting it 4 years earlier, but didn’t do anything about it until recently (3 years after that). Even though he was making a bit more than me, not fun.
Jex – practicality is romantic. Sadly of your list I only have the children and with no propect of inheritance, retirement plans, home equity or savings I have to say that any pre-nup would just revolve around ‘will you take my debt’.(well that or would you like my state pension if it still exists by the time I retire) Despite this I’m happy, debt-ridden and married to another debt-ridden individual but happy.
Spark, that’s a good point about pressure on the high earner in uneven relationships. I wasn’t comfortable when I was the source of health insurance, because I felt like I couldn’t quit. And now, I tell my husband that if he wants to quit and start a brewery he can, but realistically, it would require such a drastic change to our lifestyle that he’ll never take me up on it. That’s my one regret about the stay-at-home mom/personal chef career path I’m on now. It’s exactly what I want to do, but I worry that it limits his choices.
Right now I am an unemployed grad school dropout who volunteers and my partner has recently finished grad school for music. We live quite cheaply, thanks in part to all of the cooking/housework I do. It helps that I’ve got a knack for cooking (av0gadro, as a former chem major, I feel like I need to talk to you!). I tried to get us to share kitchen duties at first, but it really wasn’t happening. It’s better now that we recognize I do most of the work and he pays for the household stuff. I’ve never really cared about how much money the person I date makes, but fiscal responsibility is definitely important. He says that before we met he encountered some negative attitudes about him being a working musician, but really I don’t blame those women for feeling that way. It’s being realistic if you are thinking about having kids.
I never thought I’d be in this role, but life is hard to predict sometimes. Because he’s a musician and has spent a lot of time building a network here, I don’t feel like I can make us pick up and move for something I want. At the same time he knows that I am ok with moving to wherever he can find a job. We’ve had a few tense moments, but after a serious discussion I did get him to realize how much I take care of in our lives so that he can focus on performing and composing. So here I am, the girl who avoided serious relationships in her 20s because she didn’t want to compromise her life. Of course if we were rich none of this would matter!
Dorkie, you are NOT dead weight in your relationship just because your income isn’t what you’d like it to be. Money is a critical element in a relationship, but it’s not the only one, and it’s not even a predictable one. If the positions were reversed, you’d support the Dude happily and with no questions asked, right?
This is a very interesting discussion for me, because I’m a lot older than most of you (56), so there is definitely a generational difference in financial arrangements and expectations within LTRs. I was in law school and my husband-to-be was in grad school when we met, with the expectation that I would get a job while he finished his doctorate. As it turned out, we got married, we decided to have kids since I was already in my early 30′s, and I ended up never working as an attorney. Instead, I spent 15 years at home with the kids and doing volunteering once they were in school.
I never for one second felt guilty about that. My services as a parent, cook, shopper, vacation planner and so forth contributed as much to the household as Mr MM’s salary did. I think sometimes he wished I had gone back to work earlier than I did, but I felt strongly that this was the way to go, and he respected that.
That said, it’s true that placing all the financial burden on one person is a lot for that person to carry. We have always lived within our means and have never had serious money problems. Partly that’s due to Mr MM’s earning power as a software engineer and partly it’s because we aren’t profligate spenders, we didn’t have college loans to pay off, and we are of the same relatively conservative budgeting philosophy. Being in agreement about spending and saving goes a long way towards a good relationship!
elibard says:
September 1, 2010 at 8:33 pm
This is an interesting discussion, PhDork. I admire your facility for turning an execrable puff-piece into a real discussion. I miss that about academics.
But onward. I loved OldFeminist’s perspective, that it’s about a partner’s attitude toward contributing (in every way), not about the money.
When I met my now-husband, I knew he probably made more than I did, because of the very different industries we worked in. What attracted me to him was his quick wit, his passion, his drive, his intellect, and his playful sense of humor (among other things). But when, after three months of dating, I learned almost by accident (he had to find a new apartment, and he didn’t hide his salary from me when we were at the real estate broker’s office) that he made 400% of my salary, I was not only astounded, I was mad.
We finished out the day nicely, but then I seriously had to think for a few weeks how I wanted to handle the vast discrepancy, and whether I could be in a relationship with someone who made so much more money than I did.
I was so pissed off, not with him, but with the very idea that what he did meant that he was worth so much more to society than what I did. He did have one more advanced degree than I did, but that had no bearing on his field of work whatsoever.
Admittedly, this was my hang-up. I assumed that that discrepancy would make for a power imbalance in our relationship.
It did not. And that was entirely because my husband just didn’t think of money that way. To him, everything we have is ours together. It wasn’t at that point, of course, but we discussed the issue a lot because I was so suspicious. And he has always treated me as the equal partner I am, or we would never have lasted.
And you know, I really shouldn’t have worried so. Husband has now been unemployed for five years, and we live on my salary. But we still benefit from the money he made during his salad days.
As others have said, over a lifetime relationships see many ups and downs. I do want my husband to do something in terms of a job in the future, because I want him to be and feel effective, and I want an equal partner. I would love it if he could make some money so that I could feel that we were providing for our children’s and our own future as best we could. That includes providing for our own long-term sustenance. I don’t want to be burdens on our kids. But I know that if we NEEDED him to work, he would. And for now, he is providing childcare and house-husbanding par excellence. And that is worth a lot.
Recently my bankcard got swallowed by a cahs machine. On payday. I had $50 in my wallet, a long shopping list, and a party to go to. I’ve been in a relationship for… oh, three months now. The manpanion lent me $200, which I paid him back immediately through the magic of internet banking. But I hated it. Then, the next weekend, my new card turned out not to have been activated when they said it was. He lent me more money.
I HATED IT. I knew I had money in the bank, and I would pay it back right away, and that he didn’t mind, and it was a once off (well, twice off) thing. And he was lovely and reasonable about it, but it was terrible. Just standing next to him while he got money out and handed it to me made me feel shitty.
I earn way more than he does, but his mortagage repayments are less. On the other hand, he has two teenage boys to feed. But he is better at budgeting, and also I am renovating. Essentially, we come out about even in terms of expendable income. I remember being very relieved that he didn’t have lots more cash than me, because I am in a headspace of taking every resource and milking it. (Free lunch at work? Eat lots and don’t have dinner. Someone offers you a lift? You just saved $3 on a bus ticket!) I didn’t want to accidentally think of him like that.
This thread is sort of scary for me, as I am just starting out in the world of financial independence along with my manpanion. At the moment, my grad stipend is more than his (~1.5x — not that the numbers in question are, ahem, large but the difference is a fairly significant one). We’re handling it fine…I pay for the cats and for all the restaurants/movies/etc. and we split everything else. And the ratio is likely to change over the next few years as we get different sources of funding and so on. But my earning potential training to be an engineer working in energy applications is probably higher or at least more reliable than his (he wants to go into music-related programming which *could* be very lucrative but mostly if he gets lucky with a startup). It’s hard, also, because I feel bad being like, “I feel poor” when I make more money than he does. Still, the area we’re in (around Boston) is really expensive and…I feel poor! The real world is full of things you have to pay for all the time! I hate money.
I’ve thought a lot about money within the context of my relationship, but that’s because I have a fraught relationship with money, not because I wanted a sugar daddy to take care of me. When my husband and I started dating, I made a lot more money than he did, and I paid for things like vacations, fancy dates, etc. Even after I quit practicing law full time and was just doing contract work, I could still make in a busy month as much as his yearly salary. But then the contract work dried up and it took me forever and a month of Sundays to make a career transition in this crap economy. Although at first I insisted on paying for a share of the household expenses from my savings, over time we started living, for the most part, off of his paycheck so that I didn’t completely drain my savings. It terrified and shamed me to feel dependent on someone else. I could have written a lot of this post during that time. But my husband was great about it. He made it clear how much he appreciated and valued my contributions to our home, and he was always the one who talked me down when, in a state of panic, I would start to consider going back to practicing law. He never made a peep about having to largely support me, and encouraged me to hold out for a job that actually meant something to me. And because I was only paying for certain personal expenses, and some of the food bill while I was unemployed, I was able to maintain enough savings to be able to pay large, unexpected expenses like a higher than anticipated tax bill for him, and expenses related to an unanticipated move, etc. In the end, I think our ups and downs balanced us out fairly well.
Now we both make about the same salary. If I get angry about money it’s not because I missed the rich husband boat; it’s because I hate how we much we undervalue certain kinds of work in our society such that we can’t afford to do things like bring his aging parents to the US for an extended visit.
When my boyfriend and I started dating, we were both pretty equally broke. He moved quickly into a better-paying job, while I took one with more long-term growth potential.
Now, I make more than him. A lot more. He quit his corporate job to pursue his dream career. While we’ve always had separate finances and always both paid our own basic expenses, having been on both sides I can say that it matters. It’s hard not to feel indebted to some degree when your partner is the one who is almost always picking up the tab, or paying for the groceries.
But on the flip side, now that I’m that person, I don’t feel guilty that he’s the one doing more of the housework. We take vacations on my schedule, and mostly to the places I want to go. I want to move back to my home state, he’s willing to uproot his life to come along. To be honest, I like it a lot. I’m extremely lucky that he’s happy that he has the chance to pursue his dream, and thinks everything else is unimportant compared to that.
Some day things may switch, and I’m sure we’ll manage just fine…we did before. But if I were building my ideal partner from scratch…he’d make less than I do.
I am an engineer, my partner is in sales. When we started dating almost 10 years ago, I was closer to the beginning of my career track and I made less than him (a lot less). His industry has changed significantly, and not to his benefit (commissions only go down, it seems), while I have been somewhat steadily moving up (we’ve had a lot of wage freezes, the year of the roll-back, furloughs and general suckitude, but at least I have a job). So right now I make more than him (about 25% more). This doesn’t bother him. It also doesn’t bother me. We both wish he made more, only because it would be gravy money (not needed for living, retirement savings etc) and we could go on better vacations
The 6 months he was unemployed a couple of years ago and I was carrying our mortgage and all costs? That bothered him. A LOT. It would have bothered me alamost the same way, I think. We have a partnership, and we try to share equally. He got a lot of grief from a particular friend to just get ANYTHING and get back to being THE MAN… he told the friend to f himself. We had agreed, he needed to find the right job, not just the first job to come around. It has worked out pretty well, he likes his job. And I make enough that we were not in trouble those months.
My manpanion and I are buying a house right now. Or rather HE is buying it and I am helping him with the payment (we will have a second written agreement that if we break up I get a percentage of equity equal to the percentage I’ve paid) and we are doing this because I have big student loans from law school and we knew BF could get pre-approved for a big enough amount without my income.
He makes at least double my salary (although hopefully as I log more years in the work world we will end up about equal)and it is a fine line.
On the one hand I want everything to be fair and equal but then on the other hand I also have the feeling like, hey we’re not roommates. There’s a part of me that’s like it’s not fair to split it 50-50 when 50% leaves me completely tapped and unable to build my own savings and he has a surplus every month. We JUST re-did our budget this week, in anticipation of moving and having more expenses and we decided on a plan that has both of us ending with around the same amount in SAVINGS every month.
I def agree that RELATIONSHIP with money and earning and spending is important, even if actual earnings aren’t as much.
THIS. I think that when people aren’t on the same page about how money is spent/not spent etc…it can cause a LOT of problems. Even though BF and I are unequal earners I feel like we have pretty similar attitudes about money and I think that brings a lot of…idk comfort? to the relationship.
bluebears, I completely agree. It certainly helps for example that I grew up in a family that liked gambling so I don’t have a problem with the odd bet now and then. Whereas I imagine that it would be a real issue if one side of the relationship really hated gambling and the other didn’t.
It also helps that both my husband and I have debt so it’s not an uneven thing. Most of all though it helps that we both agree on how to reduce that debt, budgeting and what to do with the rare bits of spare cash we have (currently attempt to save them having been far too profligate in the past).
@emilyanne: oh yeah. Like honestly I hate gambling. No judgment at all but I personally cannot do it, it makes me slightly sick to my stomach from nerves. So I would have a problem, just on a anxious level, not on a “moral” one if I had a partner who was into it.
Meanwhile BF and I really like to eat out and I know other people would find that habit wasteful but because we both really enjoy it we’re willing to cut back on things like vacations to make room for it in the budget. Some people really need (well not need but you know) to go away every year and we don’t.
bluebears, we did the same thing before combining finances. His salary was twice mine, so he paid 2/3 of the rent. Even though the numbers weren’t equal, we felt like we were giving equally. You’re a lawyer so I’m sure you already considered this, but if he takes the mortgage out alone, then is he the only one on the deed? Does your agreement take into account your contribution to the mortgage as well? I know someone who did something similar, though probably not as carefully as you’re doing it.
We talk about money A LOT–how we want to spend and save, what our goals are, how to handle our income difference (and our feelings–mostly mine–about it), what would happen if we separated/maintaining our finances so I’m not at risk. Marriage is really a business venture. Or not so much marriage necessarily, but property-buying and reproducing.
Bluebears, if your guy makes double what you make I don’t think 50/50 is fair. Have you discussed splitting it a more equitable way, according to what you earn?
I make just a little more than my manpanion but he gets frequent bonuses so in the end it’s probably almost equal. I have more expenses than he does though (car payment, student loans, medical stuff) so he always has more money than I do. At the moment I owe him about $800 because he paid for all our moving-related expenses. I just don’t have any extra money at the end of my pay periods, while he does. It sucks that I am in a load of debt (both student and credit card) and can’t save more than $20 while he is more comfortable, but I guess we’re doing OK.
@Spark: oh yes, the agreement is all about the mortgage basically. I’ll move out if we break up but we will get the house appraised and say I paid 40% of the mortgage thus far? He will pay me 40% of any equity that has accrued in the house up to that point. Obviously he will have like a year to X amount of time to pay depending on how much (or little) equity has accrued.
@smc: Yes, we worked it all out and it’s roughly 65-35 right now.
Honestly, it didn’t really enter into the picture for me, except that I wanted to know whether he was employed in something he enjoyed, and that he was in a stable life situation. My sweetie is a college English instructor, so he makes a steady but modest income. I work in a staff role at another university, where I also make a steady but modest income. We actually make about the same amount.
We try to split costs as much as possible, and take turns paying the tab when we go out to eat or get drinks. Sometimes we got dutch on things like movie tickets, and sometimes one of us spontaneously decides to treat the other. He paid for my ticket to visit NYC this summer because I couldn’t go otherwise. We’re going dutch on another upcoming out of state trip.
He has added expenses in that he pays for half of his daughter’s childcare, health insurance and other necessary things, plus has a bigger grocery bill with a hungry grade-schooler in the house. I pay more for my car (almost paid off though!) and have a student loan, which he doesn’t.
So we come out pretty much even.
Various members of my family have encouraged me over the years to take earning potential into consideration in choosing a partner, but most would agree that love trumps money. I have dated a few guys who were engineers or lawyers, and who had pretty comfortable incomes, but for various reasons I didn’t click with them.
While I wouldn’t be in a relationship with a dude who was unemployed and not even trying to find work, as long as he does ethical work and has a a stable lifestyle (e.g. isn’t going to be skipping out on bills and pursued by creditors) I don’t really care about the money.
It’s interesting reading how various harpies have worked out their finances when living with their significant other..
I’m currently living with my SO.. I currently earn quite a bit more than him, we’re both studying, and we both enjoy a comfortable existance.
Because of the disparity in the earnings, I don’t have a problem paying for more of the shared expenses – he still contributes of course.
We don’t have a joint bank account, and maintain separately our own accounts/income etc.
It’s taken a while, and we’re now at a point where we can talk about these things in an honest and open way. At times he gets frustrated by him not being paid much.
If the situation was reversed, I’m sure it would work the same way.
However in saying that, I am glad that I don’t need to rely on him. I value my financial independence.
[...] I Ain’t Sayin’ You’re a Golddigger – Because my partner and I have different degrees, different experiences and … different sexes, we are likely to find ourselves in this or a similar situation shortly, where he will be at least partially supporting me, financially. Which is going to feel really awkward and as though I failed to put my degree to good use, but for now I just feel gypped that my education is NOT proving to be the magical ticket to financial security everybody told me it would be. My partner & I haven’t figured out how to address that yet but we know from watching our parents relationships that it can lead to trouble down the road later. [...]