Hello all, I am brand new to the forums, so I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere.
I have been married to a wonderful man for almost 10 years who I plan to spend the rest of my life with. However, we are getting hit by the marriage penalty. HARD.
I am a physician, Income ~$220 K, He is an engineer ~$80K
Being married, I bump his entire income into my tax bracket, costing us $20K PER YEAR in extra taxes. If we divorced, we could be saving that money. Possibly even more if I could arrange to pay him child support, deducting that from my income, and adding it to his lower tax bracket. We get health insurance through my work, which also allows "domestic partners" to get health insurance, and could add him as a domestic partner with very little documentation required, so he could stay on my policy if we divorced. Also, if we divorced after our 10 year anniversary, he is still able to claim my level of social security benefits in the future.
We are just coming off of a big-spending high (mostly travel and restaurants) after finally making good money for a few years after years of medical school and residency and are starting to get serious about savings. We own a $230K valued house, with $110 K left in the mortgage (15 year FRM at 2.75%, practically free money). He bikes to work 3-4 out of 5 days. I drive, but I work nights at a busy hospital and am not going to bike those times of day alone as a female. I do live about 5 miles from work though, so the commute isn't bad. We have 2 cars, both bought used, both paid off. 2001 Subaru outback and a 2007 Honda Odyssey. I owe about $58,000 in student loans.
We each max out our 401k plans (17K per year each), and save an additional 15K per year in another account.
We have lots of other opportunities for cutting spending. We spend a lot on the kids, I shop too much, we go out to eat too much, and we certainly travel too much for someone who is not yet financially free. But, we have no TV and no credit card debt or car loans. I KNOW there's lots we could be doing to cut spending under these categories, and we're working on that too, but this big glaring $20K per year seems like easy pickings.
Should I divorce the love of my life in pursuit of financial freedom?