Marriage and the Power of Divorce

Aldarion said:

even if your wife is only in the top 23% of individual income (before adjusting for sex or age which means its actually much, much smaller) or something? Is that what you meant?


The great majority of people in this country do not earn "only" 80k, and the situation is different for them than what you describe. Youre discussing a very small fraction of the country.

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Cad just missed that I used "usually". He got shit on a little bit for it and now, since this is the grownup section we're going to drop it.

Captain Suave said:

People with more means can afford luxuries. Story at 11...

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But feel free to shit on this johnny come lately who didn't bother to read for context.

Cad said:

If you said it usually doesn't make sense... unless you want your wife to be happy, you enjoy having more money, and you want to stay married... then I'd have agreed with you since you laid out when the "usually" doesn't apply. But you say usually and then say something that doesn't apply in a large portion of cases.. you don't get a pass since you said "usually." Still an incorrect and incomplete statement. If "usually" is your get out of jail card, it's a shitty one.

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Bro. You're on tilt. I said it usually doesn't make financial sense. I was speaking only about finances. I used the word financial. I even pointed out in a later post that I was not addressing other factors such as happiness.

Here's the sentence again

"If you don't have free daycare, it usually doesn't make financial sense for both parents to work. "

Are you allright? I don't remember you being the type to make strawman arguments and/or miss-interpret things this badly.

Cad said:

It might be the person I was responding to in the post you quoted.

Maybe. You might look into it.

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Wait, this was directed specifically at me?

Cad said:

A certain segment of the forum is obsessed with the tradwife thing, but interestingly the same segment of the forum is absolutely shit-themselves terrified of divorce and the wife taking half their stuff.

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lol where'd you get that? I can lean into the tradwife obsession if it makes you feel better. But I'm not terrified of losing my shit in a divorce. As I understand the process, you have to get a divorce for that to happen. I don't even have that setup. My wife and I are pretty equal. She makes a higher base salary. Who are these people wanting a stay at home moms and terrified of divorce? That sounds like opposite sides of the debate there.

lurkingdirk said:

I know you are speaking only of finances, but let me throw something else out there: mental health. We were 100% capable of taking care of our kids ourselves, yet we chose to have some child care at least 3 days a week. My wife and I both work, but not full time, haven't since the kids were born. But having a little time away from the kids was very healthy for us. It helped us realize that our lives aren't divided between work and child care. We gave ourselves time for more than that. So we each have a fulfilling career, we both pursue personal interests, and we love our kids. We can bring our kids into our personal interests, and when we spend time with them, they have something to talk about other than spending time with us. It's also healthy for kids to develop social relationships, and day care can certainly help with that.

There are absolutely benefits in both directions on child care. I think people need to stop speaking in absolutes and acknowledge that different families need different things.

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That's all fine. Other than tweaking cad with the "let someone else raise your kids" line, I'm pretty sure I haven't said jack shit about anything other than finances. I'm sure I haven't addressed anyone's non-financial reasoning because the finances was my only point. Someone said people can't afford to only have 1 parent working, and I wanted to point out that you should actually crunch the numbers because you'd be surprised at all the little expenses that add up when you work full time.

Cad said:

There's no way for me to respond to this without just insulting y'all for being poor, so whatever. There are a TON of people for whom quitting work makes absolutely no sense, and it's not purely financial either, as I laid out in my post above. There are a lot of reasons, even if it's putting me slightly in the hole, that I'd like my wife working rather than sitting at home.

A certain segment of the forum is obsessed with the tradwife thing, but interestingly the same segment of the forum is absolutely shit-themselves terrified of divorce and the wife taking half their stuff. You know a good way for your wife to not take half your stuff? Have her earn her own stuff. Also you might try keeping her fulfilled and happy by allowing her to accomplish shit in life and not turn her into a babysitter.

But hey, I've only been married 20 years and raised 3 successful children, what the fuck do I know. Listen to the fucking guy with no wife and no kids, he knows.

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Being that numbers guy that I tend to be Cad here is right. If you are making brokedick money (<$60k indefinitely) then the tradwife situation will ultimately benefit you. Assuming you and the wife stick together and don't break up for any reason. The children (which are what really matters) will benefit from this situation. This is completely true. I don't know the exact dollar amount that's beak even or anything. But there is a point for it.

Right now we pay a Ukrainian woman to come help us for like 12 hours a week at $20/hour. It is far cheaper than day care and the woman is older and specifically wanted to be with a Ukrainian family over a Russian one so we lucked out. I was in day care a lot as a kid as my father was a tuna fisherman and spent months out at sea and my mom ran her own business. Leaving not much time for raising kids. I didn't hate my childhood or anything but I really didn't like daycare. I spent weeks and months at various people's homes as a kid. It is something I want to minimize as much as I can for my kids.

I wouldn't say it was traumatizing specifically but I remember many many times feeling uncomfortable at the homes of strangers (strangers to me, my parents obviously knew them well enough).

And this is because I had to.

TJT said:

Being that numbers guy that I tend to be

...

I don't know the exact dollar amount that's beak even or anything. But there is a point for it.

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That's disappointing, numbers guy. It would be interesting to know what the break even point is on average. There are too many variables for me to want to do it and I'm too far removed from the childcare expenses. That's why I advocate people crunching the numbers themselves.

Tjt and his army of witches continues to grow.

Hoss said:

That's disappointing, numbers guy. It would be interesting to know what the break even point is on average. There are too many variables for me to want to do it and I'm too far removed from the childcare expenses. That's why I advocate people crunching the numbers themselves.

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This. $60-70k in a big city is not the same as a rural red state.

Also someone came up with a male version of the delusion calculator. Though theres a big difference in that they have a obese and overweight category, instead of just overweight. Kind of depressing results when you ignore weight requirements. Jumps to 16.8%.

Lendarios said:

Tjt and his army of witches continues to grow.

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Lendarios said:

After a certain age, it is expected for kids to be in the picture, and if they aren't it is actually a red/warning flag.
If you are a man over 40 and you have no kids, that is bad. If you are a women that is even worse.

The older I get the more I wish I had more kids and that I had started sooner.

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This one resonates with me bro. I wish I started having kids several years ago.

Makes me rethink a lot of decisions I made honestly.

Khane said:

You realize you just bro hugged the dude who was screaming about his deadbeat wife for years... in this thread... because he had to pay off all her medical school loans just for her to give up and stop caring. And then actually yelled at her, while she was nagging him, because he hates her so much... "One sec, I'm masturbating in the living room."

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I never called her a deadbeat. She didn't gave up, she became a Nurse practitioner and has been doing that for the past 2 years. The rest of the post is still true.

My main point of grief with her is that so much of her personality was centered around being a doctor that once that was not possible it became pretty ugly for a while. She is a lot better now and makes around 80 k year.