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Along with the children.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
Well, pets are easy because you can just chip them.
can you chip children yet?
Only if they're mexican children.
We do exactly this. Paychecks go into the joint account. We use that for rent and bills and large household purchases like furniture. Then each month X dollars from that account are put into each of our personal accounts for stuff like Magic Cards, Poker Money, Lunches, Ice Blended Mochas and Pedicures (I don't get pedicures).
If I wanna drop a hundred bucks on Magic Cards my wife never sees it. But I only spend money on crap like that from my personal account. If it runs out it I'm done and can't refill it until the next month.
Homemakers don't make money.
I kind of cringed when I asked that question because I kind of hate questions like that in discussions like these.
But let me give you an example from a couple close friends of mine who tried it one. They maintained separate bank accounts for about a year and tried really hard not to mix assets.
Just planning dinner was an ordeal. The higher-income one might want sushi, but the poorer one couldn't afford it. So does the richer one eat Taco Bell? Now she's unhappy because what's the point of making the extra income if you can't enjoy it? Do they get sushi anyway? Does one party pay for the other? Do they eat dinner separately? That kind of sucks - enjoying a meal together is one of the basic things a couple can do to feel intimate. (Edit: as a friend, this became fucking frustrating. I just want to enjoy a damn dinner with both my friends. I started paying the lower-income partner's way myself just so I didn't have to listen to the discussion.)
It's a little thing but it's kind of indicative of what happens. Every single decision becomes a negotiation; even if both parties are being perfectly reasonable it adds a lot of time and discussion to otherwise simple activities. (Of course, people often aren't perfectly reasonable, so sometimes these discussions become fights.)
I was called over to play amateur marriage counselor for them so many times after some financial discussion turned into an argument.
Now take the sushi example and look at a mortgage. One party wants (and can afford) to pay 50% rent on a three-bedroom house. The other party can only afford to pay 50% rent on a one-bedroom apartment. The richer party, by refusing to offer any support to her spouse, is sacrificing her quality of life - and that's at the best of times.
If two people are just roommates, and there's no romantic ties between them, then you just kick somebody out who can't afford to pay their share. It's just business - no hard feelings. But if your spouse loses his job, what do you do? Kick him out? Pay his way for a little while? Downsize both partners' quality of life? There's no single easy answer to that question, but all three of those options are on the table depending on the context and the relationship.
It's a good thing.
I don't really have anything else to add that hasn't been said by these other lovely people.
There's been some research on that, actually. Having a free personal assistant does lead to significant financial gain, who knew...
They aren't "free" Cat. People who work are subsidizing their SO homemaker's food, rent, and other expenditures. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do and like you said it's beneficial for the person working, but you make it sound like the person at home has to nothing to gain from it.
Firstly, the study indicates that the male partners are still earning much more than simple wife-rent off the backs of their partners. I'd also suggest that that the 'subsidy' scored by a housepartner in many places is very much sabotaged by the loss of superannuation and similar benefits while not working. Lastly, that period of sacrifice for your partner? Keeps affecting you for a long time after you achieve a more egalitaritarian balance post-kids or leave. Ageism and sexism in the workforce make it very difficult to regain employment after even a few years at home; 20 is a massive hurdle. There's a lot of frankly overqualified older ladies working in dead-end retail as a result.
There's an increasing problem with elderly poverty in long-lived societies, and these elderly poor are overwhelmingly female due to this big chunk of missing income and the fact that they live longer on average.
Secondly, as the article points out, most of these "traditional" women are in the workforce at least part time anyway, on top of doing all that home labour. So they're mostly covering their own expenses in addition to subsidising their partner's. "best of both worlds" for the male partner is the term bandied about, and its true.
And on top of all that, when you're a woman in that boat you have people condescendingly needling you for trying to "have it all". So yeah, I'm not a fan of that particular method of division of labour.
It doesn't sound to me like there's a definite causal link between having one partner stay at home and higher total income, based on that article. Just a correlation between men who are dicks and men who make more money, which is unsurprising.
If a nice, well-grounded married couple are trying to decide if one parent should stay home full time or not, I still feel comfortable saying that it's probably not going to be a net financial gain to go the dedicated homemaker route.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
A person shouldn't be entitled to alimony indefinitely when a couple gets divorced. Just because a person (say a woman) thinks she had her potential cut short because she was 'forced' to be a homemaker doesn't mean she should collect an extra $1000 a month because her husband took care of the finances.
I could understand a year, maybe even 4 (the length of time it should take to get a bachelors degree and thus get the person to the point where she is now at her 'potential') but 'until she gets remarried' is just ridiculous.
Of course I also think it's ludicrous that some celebrities have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a MONTH for child support, so take that as you will.
Either you missed the point of the OP or I did.
The OP doesn't think a person should be entitled and neither do I (for an extended period).
So by your theory if I got married and I paid for a new toilet in my house my wife should have to go to the bathroom outside in the bushes or something?
More seriously though I lived with a girl I was engaged to for about 8 months and keeping our assets separate that we brought into the house was pretty easy. Anything bought afterwords we tried splitting at first but it became highly impracticable as time went on and our financial situations and wants differed. I imagine both pre-move-in and post-move-in assets become harder to keep separate the longer you are together and with the exception of some personal spending money or such is kind of ridiculous to do so after a certain point.
I'm not saying if you are going to get married to someone that you shouldn't have some sort of financial plan in place before hand as with the how statically probable it is for marriages to break up its pretty irresponsible not too. Having some sort of prenup will also save both of you a ton of emotional difficulties in the event of a marriage break down.
The reason you can't understand the financial mingling involved with marriage is that you're either very naive or very selfish. Considering you don't think both parents should have a financial responsibility to their children and that you view marriage as having a live in prostitute instead of a partner I'm going to assume selfish.
One last point I'll mention to some of the others about marriage in here. While assets gained while in a marriage are split on dissolution they are not technically joint owned while married unless you set it up that way. Often someone in a career that is at high risk for lawsuits will not have their name on the house or cars which allows them to avoid losing those assets in the event litigation goes against them. You also don't split debts unless both people's names are on it so be careful on that one
He could just be a sociopath.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Entitled when? Because how I'm reading it, he's basically saying "If I make more money than my wife, and she wants to use some of mine, she's a parasite and using [this very foreign emotion called] "love" to take what's mine."
Do you agree?
Child support is pretty silly to squabble on. It's required, you made babies, you need to help support them. Yes, the money goes to the spouse because kids can't spend money on their own necessities.
Support is cheaper if you have more custody, because the law realizes if you have the kids you are no doubt spending time and money on them. If you don't want to pay support, try to get full custody (good luck unless the other person is a pedophile) and then have fun trying to juggle work and kids.
Which leads into my next point. Most, though not all, people marry with the idea to eventually have children. One person is probably going to have to stay home and take care of the kids and house (unless you are super rich and can afford maids and child care.)
Being a home maker is NOT EASY. Kids are draining, they are demanding, and being locked down to having to take care of kids for years is mentally exhausting. Not being able to progress in a career can really suck, even if you LOVE taking care of your kids.
So, if we are talking couples who are dating without any real goal of marriage or kids, sure, it might be easy to justify and work at (cause it IS work) splitting things as equally as possible.
But man, I too tried the equal split, because I make way more than my BF, and it is so so so hard to not go crazy over it.
The discussions about meals, vacations, clothes, food...Only bills tend to be kind of easy because they rarely change much.
So, I'm saying, I agree with child support, and yes even alimony to an extent, and financial differences are going to happen almost always. Things balance out if couples want to make it work, because most would be together even if money wasn't a facet.
Now, the idea that someone is a sponge... Well, I paid for everything for a long time, my BF was self employed and didn't make much, but I knew he worked hard and he made sure he helped me out where he could. Even if I didn't want his money, because he deserved it, I felt. I didn't feel resentment towards him, in fact, he sort of felt it towards ME because I WANTED to move into our own place and KNEW he couldn't afford it, but I assured him I didn't care.
He still had the mentality of wanting to do his share, and he had to learn to help out with chores to feel like he was an 'equal'. Kind of funny, really.
Let's take a hypothetical, relatively equally skilled 25 year old couple. They decide it would be best to focus on one person's career while the other takes care of the household, so the second abandons their career to stay home. 20 years later the first SO is doing well because they were able to work the late nights and go on the business trips a child would haven't made difficult or even impossible to do.
Then the unthinkable happens and they get a divorce. The second person is now 45 and has had no work experience in the last 20 years outside of being a home maker. There aren't going to be many openings. The other meanwhile is doing very well specifically because their spouse sacrificed that time for them. To not give them at least minimal support is pretty awful.
Fuckin'-A.
I've been home on disability leave for some time now, and to save money we pulled Maddie from after-school daycare (she's in kindergarten) and dropped Riley (2) down to part-time daycare. (We didn't want to pull him out completely, because he has a lot of friends there and really enjoys it.) The kids are each angels alone, but get them together and they pretty try to kill each other constantly. It's really stressful watching them both at once for the maybe 10 hours per week I do it alone, and even when my wife is home it can be trying. Kids can be crazy.
The idea of watching the two of them all day, every day, gives me a migraine.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Hence the 4 years of paid alimony. If someone doesn't go to school or find a way to get it so they are able to support themselves in four years then that is not the other persons responsibility to support them for the next 40 years.
Eventually people have to learn to take control of their own lives.
And at that point, at the age of 49 and still no actual experience, you believe they'll be able to earn an amount comparable to their former SO?
You do realize that the purpose of alimony isn't to make it so both partners are even after the divorce. The purpose of alimony is to maintain a standard of living for a divorced spouse who is not capable of attaining employment which would suffice in maintaining that standard living.*
A 45 year old is capable of going to school for 4 years to improve their employability.
My main problem is with the idea of Alimony in general to 'support' someone indefinitely. I always thought it should be more like unemployment. You can get it for a while, but eventually your on your own.
*divorcesupport.com
Hence my problem with the idea of alimony in general. It shouldn't be about maintaining the same level. That's kind of the idea of a divorce, is that things change.
And the idea kind of defeats itself anyway.
Lets say a woman marries a Neurosurgeon for 10 years and they get divorce. She is now 'accustomed' to their life style and gets several thousand dollars a month.
So a few months pass and she remarries a wal-mart sacker, which cuts off her alimony. She has married down and now no longer has the life she's 'accustomed' to. So if the purpose of alimony is to keep the person at the same level of comfort shouldn't the neurosurgeon have to keep paying alimony?
If they marry down it's obviously not a concern for them. A person who's still single can decide they no longer want the money if they want too.
"Here is a hundred bucks, go see a doctor for fuck's sake and leave me alone."
If I manage to get the job I want when i finish my PhD, then I will be earning more than he does and at that point things will be reevaluated, especially as we have a plan for him to start working part-time so he can finish his degree.
Even with the separate bank accounts and difference in earnings it is still "our" money, in that all big purchases are discussed between the two of us and we know what each other's finances are. I think we're probably as close to the "independent finances" thing that the OP wants, but at the same time, it would be difficult to split are belongings into "japan's stuff" and "Bob's stuff" as so much of it are things we have bought together, or one of us has bought knowing the other would like it, etc.
As I've already mentioned, no one will ever have to be in this situation.
@ Evil Gummy: As I've also already mentioned, this isn't about gender. My response in H/A was in the context of a specific situation. I am not some sort of woman-hating monster.
Not be a homemaker.
That's thinking outside the box
What are you doing on these forums? You should be out using your keen intellect to fight crime.
"You can't get cancer in your breast, there's no bone there!"
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