What advice would you give someone considering divorce over income?

[Backroads]

Out of curiosity, where's the lines between making low pay, making low-but-sufficient pay, and making more money?

Another humorous anecdote (as the couple is very happy) is a gal married one of my childhood friends under the impression he was going for dental school like his father and is now studying to be a teacher.

[Backroads]

My husband psychoanalyzed me about why I've been so curious about this conversation with the TA. I'm seriously thinking about quitting my job this year, or going to a job-share position, Husband's new promotion puts him working the same hours as me, which means putting our girls in daycare full-time, and the daycare lady we had on a pedestal accepted a dream job running her business at a local charter school and the board won't let her take infants, and our new daycare ladies are nice enough and all but... It's totally unrelated to the situation of "my new-grad husband doesn't make enough!" scenario but it makes me think about being a SAHM as well.

[Just_A_Guy]

10 minutes ago, Backroads said:

Out of curiosity, where's the lines between making low pay, making low-but-sufficient pay, and making more money?

Another humorous anecdote (as the couple is very happy) is a gal married one of my childhood friends under the impression he was going for dental school like his father and is now studying to be a teacher.

I think there are four broad categories:

1) Not able to pay bills as they come due (except by incurring debt);

2) Paying immediate bills without incurring new debt, and maybe even paying down existing debt, but not saving for long-term needs (kids' college, retirement);

3) Meeting all goals in 2) above, with relatively little excess;

4) Meeting all goals in 2) above, with sufficient excess for significantly larger-than-necessary house/car, extensive and frequent travel, and the other niceties of life.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Backroads said:

Out of curiosity, where's the lines between making low pay, making low-but-sufficient pay, and making more money?

Another humorous anecdote (as the couple is very happy) is a gal married one of my childhood friends under the impression he was going for dental school like his father and is now studying to be a teacher.

That's a tough question, and maybe the answer is different for everyone. I think so much more discussion needs to happen before a ring goes on the finger. 

When I was dating my husband, I was crazy about him but had huge reservations about his ambition. I never expected riches, but I did want to stay home with my kids. I was concerned about his level of education and the fact that he was in a low-level job. So I (kindly) talked to him about it. I told him I wanted to stay home with my kids. I asked him what his goals and expectations were. I learned that he had a great deal of ambition and had worked hard his whole life, and was on track with his goals.

He's provided a good life for us, though the last few years have been a major struggle because of the economy and, as hard as it is for both of us to admit, his level of education. But he works his tail off and I know he'll do what it takes to get us back to a comfortable existence. In the meantime I've worked more, and he takes extra jobs where he can. We tighten the purse strings.

Nowhere would I ever imagine considering leaving him because we aren't making X amount. Has she even discussed her feelings with him, and the fact that it's bothering her enough to consider leaving? Or does she just complain to her friends at work and her family?

[Backroads]

21 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I think there are four broad categories:

1) Not able to pay bills as they come due (except by incurring debt);

2) Paying immediate bills without incurring new debt, and maybe even paying down existing debt, but not saving for long-term needs (kids' college, retirement);

3) Meeting all goals in 2) above, with relatively little excess;

4) Meeting all goals in 2) above, with sufficient excess for significantly larger-than-necessary house/car, extensive and frequent travel, and the other niceties of life.

Wow. I don't think of us as rich but we're at about 3.7 there.

[Backroads]

26 minutes ago, Eowyn said:

Nowhere would I ever imagine considering leaving him because we aren't making X amount. Has she even discussed her feelings with him, and the fact that it's bothering her enough to consider leaving? Or does she just complain to her friends at work and her family?

I actually do think she's talked with her husband about it.

[mordorbund]

I'll just leave this here.

 

I'm sure there will be another talk on the subject in a month.

Edited September 10, 2016 by mordorbund

[Jane_Doe]

5 hours ago, Backroads said:

I slept on it and I wonder of she were speaking from mostly a place of worry about not being a stay-at-home mom. She sees me working, other teachers at our school with kids, hearing about a teacher (my neighbor, actually) who quit our school the other year to stay home who is now selling Norwex as her husband has a rookie cop salary. Me saying my ward is full of working moms didn't seem to help.

If she wants to be a stay-at-home mom, she can do that.  Now what if she "needs" a 200 inch tv, a brand new car, fancy clothes, eating out regularly, etc?  Then she gets to choose: are fulfilling these "needs" more important than her dream of being a stay at home mom?  

[Latter-Day Marriage]

7 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

@yjacketIMHO, unless some other expectation was set prior to marriage, LDS women do have a right to expect that their husbands will be able to earn enough that the wife can be a SAHM if she so chooses.

 

She has a right to expect him to do his best to provide for the family but nobody has a right to any particular income level.  If his best at the moment means she needs to work too then that is how it is.  The proclamation on the family lays out that husbands and wives are to assist each other.  Eve worked alongside Adam.  They need to pay tithing and be frugal with what they have and seek a way to improve their lot if they are not content.  Sometimes 'my husband doesn't earn enough' means 'not enough to sustain my spending habits'. 

[Just_A_Guy]

19 hours ago, Latter-Day Marriage said:

She has a right to expect him to do his best to provide for the family but nobody has a right to any particular income level.  If his best at the moment means she needs to work too then that is how it is.  The proclamation on the family lays out that husbands and wives are to assist each other.  Eve worked alongside Adam.  They need to pay tithing and be frugal with what they have and seek a way to improve their lot if they are not content.  Sometimes 'my husband doesn't earn enough' means 'not enough to sustain my spending habits'. 

I mostly agree, but with a caveat:  Especially in LDS culture, women often marry young and put their own educational/professional development on hold to facilitate the husband's own development and/or childrearing.

If after all that the wife is going to be working to support the family either way, it'd be nice for her to know it up front so she can qualify herself to do something better than cleaning toilets rather than spending those crucial early years chasing her husband's pie in the sky.  If he takes that from her, then IMHO--yes, thereafter he does owe her.  Not because she's an entitled special snowflake, but because she paid the price.

[Latter-Day Marriage]

2 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I mostly agree, but with a caveat:  Especially in LDS culture, women often marry young and put their own educational/professional development on hold to facilitate the husband's own development and/or childrearing.

If after all that the wife is going to be working to support the family either way, it'd be nice for her to know it up front so she can qualify herself to do something better than cleaning toilets rather than spending those crucial early years chasing her husband's pie in the sky.  If he takes that from her, then IMHO--yes, thereafter he does owe her.  Not because she's an entitled special snowflake, but because she paid the price.

It would be nice to know a lot of things up front, but you just have to do you best and adapt as needed when plans don't go as hoped for.  My wife dropped out of university when we married even though she was a year ahead of me due to my serving a mission.  She took a job at Sears to support us while I went to school, and later got a job closer to home and campus until I graduated.  We had kids before I graduated though and had a friend watch our kids while I was in class. 

When I graduated we moved as I started a job and she became a stay at home mom, but it was on a very, very limited budget.  Starting salaries are not designed for a husband, wife and 3 kids.  plus she would not earn enough at a job to pay for daycare for all of them.  She did get a temp job when I was out of work for a long time, and she did work cleaning houses while the kids were all in school, but it wasn't until more than 20 years after we got married that we finally had the means and opportunity to allow her to go back full time and get her degree.  She finished her master's this past May in fact.  If you ask her, she'll say it was a far better life plan to chase kids at 20 and do homework at 40 than the other way around.

[Guest]

If the wife is really concerned about her husband's career trajectory, she should sit down wih him and say, "I really want to be a SAHM.  I want to encourage you to go to grad school.  I understand a masters degree may or may not allow you to make enough for me to be a SAHM, and I accept that risk.  This is our decision together, and we will share in the consequences."

If she wants to share in the benefits of being married to a man making enough for her to be a SAHM, she needs to help him make he decision to take the steps that make that possible and share in the risk of failure.  No income ultimatums.

 

Edited September 11, 2016 by DoctorLemon

[Just_A_Guy]

3 hours ago, Latter-Day Marriage said:

It would be nice to know a lot of things up front, but you just have to do you best and adapt as needed when plans don't go as hoped for.  My wife dropped out of university when we married even though she was a year ahead of me due to my serving a mission.  She took a job at Sears to support us while I went to school, and later got a job closer to home and campus until I graduated.  We had kids before I graduated though and had a friend watch our kids while I was in class. 

When I graduated we moved as I started a job and she became a stay at home mom, but it was on a very, very limited budget.  Starting salaries are not designed for a husband, wife and 3 kids.  plus she would not earn enough at a job to pay for daycare for all of them.  She did get a temp job when I was out of work for a long time, and she did work cleaning houses while the kids were all in school, but it wasn't until more than 20 years after we got married that we finally had the means and opportunity to allow her to go back full time and get her degree.  She finished her master's this past May in fact.  If you ask her, she'll say it was a far better life plan to chase kids at 20 and do homework at 40 than the other way around.

I am always loath to personalize these sorts of discussions, but since you've gone ahead . . . please forgive me if what I say appears to be a judgment on your particular situation.  I promise, it really isn't intended to be.

Sure, I'd agree that taking a temporary part-time job to deal with an unforeseen short-term financial setback, is part of that give-and-take process that I talked of earlier.  But if the husband is at a point where he's saying "yeah, honey; I know you quit school to get me that PhD in Art History with a minor in Dancing Parapalegic Cats, but . . . turns out that my degree isn't as useful as I thought it'd be.  So even though your girlhood dream was to be a molecular biologist and you turned down that full-ride at Johns Hopkins, what we all really need is for you to wait tables for the next thirty years"--

--Well, good for any woman who decides to go along with that sort of scheme, I suppose; but I continue to maintain that the husband has no right to demand it.  In the long run he either needs to up his earning potential, or else break his back finding a way for his wife to increase hers.

[NightSG]

On 9/10/2016 at 10:56 AM, Backroads said:

Out of curiosity, where's the lines between making low pay, making low-but-sufficient pay, and making more money?

At the point where they're missing meals, living out of a barely functional car or resorting to immoral means (theft, prostitution, selling weight loss supplements, assassination for hire, etc.) of avoiding those.

The vast majority of people complaining about low incomes just need to learn to live within their means.

Edited September 12, 2016 by NightSG

[Latter-Day Marriage]

2 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I am always loath to personalize these sorts of discussions, but since you've gone ahead . . . please forgive me if what I say appears to be a judgment on your particular situation.  I promise, it really isn't intended to be.

Sure, I'd agree that taking a temporary part-time job to deal with an unforeseen short-term financial setback, is part of that give-and-take process that I talked of earlier.  But if the husband is at a point where he's saying "yeah, honey; I know you quit school to get me that PhD in Art History with a minor in Dancing Parapalegic Cats, but . . . turns out that my degree isn't as useful as I thought it'd be.  So even though your girlhood dream was to be a molecular biologist and you turned down that full-ride at Johns Hopkins, what we all really need is for you to wait tables for the next thirty years"--

--Well, good for any woman who decides to go along with that sort of scheme, I suppose; but I continue to maintain that the husband has no right to demand it.  In the long run he either needs to up his earning potential, or else break his back finding a way for his wife to increase hers.

No offense taken, in my case I was working towards a degree in mathematics and computer science.  But one thing I learned from my time unemployed is that no matter what education you have, not matter what skills and talents you have, your ability to turn those into income depend on other factors that are not fully in your control. 

Also, I think it is a better choice to go for something you are passionate in rather than pick a career based on how munch money is in it.  There are successful people in any field, and a big ingredient for success is having passion for what you do. 

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, Latter-Day Marriage said:

No offense taken, in my case I was working towards a degree in mathematics and computer science.  But one thing I learned from my time unemployed is that no matter what education you have, not matter what skills and talents you have, your ability to turn those into income depend on other factors that are not fully in your control. 

I second that.  I went to a well ranked law school in 2008 when the legal industry was doing great, was still there when the market crashed, and got out in 2011 in the top quarter of my class when the legal job market was just awful.  Since then, i have seen a real mixed bag of outcomes in my personal career, making both far less and far more than i could have ever dreamed, depending on the year.  I have also had to jump firms a couple of times, when business has dried up... 

Remember, this is with a doctorate level degree in a field that until very recently was considered lucrative.  Has my degree helped me?  Overall, yes.  Has it guaranteed a high income and success?  Not necessarily.  I have had good years and bad years.

My wife strongly has felt that i was doing the right thing by going to law school, even more than me.  She has always emphasized that it was not my choice, but our choice to do this, and has not given me a hard time during the bad years.  I periodically have asked her if she would like for me to try something else, something more stable.  She has said no, i should keep doing what i am doing, but point being, we make these decisions together and have discussions about it.  We both own the consequences, even failure, because it was our decision to try law out.  If my wife ever gets fed up with my career and wants to try something else, i plan to listen to her an make the decsion together with lots of prayer.

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by DoctorLemon

[NightSG]

On 9/10/2016 at 10:19 AM, Just_A_Guy said:

LDS women do have a right to expect that their husbands will be able to earn enough that the wife can be a SAHM if she so chooses.

I have a friend with an absolute passion for traditional blacksmithing.  He makes about $28-30k/yr.  By your standards, that makes him a "special case" that a woman must consider inferior to a man who makes $100k plus at a job he hates.

On the other hand, he's had a very successful 30 year marriage to a woman who still thinks he could make a lot more but doesn't care because they were never out in the cold or wondering where their next meal would come from.  Neither do any of the four kids, two of whom have gone into custom metalworking making 4-5 times as much as he does.  Sure, she's worked full time for most of their marriage, neither of them has ever owned a new car, their house is ~70 years old and his family provided a lot of their child care, but they focused on what really matters, and have achieved a far better result than any of the people I know who check financials as a condition of marriage.

[Just_A_Guy]

30 minutes ago, NightSG said:

I have a friend with an absolute passion for traditional blacksmithing.  He makes about $28-30k/yr.  By your standards, that makes him a "special case" that a woman must consider inferior to a man who makes $100k plus at a job he hates.

It's not a matter of inferiority.  It's a matter of men not having a right to thrust their wives unwillingly into the workforce just because they've discovered that--egads!--the kind of work that will adequately support their family, doesn't tend to be all that fun.  Suck it up, brethren--we have the priesthood, for crying out loud!  That doesn't come without making some sacrifices that our wives, who don't hold the priesthood, won't be expected to make.

There seems to be a subculture of Mormon men who think that it's a Mormon woman's responsibility to wed and bed the first "eligible" LDS male who proposes--and "eligibility", of course, should be determined by the man's own appraisal of himself; not the woman's own values and priorities and expectations in a mate.  I stringently disagree with that kind of misogyny.  Like I said earlier--if a woman is willing to put up with a lifestyle that the Church teaches is sub-optimal, that's her choice (and one that my own mother made, by the way; so I'm really not putting working moms or their families in any special class of contempt).  But her husband has no theological or moral right to expect it, let alone demand it.  1 Timothy 5:8, and all that.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Just_A_Guy

[Budget]

On 9/9/2016 at 7:54 PM, Backroads said:

Chatting with a young associate today who has been married about three years, no children yet. She says she was raised to find a husband who makes a very good income, but her husband has not yet been able to secure a job paying over 30,000$ She is afraid if she has kids she won't be able to stay home. Her parents are encouraging her to divorce her husband if he doesn't find a way to make more money in the next year, and she really considering this. It is indeed a temple marriage. Her reasoning is that while she loves her husband, she doesn't feel he is living up to his duty by not being able to make enough.

 

 

My mouth literally fell open reading this.  It makes me so... sad, I guess.  Disappointed. And thinking how it's possible that someone who proposes to 'love' someone and even is sealed to them, could so easily divorce them just because he hasn't made the amount of money she and her parents thinks he should.  I get that she wants to stay home with future children - but there are options and ways of making things work and who knows what blessings are yet in their future?  To throw love and marriage away based on money is so so wrong.

 

[anatess2]

GGRRRRR... I'm really starting to hate these I LOVE HIM BUT... attitudes.  DEFINE LOVE!

And $30,000 is not enough?  Does she live in New York City or something?  My mother used to yell at me when I was a kid whining about how small my weekly allowance is - "You keep that up, I'm sending you to live with your grandmother!"  My grandmother, of course, lives in a little fishing village where houses don't even have indoor plumbing.  That's what she needs - a swift kick in the face through a visit to small-town, USA, or even the Philippines to see how the rest of the world lives.

[NightSG]

17 hours ago, Budget said:

My mouth literally fell open reading this.  It makes me so... sad, I guess.  Disappointed. And thinking how it's possible that someone who proposes to 'love' someone and even is sealed to them, could so easily divorce them just because he hasn't made the amount of money she and her parents thinks he should. 

Exactly.  And it wasn't that long ago we had the post from the wife of a video game addict, where he refused to work because it interfered with his gaming time.  Seems a lot of these women have a serious lack of perspective.

Quote

I get that she wants to stay home with future children - but there are options and ways of making things work and who knows what blessings are yet in their future?  To throw love and marriage away based on money is so so wrong

More to the point, what trials are in the future of the ones who find a guy with enough income?  I've seen plenty of people wiped out by a single bad decision or stroke of bad luck, to the point where they went from debt free and planning an early retirement to working 2-3 jobs just to put food on the table and try to dig out from under the emergency debt.  Some never recovered.

[Just_A_Guy]

40 minutes ago, NightSG said:

More to the point, what trials are in the future of the ones who find a guy with enough income?  I've seen plenty of people wiped out by a single bad decision or stroke of bad luck, to the point where they went from debt free and planning an early retirement to working 2-3 jobs just to put food on the table and try to dig out from under the emergency debt.  Some never recovered.

Does the fact that something might turn out to be impossible, exempt everyone from being expected to even try to accomplish it?

Look, after all the contortions of logic, the simple fact is that a woman who marries a man who currently earns a lot of money--as opposed to a woman who marries a man who is living at or near poverty level (which would be below $32K, for a woman who anticipates having four children or more)--has a statistically better chance of being able to be a full-time, stay-at-home mother; which is something the Church teaches women should aspire to. 

Sure, there will be individualized exceptions; but as a general rule:  the laws of probability--and the Church teachings--are what they are.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Just_A_Guy

[omegaseamaster75]

The real problem is in the culture people jump the gun and get married after knowing each other for 3 months all while living in a fake environment (school) that does not relate to real life.  If you marry a history major cool know that things are going to be a little tight because your spouse will be qualified to be a teacher, you want to marry a Dr. or a Lawyer (no guarantees on the lawyer being successful) find a guy who is in his last year of school, not just starting the drop out rate is high

For the OP 30k? you can make that working fast food....If I was the husband I'd go to my school and ask for a refund on that useless degree. 

For the wife she needs to get her head straight about the decisions and commitments she has made to her husband and God.  

[Guest MormonGator]

7 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

The real problem is in the culture people jump the gun and get married after knowing each other for 3 months all while living in a fake environment (school) that does not relate to real life. 

Exactly. It's a problem inside the church. In the secular world people are not marrying so early. 

[NightSG]

26 minutes ago, omegaseamaster75 said:

For the OP 30k? you can make that working fast food....

If you're living where fast food pays $14.50/hour, you're not going to be able to afford to rent a one bedroom apartment on that, much less the enchanted castle these women are being told they're entitled to.

Edited September 13, 2016 by NightSG