I've been following my DH in his medical career. It has resulted in fewer, less lucrative employment opportunities for myself. He's fine with that.
How do I shake the guilt?
I want to be an equal financial partner. I have trouble spending money on things that could improve my happiness (like a gym membership, or whatever) because I'm not bringing in as much money. I make 25-50% of what he does.
Is anyone else in the same boat?
I make more than twice what my husband does. It's impossible for spouses to be "equal financial partners" in the sense of contributing 50-50 to the household bank accounts unless they work in very similar professions and, assuming they have kids, share childcare equally.
Let me repeat that: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. It's a pipe dream unless you're in the same or similarly lucrative professions, in which case it's a mere possibility but still not necessarily easy or feasible in your particular case even if you DON'T have kids. Two lawyers can do it, as long as they're both the same kind of lawyer (a big-firm lawyer and a prosecutor, however, can't). Two doctors can do it as long as they're similarly specialized--say, an oncologist and a cardiologist--but not an oncologist and a family physician. Two public schoolteachers can do it, but a public schoolteacher and a private school teacher may not be able to.
I could go on and on. All I'm trying to do is help you liberate yourself from the belief that somehow, despite being in a different profession and having made sacrifices in your own career in order to promote hubby's career, you still "should" somehow magically manage to contribute equal amounts of money to the household kitty.
Step back. It's not all about money. You have contributed and will contribute by following DH in his medical career, letting him take opportunities he wanted to take but couldn't have taken if you had been as dedicated to your career as he is to his. You can straight-up quantify how much money you contributed by comparing all his new salaries (after the moves you enable him to make) to his prior salaries. But you don't even need to quantify it because there's also the intangible but profound satisfaction that he presumably will have from being able to have the career he wanted, thanks to your support.
Back to my situation. As I said, I make more than double what my very solvent spouse does, because I have a high-paying law career. And so here's how we divvy up the bills:
we contribute equal TIME, not equal money. Because time is the only real thing, right? I mean, the reason most of us here are so interested in money/financial freedom is because when you're set financially, you can spend your all too limited time on earth doing things you're really interested in, things you really find meaningful and/or fun and/or fulfilling.
So concretely what that means is that if it takes me 4 days' work to pay my portion of the mortgage, it should take him 4 days' work to pay his portion of the mortgage. To make the math easy let's pretend I earn exactly double what he does. Say $100k to his $50k, for $150k/year. And let's say our mortgage, taxes and insurance are $1500/mo. Of that $1500, I pay $1000 and he pays $500... and that way
we are contributing exactly equal amounts of TIME, because the time it takes me to earn $1000 is the same as the time it takes him to earn $500.
So basically what we did is add up all our monthly bills, have me contribute 2/3 of that amount to a joint account, have him contribute 1/3, and pay all our bills from there. Whatever's left is ours to do with as we please, although we tend to use a lot of what's left on joint projects and to count more things as joint expenses than some people would (we factor in our student loans, our vacation costs, our cell phone bills, yada yada, and split them all 2/3-1/3, because all these things are things that are useful or pleasurable to us as a couple... some people might just count their actual joint bills). But the point is, he could join a gym with zero guilt if he wanted to, because he is putting just as much TIME into the household kitty as I am. We are both equal contributors... of time.