As someone who sympathizes with your comment ("tech stack complex and fugly") and has made moves both ways in terms of salary (high to low for QoL -25%, then low to high again +50%), start with your requirements.
OP did a great job of saying "Here's what I need." Until that's staked out, you don't know what's too little, enough, and too much.
But generally, minimizing and controlling costs (critically, through city choice) affords you flexibility. High costs = must work high paying job. Low costs = choice between working less, taking a job you enjoy more that pays less, or working more & saving.
I'll probably switch back to a lower paying job in the next 6 months or year, because I'd rather work on something I love, and because I'll have the financial flexibility to do so.
This can be the biggest factor. It can't be understated.
For example, my wife won't let me consider relocating and spends basically all her money on hobbies. This limits my job options to locally available ones (not a great area) and that I can't get a less stressful job because it pays less and I need my current salary to pay all the bills.
For many years my partner and I operated in the same way. I paid our rent, utilities and food while she spent on her hobbies and saved. I was not unhappy during this time because I didn't want much. A few years ago though, I became a bit more financially aware after having my first soul crushing job and realizing I couldn't rely on work to produce income in the same "easy" way I had when I was younger. The emotional cost had become too high. Managing this part of our relationship continues to be a multi-year process requiring ongoing discussions of what we have, what we want and what we'd be willing to do to get it. It feels like a muscle that atrophies, but I have made my peace with that because it works for us. I remind her what she wants and how she can get it by helping me now or spending less now. I even ask her to provide the same feedback for me. Her perspective on my spending is as important as my perspective of hers. I imagine we will regress in the future. Those moments will probably suck and cause a lot of stress. For now my only advice is to make a habit of these discussions in your relationship and protect the habit as long as you can.
"...having my first soul crushing job and realizing I couldn't rely on work to produce income in the same "easy" way I had when I was younger. The emotional cost had become too high."
I feel exactly like this.
My wife has basically changed what she wants (or stopped hiding it) now that we are married. She wants a big fancy house and she wants to live in an suburbanized and expensive area. She originally told me she wants to live in the country and own land. This area isn't the country and we can't afford land around here.
She doesn't care about her spending. She has never been required to support herself or even live alone. She would rather spend a lot on a her expensive horse hobby than contribute to our kid's college or our shared bills. By expensive I mean she spends as much or more each month than I do on the mortgage. One month of her hobby expenses equals what I spend in an entire year on hobbies, and many of my hobbies have a return on investment (like foraging/cultivating mushrooms, growing a garden, etc).
I've come to accept that I will be stuck here and miserable. I don't see myself living past 50 in this condition, so I just have to endure this until then. I don't really see much reason to try extending that either.
How? With a divorce, GP commenter will be required to continue supporting his* ex-wife's hobbies financially, now without any option to balance then with his own earning. He will not be permitted to earn less and reduce the spending proportionally.
On top of that if there are any kids he will be required to take up a portion of her only responsibility.
He can move to any country that doesn't have debt collection agreement with US (assuming he's from US). Like Philippines or New Zealand. Or just make himself judgement-proof. Convert his savings to Bitcoin, quit his job and work cash jobs. Court cannot force him to earn less.
Unpaid child support will result in an arrest warrant in many states. The debt itself may be civil, but it's a crime to avoid the court mandated payments.
My father in law was in a coma for a while and the child support payments stopped and he went broke from the lack of job and medical bills. They arrested him multiple times after that because he wasn't paying. Of course that gave him a criminal record and made it much harder to get a job.
If you're under some sort of child support and/or alimony, courts will often interpret losing a job as an attempt to dodge payment, and will not reduce payment to match the new circumstances.
(throwaway because I don't like to mix discussions of my relationships with professional discussions)
I was in a situation freakishly similar to yours for over 10 years. In late 2019 I left her, and while it was one of the hardest decisions of my life, definitely the hardest day of my life, and the road to a mentally healthy(er) position has been ongoing, it has proved to be a wise decision. I spend far less of my day feeling resentful, unvalued, and unvalidated, both individually and in my new relationship. In my own time and in counseling with a professional, I have learned many lessons about myself, what I want out of life and in a partner, and how to be my own advocate.
I deeply empathize with your position and you deserve to be happier. I hope this experience of mine might give you some vicarious experience to draw from, and I encourage you to consider making a change.
You're getting a lot of unsolicited advice here, from folks who mean well but all of us here can't know the particulars of your situation.
That you're posting this on HN suggests that you would really like to have someone to talk to about this, at the very least to feel heard about it.
From personal experience, consider a therapist for a while - starting just on your own. There's nothing wrong with you, but you're in a sticky situation and are unhappy, and you're worried about the implications for your daughter and your own longevity. It can be really nice to have someone to talk through this stuff with, especially when it might be tough to talk with your wife about it, at least at this point, if she's causing the problem. I don't know about you, but it helps me mentally figure out what to do when I can talk about it, and (good) therapists are good at pulling our thoughts out and letting us think about all the angles.
It's pretty low stakes, and while they do cost some money, it's not a ton (compared to the horses!). And it can really help you think through the particulars of your situation over time, which it's tough for any of us here on HN to do, and when it's time to do the tough stuff - like broaching the subject with your wife - you have got someone in the therapist who knows the background and can help you deal with any fallout.
Good luck. You deserve a happy life. Your daughter deserves a good future. We only get one shot at this.
Yes, agreed. I want to add, "You can’t pour from an empty glass of water.” Fill your cup first, take care of yourself, then your daughter, otherwise you might harm both.
I agree with the other comments that you need to do something, but I'm going to disagree with that you should jump to divorce as the first step. You haven't said what you have already tried, so I suggest:
1) telling her how you feel, in the form of "I feel X when you do Y". For example, "I feel unvalued when you spend more on your horse than we do on the mortgage. I feel scared for our kid's future when you prioritize your expensive horse over saving for his/her education. I feel trapped when you spend the money I make without deciding together how to spend it." It can be hard to know exactly how these actions make you feel unless you've practiced thinking about it, so you might want to write it down and revise it over a week or two. Also, depending on how your wife takes feedback, you might want to have discussions of just one at a time.
2) marriage counseling.
3) setting boundaries: "my standard of being treated is <...>" and take steps to "enforce" them. The easier levels are along the lines of "I want to be talked to respectfully, so I will leave the room when you do not, but when you are ready to talk respectfully, come and get me." I'm not sure how you communicate "I think our budget should look 25% house, 20% food/clothes, 10% retirement, 10% kids education, etc, which leaves $X for optional things like horse; if you need more than that you'll need to get a job" without being unilateral, though. But you have some financial values/boundaries that are being crossed and you need to communicate / enforce those.
4) It would be a bad sign if your wife didn't respond positively to any of the above. However, even in that case you could get counseling for yourself on how to respond healthily, and you are also likely to get insight into why your wife is behaving this way (the counselor might notice consistent signs of co-dependency, for instance).
5) Read pre-modern stories about how spouses handled toxic behavior. (The quasi-mythic ones that start off "There was once a woman in ... whose husband ...") I've read a few Japanese stories about wives that change the incentives for their husbands and they stop being drunkards and start being productive. (There's fewer stories the other way, but those exist, too.) Some of these stories are quite creative solutions; maybe something like that would work with your wife.
Don't just stay stuck and miserable, though. There are many ways to defeat the giants.
As a married woman, I’d say leave ASAP.
Your mental health is most important to a fulfilling life.
People marry the wrong person every day. Divorce is the way out of this situation. Judges are more realistic today about women and their plots.
Write down and document everything. Find a couples therapist so you have on record you are trying to make the marriage work for everyone.
The therapy will either make your wife “grow up” and perhaps better your relationship or it will show her inability to deal with reality of marriage as a working relationship.
Don’t be the guy that hates his life. There is the right person for you out there. Take that first step for your own sanity.
Her parents can help her out financially. She knows this too!
You need to change something. Other people have better advice, or at least specifics due to personal experience. But I can see that you are living in resentment and hell. There is no way your relationship with your wife is healthy. You've got a kid right? That child is watching you two and learning what it means to be in a relationship. They pick up on stuff left unsaid, you aren't hiding anything successfully (if you are indeed trying to hide these feelings).
Would you want your child to grow up to feel the way you do now? You're giving them the lesson plan right now.
Get a divorce attorney now, because you'll need one later.
For now, just because you're married doesn't mean you have to have complete sharing of finances. Get your finances completely separate. Create your own bank account; have your salary go there. Cancel any shared credit cards. Lock your credit report so new accounts cannot be made using your social security.
Then, offer to pay 1/2 the mortgage each month; or, better yet, let her pay the full amount from her own wages.
I am also an avid equestrian but support myself and my hobby on my own (which also costs more than my share of the rent). And I have to admit, I feel a bit envious of those who managed to make a fool work and sustain them without caring the smallest amount. But I hope it will bite her back the day you will leave her because you sound too miserable to stay in this relationship.
To what end? There is no award for Longest Suffering Person, just a life of wasted opportunities.
The repercussions and coping mechanisms are likely to only get more destructive the longer you put off dealing with misery. May you find your bliss, internet stranger.
I've seen couples drift apart pretty quickly once their daily experiences diverge.
If she spends all day working at an office, and he spends all day homemaking and with the kids, then each forgets what the other really does.
"The office" becomes an abstract place that someone just goes and isn't stressful at all. "The home" and "the kids" just magically take care of themselves and don't require much work.
Dual income has its own problems, but it seems a healthier default in terms of reminding people that work is... work.
I can relate to this but my wife is attractive, smart, honest and loyal so it seems like a fair trade. I earn all the income, do most of the house chores, spend almost nothing on myself, buy her almost everything she wants, move to whatever country she wants to go, I let her win all arguments (including arguments about who does the most chores). Thankfully when she sees me getting overly stressed, she gives me some slack. She even stayed with me after we ran out of money (I say we because we share all bank accounts) - Running out of money is the best test for a relationship.
My wife is almost 100% consumer and I'm almost 100% producer. She latched on to me the second we met. She initiated. I was a poor and shy college student at the time so it was quite a shock for me to suddenly receive so much attention. It's like she knew something about me that nobody else knew, not even myself. It's like she could see through everything and see the pure productive potential.
She spends a lot of time at home reading books (mostly non-fiction) and browsing the net (she reads a lot of online articles about a wide range of topics) and chatting with her friends on social media (most of her friends live in different countries because we traveled a lot). We do a lot of outdoor activities together but aside from that she doesn't like to do much. We both spend most of our time at home because I work remotely. She hates working or doing anything productive. She even tried painting once and is good at it but she could never be an artist as she is allergic to the idea of earning money.
From reading your other replies, if you're staying in it for the kids; don't. If my parents were deeply unhappy with each other I'd much prefer they went their separate ways than to suffer through the marriage just for me.
Agreed. Also, you're actually hiding the kid from the support they need by staying married. They're not considered a child of divorced parents, yet they might live the worst lives of all. People who live together but don't like each other aren't exactly good parental role models, and they also hog the opportunity for others (go dating!). Staying together means children don't get the support, and parents don't get the support/ suffocate. If this is happening, do you really think your child is currently getting a fair childhood?
Aren't you and your wife sharing responsibility equally or proportionally at least? It is unfair for one partner to bear the brunt of stress and the other to thrive. Sounds like some compromises need to be made here.
Ironic, coming from someone with such nickname. :)
Relationships aren't 50/50 in each area, but the effort across everything should be similar on both sides. Otherwise someone is taking advantage of their partner, imho.
Yep. She doesn't really care. She says nonsense stuff. Like I should get a different job. But we can't move, so my options are limited. I pay all the bills and would need to take a pay cut if I switched jobs, so we would have to at least sell the current house and move to an much smaller one.
Another good example is that she said I should keep my nice car and keep doing track days when she found out I was going to sell it. Well, were getting married and having a kid. With what money am I expected to do all this? It had to be sold for the budget to work.
You don't have to be a victim.
If you earn x, and she earns y, it's perfectly OK in a relationship to get a job that pays only y.
I think your wife doesn't want you to be a victim either, maybe she is just not good with finance.
You can be happy in a smaller house as well.
Good relationships require clear communication and some semblance of equality.
If you're serious about staying with her, then you need to balance your needs against hers. It's a perfectly valid thing to say "I hate my job. I'm looking for one I enjoy more that pays less. If that happens, I won't be able to pay for your horse. If you want to keep your horse, we need to find a way to balance the budget."
Either she cares about you and has never developed financial muscles, in which case you two can get through with some hard decisions and be happier.
Or she doesn't care about you, and you should split.
While my wife and I are mostly eye-to-eye on bills, etc., we are in a disagreement on where to live. We live in Texas, a state I loathe. I'm not from here. I grew up in Europe. My wife is from this area. She makes twice what I make. Both of us love the scenery and overall PNW vibe. I have been trying for years to get my wife to move. She finds every excuse in the book. Meanwhile, neither of us are getting younger. Our daughter is graduating HS soon. This leaves a kid in the house for several more years. Once my daughter is off on her own, I suggested being able to downsize (no real opposition there), maybe buy a nice double-wide trailer on our own land (no real opposition), and save money on taxes, etc., in the PNW close to a fairly large conurbation where we could work.
It's tough trying to get someone to see your PoV. Maybe do a spreadsheet with numbers to show her how you could get ahead elsewhere, keeping in mind her hobby. Big houses suck. Literally. Ours is ~2500sf and the upkeep is ridiculous. Maybe sell it as, "we could both do more with our respective hobbies if we had a cheaper outlay every month. We can only be in one room at a time, so having a lavish house is more to impress others than for our own benefit. I encourage you to pursue your hobby (within reason/set a budget maybe). Set a budget for you both outside of essential spending (housing/utilities/medical) and stick to it. I now no longer buy computers. I buy RPis and do things with them. They have a command line. I'm happy. My wife gets her happiness from attending sports games of our children. Her other hobby is gaming. Sell the idea of moving to a cheaper state with less taxes/cheaper property taxes and downsizing but keeping her hobby. It's all about compromise (but not your dignity). Remember, love is not a sentiment or emotion, it's an act of the will. Love wills the good of the other for the other. Find a way to make you both "happy" while giving you both what you want. I'm sure a nice, expensive house with high taxes and ugly upkeep costs would take a back seat to your wife's hobby (at least I would hope it would). Chart it out with numbers and present them. You owe it to yourself to stand up and set the tone, but do so with respect and tangible ideas that you can execute on. Everyone has great ideas, but almost no one can execute on them well.
As someone from the Gulf South who lived in the PNW for most of a decade:
There is a not insignificant chance your Southern wife will be incredibly miserable in the PNW. It is gorgeous and green but it is also grey, and if your wife has not lived in similar conditions before, it is very possible that the lack of Actual Sun will start giving her heavy seasonal depression.
A huge sun lamp will help. So will regular megadoses of vitamin D. But she may be like me and find that even with that, the urge to kill herself gets louder and louder every winter.
I moved back to my very culturally weird Southern birthplace a couple of years ago and that urge completely vanished.
Thank you for the information. Fortunately, we are both overcast lovers, so the SAD angle would likely not play a huge role. Growing up in Europe myself, I prefer 9 months of overcast and rain. I'm at a high risk for skin cancer, so this features into my desire to move as well.
For my wife, the primary reason is that her parents are here. She doesn't want to leave them, which I can understand, but at the same time, they are loaded and want for nothing. My parents are long gone, so I have zero attachment to the area other than my wife.
No matter how rigged the courts are, it can't be worse than spending 100% of your money taking care of the two of you. You'll still need to stay in the same city for custody, but at least you can switch to a less stressful job.
Also, you should keep your eyes peeled for remote jobs.
"...but at least you can switch to a less stressful job."
Nope, the courts will force child support and probably alimony based on the current job rather than some lower paying job one might get during/after any divorce.
At this point you're participating in your own abuse. Your relationship is unbalanced and objectively broken. If you're unwilling to entertain any realistic solutions then you're wasting everyone's time complaining about it.
You should seek out real help, either a therapist or marriage counselor. There's no actual reason for you to stay in your current broken state. Your made up reasons are equal parts bullshit and naivety.
I wasn't going to jump into this thread and I don't want to turn this into "Relationship News" but, I feel like I need to let you know.
I grew up with divorced parents who were together longer than they should've been and let me tell you, kids know. They absolutely know when their parents are together but can't stand each other and what's worse, they may assume it's their fault.
I grew up with parents who divorced when I was 18 months old when it became clear they did not love each other anymore. But they both wanted the best for me, and didn't do the petty shit I've heard about other couples where they shit-talked each other to the kid or something. They split time with me evenly.
They both eventually got re-married and are very happy and I have no regrets about how my childhood went in that regard.
Seconding. Furthermore, please don't feel like you gotta stay together "for the kid". At least ask the kid whether they care. My parents asked me. I told them I didn't care.
Looks like you are less than 10 years into the marriage. Get out ASAP. You are stuck with alimony for basically half the length of your marriage. Unless it exceeds 10 years. Then you are stuck for life.
Wow, those are some crazy laws. Child support is mandatory around here, and follows well defined rules, but spousal support ("alimony") is much less well defined and (in my limited understanding) less common and shorter lived.
Edit: "around here" being Australia and New Zealand
You know what, if you don't want to have kids because they're too expensive - do not have kids!
Too many parents don't want to be in the position they're in for whatever reason and didn't take the time to figure out whether they really want to have kids.
Yeah, if one thinks that kids are expensive they're probably making the right decision of not having any. It is true having that children require changes in the parents lives, which are not only financial, a lot of time gets sunk into family and children. One must enjoy it. I personally do though I can't say I would've said the same thing before having my family, I did not know what it would be like. There is a great positive side and that is the great reward this brings. My life took a different turn for sure and it is for the better.
There's a term for this (anyone know?) - when someone says life has improved and attributes it to specific events when really it would have improved on any number of other paths they could've taken too. The underlying factor is that "time passed and things happened".
You imagine the alternative as staying in the spot you were in, but of course that's impossible. There are all kinds of random encounters and unknown unknowns that would have happened.
I was on a stagnant personal development trajectory for a while and having a family unleashed stored potential. It is impossible to know exactly how things would have turned out in an alternate reality but if I feel that things took a better turn and that is enough for me to feel satisfied.
That's a good way to put it, and I don't doubt you. It's just that the childless are frequently spoken to as if getting a family is the only way to unleash this potential, and I want to provide a counter-view.
Oh, I was responding from my personal experience. Some people have other priorities and are currently doing well the way they are and that is perfectly fine by me.
Being aware that they're expensive (although my child is much less expensive than my spouse) doesn't necessarily mean not having them, it just means having them with your eyes open.
I think it's only genuinely bleak if your starting position is that family is assumed, rightful, and ineluctable - and electing to not head down that path is purely a fiscal decision.
Kids are not that expensive. You do not have to send them to college, you just have to love them, teach them, care for them. Sure you will have to buy more food, and you might need a bigger house/apartment.
My opinion only- For the middle class going to college is not seen as optional. Doing the same expensive activities as the other middle class kids is not seen as optional. There are millions of working class people in the US with good lives, but most middle class people would never seriously consider not following middle class norms.
Not paying for your kid's college doesn't mean they don't go to college. I went to a very respectable state university with loans that I paid off within 3 years after graduating. I've worked at some of the top companies in the world. It's very attainable and not unreasonable.
Totally agree. You can graduate from your state school with <$100k in debt easily. You can get much lower debt levels if you don't stay in the expensive dorms (with expensive meal plans) after your freshman year, if you plan ahead and graduate in 4 years, and if you apply for many local/state scholarships (in my experience the national scholarships are a waste of time).
As an engineering student, you can also get paid internships each summer (can often pay >$10k) or can be a paid research assistant for a professor during the year for ~10 hours week (pays for groceries each week).
Or you can go in the Air Force, be a "civilian in uniform" (Air Force is really easy), and have Uncle Sam pay for your degree at night while you get free room and board, free meals, free medical and dental. It's an option for those people not opposed to military service. The AF really is an easy row to hoe. Personal experience. Show up with a clean uniform, good attitude, and everything is easy peasy lemon squeezy. My military service paid for my own degree. Nothing says crappy life like emerging from university behind the power curve because you're in massive debt, paying back student loans while struggling to pay rent, medical costs, transportation costs, ad astra... Start your working career not in debt. Just my 0.02.
Editing to say that if you make the military a career, you can literally save almost your entire salary if your personal peccadilloes are minimal. I knew guys that decided 4 years was enough and emerged after 4 years with over 50k in savings while paying nothing and they also got the BA/BSc degree on Uncle Sam's dime. They emerged debt free, degreed, and ready to start the next stage of their lives. Doing 8 years gets you a masters all the while doing nothing but work a job with everything paid for. At that rate, you might as well do 20, marry another member and have a steady retirement at 39 or 40 with money enabling you to pursue a job you really love because you can afford to live where you want. Bonus: Tri-Care military medical costs $500 year on retirement. Cannot touch that out here.
You can get much lower debt levels if you don't stay in the expensive dorms (with expensive meal plans) after your freshman year,
As someone who lived off-campus the entire time and regretted it, I do think that spending at least freshman year in dorms is a really good idea to make friends and get to know the school's culture and environment.
if you plan ahead and graduate in 4 years, and if you apply for many local/state scholarships (in my experience the national scholarships are a waste of time).
My advice to my younger self would also be to take more student loans so I wouldn't have to work. I had to work to pay tuition, but working made keeping up with school impossible. Catch 22.
> My advice to my younger self would also be to take more student loans so I wouldn't have to work. I had to work to pay tuition, but working made keeping up with school impossible. Catch 22.
This is counter to my experience. I was able to work part-time jobs just fine, and having that experience made me a much more competitive candidate upon graduation.
Depends on a lot of factors -- morning vs. night chronotype, how close work is to school, how close school and work are to housing, how many hours work demands, whether your landlord is insane and kicks you all out with 3 days notice right before the semester to rent to a family, etc.
I would still have worked most if not all of my summers, but never more than 5 hours a week during the semesters. My job, which I actually really liked, demanded 20, which also required another 6-10 hours commuting on top of 5-8 hours of commuting to school.
I had also worked in tech for a year before starting school, so I was a bit less worried about having experience to list. And in the end it didn't matter because I started a company and ran that for 5 years instead.
At least for me, the key was to keep it capped at 10 hours a week. With more hours than that I would have struggled to balance coursework, social life, work, and sleep.
You definitely can't pay for everything on 10 hours a week, but it at least pays the bar tab...
This is pretty much my own history, too. (I think I took three years to pay them off, too!) And yet, many--I'd say most--people out there don't want to be computer programmers or work in other technical fields. They still need degrees to be employable at all in most fields, and with the state of student debt, it's pretty reckless to just roll out claims like the ones you've made.
"Affordable" is doing a lot of work there, particularly when before you didn't say "affordable" and did say "very respectable".
I went to a "very respectable" public land-grant university in my home state and today that school costs $15K a year outside of room and board ($35K/year for out-of-state), and students should live on-campus at minimum the first year--so let's say, best case, you're looking at $70K for in-state. Plus living expenses, and despite your claims elsewhere in-thread I can personally attest that part-time jobs even ten years ago took a bite out of but did not solve the problem of food, board, etc.--so we're probably talking closer to $100K when all is said and done.
Even if you assume some defraying of costs, a student loan bill of $50K (which was about what I left school with) is staggering for many non-technical folks, coming out of college looking at salaries closer to $40K than $100K when they can find a job at all. Further, the knock-on effects are financially hazardous. If you end up on income-based repayment because, y'know, jobs are hard to find unless you're a computer toucher and even then there probably aren't enough for everybody, you will be paying less-than-interest, and the principal only grows.
Put frankly, I would advise the cultivation of more empathy for those not as economically advantaged as you or me. This stuff is staggeringly, mind-wreckingly expensive for people who aren't in tech, and yet functionally required because of the structures we have allowed to be built.
> This stuff is staggeringly, mind-wreckingly expensive for people who aren't in tech, and yet functionally required because of the structures we have allowed to be built.
Society has always worked this way. Those who have rare skills get paid the most. Supply and demand and what not. Universities are gateways to advanced skills, especially in traditional occupations where equipment is often expensive (medical, chemical, mechanical, etc). The reason you go to a university is so that you can get advanced skills in order to make an advanced salary. It makes no sense to go to a university by default and come out with a degree that doesn't teach you advanced skills that get you a high wage. If the jobs that your degree are going to get you aren't going to pay for what that degree cost you then you made a poor decision by taking on that debt.
This sort of thing is why I believe basic economics should be a hard requirement in high school. You shouldn't be able to get a high school diploma without understanding the mechanisms of debt/leverage. So many people have screwed themselves over because they don't understand that the only reason to ever take on debt is to use it as leverage so that you can earn even more than the debt you took on. Any other reason is foolish.
It's really sad when you think about it, so many people would be way better off if they knew the definition of leverage. Such a simple concept, yet so powerful (it's funny how knowing about leverage gives one so much leverage in life).
> The reason you go to a university is so that you can get advanced skills in order to make an advanced salary.
Most of your post is pretty good, but I laughed aloud at this, tbh. The reason you go to a university is because your resume gets thrown out for almost any desk job--hell, for Starbucks--if you don't have a bachelor's.
It is functionally necessary. These aren't "rare skills". These are employer-mandated minimums, and it leaves people with that inflated student debt, encouraged and pushed upon them by their parents and by the expectations of society, to subsidize those employers' demands.
Man, that's weird. US really is different to our North-European way of life.
We are middle class and have two kids but our kids have close to no hobby expenses. Our son is vehemently anti-hobby and daughters dance and piano lessons are not really that expensive. On the other hand we have no-one close for whom we should "keep up appearances".
Government will pay for the kids degrees. Ditto for healthcare and the dentists for kids are excellent.
I know some kids play hockey or whatever and that can be a bit steep but never have I felt such would be a mandatory hobby. Neither of my kids really showed interest for any team sports and we gladly obliged not to force introduce them.
Sure you need to buy food for 4 persons and wash a bit more laundry, but that's about it when I think of the "overhead" caused by kids. The necessity for an apartment with a few more rooms is probably the biggest financial burden but loans are cheap.
The fact only one of us is capable of working due to health reasons is a much bigger issue financially than having kids.
It’s not the US, it’s a certain income bands in the US. This forum is probably full of many people who earn at least $100k per year, if not much more, and are likely to be partnered up with someone earning the same. Naturally, if you’re hanging out with people that have a lot of disposable income, they’re going to use that to give their kids as much of a leg up as they can to maximize their kids’ chances of moving up to the next step on the ladder.
They're also tend to blow money on things that have no real use whatsoever yet they fervently believe they are absolutely necessary to live a normal life even though 95+% of the planet lives without them.
Some things, but I think it's evident that the neighborhood/friends/schools/network you make are a big factor in one's upward mobility, so parents are willing to part with a lot of money to increase those odds.
But it is optional. There's social pressure for all kinds of things, including getting married and having children.
You have to figure out how to get food & shelter and follow local laws. Everything else is unequivocally optional. I would argue that "not seen as optional" is just a way of saying "I don't own up to my choices."
Agreed with not sending them to college. My wife and I are not paying for college. I have a daughter who is getting close to graduating HS. She has two choices: get a local job and attend the local university or go in the military and have Uncle Sam pay for it. I did the latter many moons ago and I'm glad I did. These days, if you are disciplined, you can go in the Air Force, for example, and get your degree in less than 4 years almost free. If you hate it after four years, you leave debt free, have veteran status and hiring preferences, and you paid nothing for your medical/dental/lodging/food. If you like it, go back in as an officer and still not pay for anything other than a tiny officer housing sum for single officers. If you marry an officer and do 20 years, you can salt away some serious cash and still be young enough at retirememt (39-40 yo) to get a second gig. If the government doesn't ruin Social Security, you'll get that, too. All the while not paying for medical or dental, two things which out in the civilian world are costly. Just my 0.02.
Editing to say that kids are not too expensive if they're healthy. If you have children who have medical conditions, then all bets are off. What really pisses me off is the local school district always begging for money. I pay those thieves almost over $5000 year in property tax, since we live in an area with ridiculous property taxes. Whenever I've visited the school and my children have also seen this, they beg for school supplies, but the closets in all of my kid's classrooms are brimming with supplies. They spend more on sports than they do on education, which really irks me. Sports may be important, but nowhere near as education. 1% of 1% go on to play pro sports, but here they act as if sports are more important. Classes are let out early to watch games, yet the school district where we live is a poor performer academically. My own children are fine, but that's because we watch and are involved.
Colleague I knew in London literally spent more on daycare for his two kids than he did on his mortgage.
The other option is that one parent quits their job and stays home, but that is also a massive (opportunity) cost if you're both educated and have a decent career.
Strictly speaking the problem isn't that the kid is expensive, it is that, per your two options, 1) childcare is expensive, and 2) London / their spending habits are too expensive to support a stay-at-home parent. There are lots of other choices that one can make, although they are problem not the common choices. They might actually be happier with some of the other choices, from stories I hear of people that sat down and thought about other options.
It really has nothing to do with being able to support a stay-at-home parent or not. If you're bringing home 100k a year and quit your job to raise kids then the opportunity cost of having kids is 100k a year. The fact that you can afford to 'lose' that money doesn't change that.
Now you may think it's worth 'paying' 100k a year to gain all the non-monetary benefits of staying at home and raising kids, but that is a separate discussion.
My experience- I had my first kid when I was totally broke. Working multiple minimum wage jobs. Everything was thrift store, hand-me-down, government assistance. Instead of child care, I worked every day and night so our kids could be with their mother.
As I built my career, my lifestyle inflated, and so did the kid’s expenses. We make in 3 days what used to take us a month.
The kids get to share our lifestyle with us. It’s probably different for us because we’ve never been well off + not have kids.
Funny you mention this. I live near Houston, Texas, soon to be, if not already, the 3rd largest city in America. What I'm seeing around me in north Houston burbs is somewhat disturbing, namely two things: 1. An outbreak of RV parks (6 near me in less than two years) 2. An outbreak of tiny home parks (Several in my area). What pains me is driving by the RV parks, where entire families are living in an RV not much larger than my kitchen and I see kids boarding the school bus. Some of you may disagree, but that is no way for a child to grow up. While I don't have anything against this per se, the stigma of that lifestyle can damage children. The rotten-ass kids at school make terrible fun of children who live in trailer parks, RV parks, tiny homes. Of course this is no fault of the children in those conditions, as they have no say in how they live, only in how they perform at school. This area lives and dies by oil and gas jobs. It's likely no accident that in the last couple of years, those jobs have bottomed out and many people have lost their jobs. I don't know if there is a correlation between the job losses (tens of thousands) and the number of cheaper housing accommodations springing up, but it's real and it's somewhat disturbing to see so many people in a down-and-out state.
Editing to say that these are not the $500,000 RVs that retired people holiday in. They are kitchen-sized campers (for lack of a better term) that may be the size of 6-8 cubicles. They need outside water connections which many don't have, and they almost always need propane attachments. Many have composting toilets which the owner needs to clean out, as they cannot connect to the sewer lines.
An acceptable daycare for the "professional, white collar" class is minimum $1,500 per child per month and doctor visits are at least $200 or $250 out of pocket each time for regular viral/bacterial infections.
Kids aren't cheap if you want to keep up with your socioeconomic class. And by far the biggest cost is the extra you pay for a house to be located near other high earners so that the schools your kids go to is filled with kids of other high earners.
I make less money than someone in the US, but daycare for me is 250 euro (it was 500 until 3 years old) and public daycare would be cheaper still. Visiting the doctor for a random virus brought back from school costs exactly 0 (a private visit would be around 100 euros). An orthodontist, if needed, would be the only major expense for a child apart from clothing and food.
University will be about 4000 euros a year at most (and would be cheaper if I earned less).
A large emotional/spiritual investment... And financially as well, especially considering the cost of child care nowadays. Tax breaks help (in US), but not that much.
Sure, you don't have to send them to college, but if you don't help them pay for some sort of education or training after high school, you're doing them a massive disservice if you can afford it at all.
You may say, oh well they can just get loans, true, but you can only get so much in federal loans before you have to get private, non dischargeable loans for ~ 7% interest.
Alternatively, you might say oh, they can just join the military. Only problem is the Air Force and Navy don't want little Johnny and now he's getting blown up doing patrols with the 3rd ID in Iraq (I lost my childhood best friend this way).
TLDR: If you don't want to help your kid pay for college or trade school, just don't have them. No one should have to go deeply in debt or put their lives at risk to earn a decent living.
Many people would qualify for CHIP. But of course that only applies while they are children. If they are disabled, then they would likely qualify for social security and medicaid as adults depending on the severity type. The real issue is that they may need help with the administration of the benefits or with things not covered after the parents pass away.
Social security disability is incredibly difficult to live on. Depending on the individual's work history it can pay as little as $700/month. The average beenfit is $1263 but it's only that high because most people claiming it became disabled but had (or their spouse had) a productive work History before that. People with lifelong disabilities will be well below that.
You can supplement with part-time work but that only gets you so far. As soon as you start making money on disability, you lose 1 dollar for every two. And the most you can make is $1260/month. At that point you lose Medicaid and any progress you've made is lost because insurance is way more than you are making.
You effectively top out at $1263 + $1260/2 = $1893/month. Rent is going to claim 1/3 to 1/2 that.
Yes, US disability and far too many government benefits are setup in a way that can actively discourage people from self improvement or trying harder.
Where are the fade outs, and the incentives that will reward you for getting off the system, rather then punish you? It's a subject for a different thread at a different time.
Most serious medical costs will far outstrip the increased salary. Usually you use that increased salary to pay some crazy insurance premiums/deductibles.
Yes and no. Acute health care may be free in Canada, but even here, money has a particularly substantial effect on your quality of life if you're disabled.
Sure, most important thing is to know yourself and your preferences.
In complex technical niche fields jumping from gig to gig is not that easy, though.
I was perhaps overtly bleak in the above for the benefit of clarity (it's ok not to love your job, but it's also ok to concentrate on things you love and the thing does not need to be your job).
OP did a great job of saying "Here's what I need." Until that's staked out, you don't know what's too little, enough, and too much.
But generally, minimizing and controlling costs (critically, through city choice) affords you flexibility. High costs = must work high paying job. Low costs = choice between working less, taking a job you enjoy more that pays less, or working more & saving.
I'll probably switch back to a lower paying job in the next 6 months or year, because I'd rather work on something I love, and because I'll have the financial flexibility to do so.