The Money Mustache Community
General Discussion => Post-FIRE => Topic started by: Nona on November 02, 2020, 01:14:48 AM
-
Have you noticed any shift (subtle or other) in the balance of power you maintain as a couple? I've heard this happen when women leave the workforce to become stay-at-home moms, but is this the case when the woman FIREs as well?
-
I am a woman but so is my spouse, so I am not sure. But I think the conversation should happen pre retiring what extra responsibilities you are going to take on and you have to have the conversation.
Like My plan is to take care of myself first. Get fit, loose weight, rest, sleep more, learn to fish. Not do more housework. I may cook more though, but I have stated that I will not be doing a ton more housework just because I am retired and my spouse is not. Set expectations. Don’t let your spouse assume anything.
My spouse could retire but chooses to work longer, her choice and not my problem.
-
I'm not sure why it matters if you are a woman or a man. I am a man who retired 6 months before my wife. We normally divide household duties pretty evenly between us, but when I was retired and she was still working, I did all of the cooking and cleaning and home maintenance. She still did the grocery shopping once a week and bill paying once a month (now mostly automated), but that was about it. The kids were on their own by this point, so no child care duties. Once she retired, we reverted to a more equal division of household labor. There was never any issue about power in the relationship. I always earned quite a bit more than she did. Even when she was the only one working, my pension payments exceeded her income. But none of this ever really mattered. Our income was always pooled and we always operated as team when it came to the household finances. I have always been in charge of investing our money but I never make a major move without informing her first.
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
-
I am not retired yet, but I think this is a good question. I'll be retiring before SO, partly because I'm older than he is and partly because I've saved up for it while he has not.
I hope things won't change... I'm planning to still contribute the same amount to the household that I do now, but from investments rather than working income. I'm also planning to work part time for at least a year or so to "ease into it."
But I can definitely see how this could be an issue. I think it depends on what the balance of power is now (before anyone retires) as well.
-
I agree this is a good question and that gender very much matters.
...The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I'm in a similar position to this. It is like shoveling shit up hill. One thing I find helpful is to explicitly separate certain tasks, so we have two laundry baskets and I do my laundry (and vv); we each manage our own families for presents, remembering birthdays etc or it doesn't happen; we each have rooms that we are responsible for cleaning. It makes it easier to spot when I'm lagging on my chores (or conversely, when my SO is lagging) so we don't end up covering for each other and letting the resentment build.
There's more to power than chores though. Did you have anything particular in mind OP?
-
This is an interesting discussion and I’m glad you brought it up. I think about this since I FIREd earlier this heat and my husband is still working for the next (?) months. With three little kids and homeschool and Covid and and and I am pretty much “working” 10-12 hours a day with no reply break except for an hour or two here and there.
I know work is hard because I did it for years, in similar-ish roles and fields so I do get what he is doing. He took full paternity leaves with our last two kids (16 weeks) so he understands what it is like to be at home all day caring for a small child and (sort of) keeping house. It is really helpful that we each understand what the other is doing and value those contributions. That said, the root of the challenge is that I have a much higher standard for what keeping house means and that has caused friction between us since Day 1. We used to solve this with house cleaners but since Covid we haven’t been doing that. I’m at the cusp of deciding to bring them back for my own mental health.
I don’t know what the right balance is now because we have always both worked full time in equally demanding careers so this is the first experience of something other than even split with kids and house. At least it won’t be forever, and once he is also not working, it will damn well go back to something closer to even. :)
-
Agreed, great question. I'm a few years out from FI, but I have been able to sock away a significantly higher amount than my SO despite being in the workforce for less time. We have the same job at the same company with the same salary so things are about as equal as they can get there (at least on paper). He enjoys his job a lot more than I do, and is better adept at dealing with workplace BS than I am, so he will continue to work longer than myself for both his own enjoyment/keeping his mind busy and to save for retirement.
I'd imagine it is a major life shift of having one person of either gender go from working FT to not. I am worried about things from that perspective. A lot of my FI plans have been around travel, at least for the first year or two. Not even "I'm selling everything I own and moving to Thailand" travel, but I have been roughing out some 2-3 month long roadtrips around the US. Even taking a three-week trip is something my SO could only get away with MAYBE once a year, and I'm not sure if that long of a trip really suits him. I think we would both miss each other too much if I took all of these trips on my own. My guess nowadays is I'll end up taking some trips with siblings/friends, and some with him, but I do think in the long run I'll end up fulfilling less of my initial plan (made before I was coupled up). Flip side is now I have an amazing partner and some practical benefits too (I can jump to his health insurance once I quit). Other than travel, I do worry that things will generally feel off balance since we are used to having a very similar routine. I'm worried I might start to feel like too much of a free spirit or directionless or something, where he is more of the stable homebody type. I'm still an introvert that loves to be at home, so that prediction is probably overblown, but I do worry about some kind of rift. I don't think he will harbor any resentment towards me not working since he truly does enjoy his work, but give it 10 years and you never know!
As for chores, we've gotten to a place where I feel that it is pretty even. Since we are managing well I don't expect that to change if I RE/take a few years sabbatical. Now, we don't have kids, and its unknown if we will. In that case I do think there would be a shift where things would be uneven and I am okay with shouldering more responsibilities there. Don't have much else to say there since I haven't experienced it yet.
-
I just celebrated my eighth FIREversary, and DH is still working. I am living the dream, baby. This is kind of a PTF so I can collect my thoughts and deposit them here later.
-
There's more to power than chores though. Did you have anything particular in mind OP?
Yes, though I'm finding it hard to articulate, even to myself. My husband is the farthest thing from a male chauvinist you can imagine, and has done his share of housework (and most of the cooking) through 25 years of marriage and 3 kids. There have been times when he was the primary breadwinner and times when I held that title, though minus shortish periods of maternity leave (mine) and unemployment (his) we always were a 2-income family. I just want to know if this could change once I don't have an "official" job.
I might add that I may have let some disparaging comments my mother-in-law made recently about my husbands' cousins who've FIREd (in their 40s and 50s) get to me. (Yeah, I know).
-
Chores and power aren't the same to me, because I don't really mind housework and I did it all when I was working, anyway. LOL
The "chores" part of my day is done pretty early, and I do whatever I want with my day. I've always managed all the money, from the start, and we've been married 43 years. Dh and I had a sit down this summer when we were moving money around to buy a new house, and he really had no idea where the money was.
-
I might add that I may have let some disparaging comments my mother-in-law made recently about my husbands' cousins who've FIREd (in their 40s and 50s) get to me. (Yeah, I know).
I hear you on the mother-in-law issues!! Mine is continually surprised when I pull her up on "you'll need to ask SO to buy that for you" or "when you're ironing SO's shirts" or "when you're making SO's sandwiches". One one hand she knows that I have a job that pays more than my SO (he's public sector, I'm private), and that I have my financial shit together and don't need to ask for pocket money from any man, but on the other hand she can't not think of my job as a little hobby that I have while my husband is out of the house. Initially my SO was hesitant to pull her up on it, but he understands my POV better now.
Are the cousins women? Did your husband hear or react to it Are you worried primarily about the power dynamics of interacting with other people, or just within the relationship?
I could see it playing out in spending decisions, or the extent to which I'm expected to accommodate his work overtime or free time. We have some issues with the latter during Covid that have taken some working out, and I see them magnifying when I FIRE.
I struggle with the idea of people seeing me as being "kept", or that it undermines my stance on equality if I'm seen to be expecting equal pay at work while demanding that a man pays for everything at home. But I'm not going to avoid FIREing to placate people that I dislike anyway. Super interested to hear from post-FIRE folk.
-
I've considered the idea of early retirement before my spouse if he wants to continue after FI. It's a little easier for me maybe because I got started started in a higher paying field much earlier. Therefore, there will likely be little doubt that I haven't fully "earned" it. Our set up wasn't traditional from day one, so I actually got flack from some for being a working mother. Regardless, if I do retire early, everyone else can kiss my behind.
-
An interesting topic, although my spouse and I have been immune (so far) to any power imbalances. We aren't FIREd yet (5-6 years to go), and I (male) have outearned SO (female) for the past few years. However, recently, that has changed and now SO outearns me in total compensation. I look at this as an advantage and a "score" for the team, though, and not with any sort of mind to shifting power balances. Ultimately, it decreases our working time and makes FIRE happen that much quicker, so it's certainly a positive thing. We approach household tasks equally and generally don't have to plan for household things to get done...both of us tend to be "if we see it needs to get done, it gets done" type of people and I don't think that would change much if one of us stopped working all of a sudden.
-
I haven't noticed that shift at all.
I left my job to be a trailing spouse when DH's work took us overseas. We thought it would be for 2.5 years. nearly ten years later, we finally made it back to the US (about a year and a half ago). That resume gap killed me. I was never a high earner. I made enough that I could have somewhat modestly support myself. Now, even that job probably wouldn't hire me back. I have very half-heartedly (okay, more like 1/8-heartedly) looked a little bit for a job. I've applied to exactly one. I may never work again, or at least not in a full time professional capacity. As it turns out, I may have retired at 35. (I'm 45 now.)
I didn't notice any change in the power dynamic.
I am not a domestic being. Cooking and cleaning are not my thing. At all. But I recognize the equity in my doing most of them, so I do. That's especially true not that my role as wife-of-person-doing-DH's-last-job has ended. That took up 15-20 hours a week, sometimes more. I could have done less, but it felt good to contribute and I had the time. Now? All of my time is my own, so to ask DH to clean the kitchen after he's put in 60 hours of work seems unfair. But he still does some of the cleaning and we cook dinner together many nights. If I ask him to do something, he does. If I don't do it, he generally does. And he does plenty unprompted as well, to be clear.
And it seems like the overall power balance is pretty even.
-
Are the cousins women? Did your husband hear or react to it Are you worried primarily about the power dynamics of interacting with other people, or just within the relationship?
The cousins (two of them) mentioned happen to be men, but the way my MIL reacted to their being "idle" so early in life indicated she'd think the same of a "career woman" like myself. I've spoken about it with my husband afterwards, he agrees that's how she'd respond. He also thinks it's silly for me to care about what his mother thinks.
I struggle with the idea of people seeing me as being "kept", or that it undermines my stance on equality if I'm seen to be expecting equal pay at work while demanding that a man pays for everything at home. But I'm not going to avoid FIREing to placate people that I dislike anyway. Super interested to hear from post-FIRE folk.
You echo my own thoughts (rather, ruminations? Perseverations?) about this :)
-
I've been married 35 years and the chores negotiation went on for many years longer than it should have. ;)
Where we started: We don't have kids, and we both went to school at night while working full time. I was still picking up way more than my share. When he came home, he studied, slept or watched TV. When I came home, I cleaned and picked up.
When either of us have been unemployed, the unemployed person picked up most of the household maintenance.
Where we are now: He retired 6 years ago, I retired last year. When he retired, he picked up most of the household maintenance, outside of bathroom cleaning. I continued with food shopping and cooking. After I retired, I didn't pick up any additional work outside of what I'd always been doing, and instead picked up hobbies and relaxing stuff that he always did along the way. I figure its my time now to enjoy, as he enjoyed the first 25 or so years.
-
Are the cousins women? Did your husband hear or react to it Are you worried primarily about the power dynamics of interacting with other people, or just within the relationship?
The cousins (two of them) mentioned happen to be men, but the way my MIL reacted to their being "idle" so early in life indicated she'd think the same of a "career woman" like myself. I've spoken about it with my husband afterwards, he agrees that's how she'd respond. He also thinks it's silly for me to care about what his mother thinks.
Sure, but it's unpleasant to listen politely to someone criticise you. Would it help if he agreed to back you up on rude comments? Or do you need to manage your visits so that you see less of her? Or does she get a different version of how much you are working in the future? You don't need to justify why you care about it, just acknowledge that you do.
-
I guess DH and I are unicorns? Lol
No power change here. My career has gone through a bunch of changes over our marriage and now I'm fully retired from it. There have never been any power shifts, and truthfully, I can't even wrap my mind around how "power" would play into it.
We both highly value balance and health, so we make pretty much all decisions with that in mind, and we talk, like, a lot, about everything. So feelings, vulnerabilities, ambitions, etc, are all highly transparent.
Chores we balance based on who would be the least burdened by them, spending decisions are 100% collective, and we have no separate money.
We're both serious caregiver types and we don't have kids, so we're each the other's main priority, which means that DH is beyond thrilled that I'm not working because my body seriously needs a break.
As for people commenting about me being "kept"?
Lol, no, the people in my life lean more to admiring me for being able to walk away when that option made the most sense. That said, I'm quite strict about how I'll allow people in my life to talk to me.
People judge the hell out of me, it's unavoidable, I just don't give it much real estate in my world.
You cannot avoid judgement from someone who wants to judge you. It's a function of them trying to exert a sense of power over you, not actually about anything you're doing. That's why you can't avoid it through behaviour, if you dodge one judgement then another one is around the corner.
When it happens, let it piss you off and then move on. It doesn't mean anything about you, it means something about the person judging you.
If this really is about other people judging you, then that's fine, but don't let it make you have doubts about your own marriage and the possible "power" dynamics shift. That's you internalizing someone else's nonsense.
-
. . . .
No power change here. My career has gone through a bunch of changes over our marriage and now I'm fully retired from it. There have never been any power shifts, and truthfully, I can't even wrap my mind around how "power" would play into it.
. . . .
We're both serious caregiver types and we don't have kids, so we're each the other's main priority, which means that DH is beyond thrilled that I'm not working because my body seriously needs a break.
. . .
Just for the sake of conversation and to give an example of how power works and changed in my relationship: our relationship had a power shift when my job became home-based and he was required to be outside of the home. It became easier for him to make decisions and plans that had nothing to do with me.
With the default being him gone and me home, my sphere became the home even though I was working.
I'm not sure how to articulate this clearly but he was/is gone all day because his work requires it and so having coffee hour or dinner to be collegial became an easy yes for him. Conferences or work travel were easier to schedule because I needed to be at home anyway. The power flex is time related, and when I started working from home it became easier for him to use his time however he liked, while I had to schedule my time.
Once we had kids it was all downhill on the "time" balance because I work from home, which made it more efficient for me to deal with pick-ups, drop-offs, emergency calls, and everything else. (And obviously COVID has compounded that further).
But- we have children, which statistically unbalances even previously "balanced" marriages. So there's that. And I am a caregiver type, and DH is not - so we've worked on that balance our entire marriage.
We continue to discuss and work on this constantly because his default world is set up in such a way that he is pretty autonomous and I am not.
-
I promised I'd be back, and like a bad penny...I've turned up again.
I'm not sure what kind of information you're looking for, so this will probably end up being a random ramble. Hopefully something will prove useful.
With apologies to those who have read chunks of this story before...
DH and I married late in life. He was a recent-ish widower and I had never married. We were both in our 50's and he had two young adult children. Soon after we wed, my company instituted some obnoxious 24/7 tracking technology and at his suggestion, I "retired".
He had somewhat more in invested assets, and I had more in real estate. Overall, our net worths were pretty close. Not long afterward, his dad died and we realized his mom was not okay. We sold both or our houses, paid cash for a single story clown house together, and moved his mom and her pal, Al Z. Heimer, and DH's college-age son in with us. (Don't worry DPOYM-ers, our rentals all have mortgages, lol.)
After a few months, DH suggested that I had my hands full enough with his mom, and suggested we hire house cleaners. While my single self never would have spent the money, my married self was very pleased with the arrangement, which continues to this day, except for a long Covid break.
Not long after we married, DH asked if he could take over the bill paying. His wife was a bookkeeper and when she died, he had no idea about anything, which led to some pain-in-the ass bill payment situations (fuck you, AT&T). He's done an excellent job at this, so I'm happy I relinquished this task. We've also gone from one to three rental properties and he takes care of managing them, which I love.
I have complete access to our accounts and he never questions anything I spend. Except...well, I'll get to that in a minute.
He loves his job, and has almost earned a very generous Defined Benefit Pension, so it has been worth it for him to continue being employed. He walks to his office and works four tens, so every weekend is a three day weekend. He jokes that he goes work to relax.
As of last December, his mom no longer lives with us. In March, we bought an RV, just prior to the Covid Shelter in Place. This means I have a lot of newfound freedom, but most of my regular activities are suspended, and we're not really free to travel extensively, so we've kind of just bobbed along. I've had no difficulty finding activities to fill my days (cough*multiple campaign volunteer*cough) that do not include Swedish Death Cleaning and I have Kon-Maried nothing.
Despite all the insanity around us, life is good. I am endlessly happy not to be in my former industry and have never once regretted leaving the world of the employed. My life looks nothing like what I had planned in my pre-FIRE journey, but it is full and rich and good. I recommend FIRE to everyone. Yes, it's true that mid-fifties isn't exactly "early", but in our HCOLA, it's not exactly easy to do, especially for a single girl who had her eye on early retirement long before it was called FIRE and who also understands the importance of stopping to smell life's roses along the way.
That's the end of my ramble, except for the "except" part.
DH was raised by wolves parents who taught him nothing of philanthropy. He struggled with my charitable giving, not so much my donating time and effort, but of my donating "our" money. Small amounts were no problem, but amounts with commas were harder for him to wrap his head around. He didn't really question me, but I could tell he didn't completely get my spending in this area.
When I inherited a nice sum from my parent's modest estate, I started a Donor Advised Fund with about a third of it. (Because this is a forum about money, one third is still in 401k's that have tax consequences, and the other third I knowingly dumped into our joint savings/investing account.) At first, it bugged him a little bit, because he compared the amount I "spent" on the DAF to his annual income. It took him a while to get comfortable with that. Now, he can see that the DAF money has continued to earn money, even as I give it away (but only when I make him look show it to him, because I think it's so amazing that it does that). It has also made my giving less visible, which helps. Don't get me wrong, he willingly participates in a number of my volunteer shenanigans and is incredibly generous with his skills, knowledge and time; it was the giving away of hard-earned income that he was completely unaccustomed to. He's pretty much there now, which makes my heart happy.
The above may be a weird, rambling response, and my life is certainly not what I planned for so many years, but every internal struggle to save a dollar and plan for the future proved to be 100% worth the effort, even if I never get to Holland. I hope something here proves useful to someone. That's why I still hang around here 8-)
-
Thanks both @StarBright and @Dicey for your thoughtful comments.
StarBright really articulated something that I was failing to find words for. There's a power imbalance when my SO can come back from work any time and expect me to be home and free to start whatever joint activity we'd planned for the evening, or when he will schedule a delivery or service and expect me to arrange my time to be home.
Dicey, were you genuinely okay with being the one to look after his mom? I understand that this is different for everyone and that crappy, challenging illnesses demand attention. I am not a natural caretaker and have no interest in assuming this role if/when our parents need help. I'd go back to work to fund care before doing it myself and I have no time at all for people who see a woman not working and assume this shit is mine to deal with. You sound awesome for stepping up to this, but was it out of obligation or choice?
-
That expectation to be home all the time is definitely recognizable! I've been 100% WFH since March, my partner still works outside the home. He buys and sells certain vintage items as a side hustle. Before we'd always plan around deliveries and now he doesn't even inform me beforehand that a parcel will be arriving. Literally 5 minutes ago there was an unexpected knock on the door and it was a delivery guy. It's 11am here and I was dressed but I looked like a mess, my hair is still in the ponytail I put it in last night before I went to bed.
Well, my grandma, who was a fantastic homemaker, would have said 'that's why you get dressed from head to toe, including shoes and lipstick, every morning as soon as you wake up!'.
I have always done more around the house because I care about it more (his cleaning standards are much lower) but now it's tempting to spend even more time on the home because I'm there and not very busy with work. I am starting to feel more and more like a homemaker, which was never my ambition.
-
Well, my grandma, who was a fantastic homemaker, would have said 'that's why you get dressed from head to to, including shoes and lipstick, every morning as soon as you wake up!'.
I'm so pleased that worked for your grandma. I'm way too lazy to do that.
I am starting to feel more and more like a homemaker, which was never my ambition.
So much this.
-
That resonates with me also. I am currently pretending in the role of homemaker, complete with homeschooling (“distance learning my arse”) and a baby underfoot.
It is something I always knew I didn’t want to do, so I’d rather ironic that so far it is how I am spending my time in fire.
-
Thanks both @StarBright and @Dicey for your thoughtful comments.
StarBright really articulated something that I was failing to find words for. There's a power imbalance when my SO can come back from work any time and expect me to be home and free to start whatever joint activity we'd planned for the evening, or when he will schedule a delivery or service and expect me to arrange my time to be home.
Dicey, were you genuinely okay with being the one to look after his mom? I understand that this is different for everyone and that crappy, challenging illnesses demand attention. I am not a natural caretaker and have no interest in assuming this role if/when our parents need help. I'd go back to work to fund care before doing it myself and I have no time at all for people who see a woman not working and assume this shit is mine to deal with. You sound awesome for stepping up to this, but was it out of obligation or choice?
I'm going to give this more thought, but for now, my answers are I'm not a natural caretaker either. As far as people w/ALZ go, MIL was fairly easy. She was mobile, continent, and physically quite healthy, which helped immeasurably. DH works nearby, which was a source of comfort, but seldom needed. Bonus Kid is an adult. He also lives with us, so his presence gave us a good deal of flexibility. My career work was hard. I joke that one little old lady who can't remember if she's eaten breakfast was a lot easier to deal with than 100 always demanding and frequently legitimately pissed off customers.
There was also family financial assistance, because I insisted that we would not do this (specifically buying and running the clown house) if it caused us one iota of financial stress. MIL has significant resources, but we were concerned about how long she would need them to last. By delaying asset drawdown for over six years, we are confident that she won't run out of funds, even though the cost of her care has now increased significantly. The money we received for her care was a combination of her spousal SS and a small pension, with covered the cost of the property taxes on the new home, the utilities, with a little extra for groceries. We used one of her credit cards for her medical and incidental bills. BIL handles all of her financials, even though DH has full access as co-executor. We took care of her, he managed her money. It was the best distribution of responsibility for our situation.
It was most definitely a choice, but kind of an obvious one, IMO, because DH and I were the only reasonable candidates. It was 100% my decision. DH did not pressure me. I know in my heart of hearts that what we did was the right thing, even if things weren't always perfect. Our little team was better than any care we could have hired.
Whew! And that's the "short" answer.
P.S. I 100% could not have done this for my own mother. Our personalities did not mesh. After a lifetime of dealing with my mom, my MIL was a comparative breeze.
-
Question for those who describe spouses not respecting at-home hours:
What do all of your spouses say when you tell them you don't appreciate your at-home time being taken for granted that way?
I'm curious, because DH and I had this happen except reversed when he was working from home and I was going into the office. I organized a bunch of things just assuming he would be home and he then asked me not to do that because he's moved into a work phase where he has a lot of Zoom meetings and phone calls. He had just been doing research before so I didn't think of it.
I apologized for inconveniencing him and started coordinating with him if I needed something done or dropped off while he's home working.
First, I don't see my original behaviour as having anything to do with a "power" dynamic, and second, when he brought up his objections, I just listened to him and adjusted my behaviour appropriately.
Are your requests for more respect for your at-home hours just being flatly rejected?
-
I intend to be home, but not all the time and certainly not a "housewife" (my kids are old enough to manage on their own and even help clean the house, a chore I seriously suck at). So far I have a morning off in my current work schedule, but it's not a given I'll be home all morning and DH will ask if he wants to schedule a repairman or have a package delivered. I hope that doesn't change with FIRE.
This thread really clarifies to me that we need to discuss this ahead of time and I also need to be less concerned about what outsiders (e.g., MIL and various friends) think. I'm very grateful to you all!
-
Thanks both @StarBright and @Dicey for your thoughtful comments.
StarBright really articulated something that I was failing to find words for. There's a power imbalance when my SO can come back from work any time and expect me to be home and free to start whatever joint activity we'd planned for the evening, or when he will schedule a delivery or service and expect me to arrange my time to be home.
Dicey, were you genuinely okay with being the one to look after his mom? I understand that this is different for everyone and that crappy, challenging illnesses demand attention. I am not a natural caretaker and have no interest in assuming this role if/when our parents need help. I'd go back to work to fund care before doing it myself and I have no time at all for people who see a woman not working and assume this shit is mine to deal with. You sound awesome for stepping up to this, but was it out of obligation or choice?
This doesn't happen in our home. If I want to go out and do something or have to be somewhere, I do it. If he comes home from work and I'm not hope (though that pretty much never happens now that Covid means I rarely go anywhere), so be it. If I'm not going to be home for dinner, I do let him know ahead of time so he knows to make his own plans for the meal. None of that has changed from when I worked full time. We communicate as a courtesy to one another, but he doesn't just expect me to be around and available around his whims.
If I worker needs to be arranged, I am generally the one to take care of that. I consider that part of my contribution to our house. But he would never just schedule and ten tell me I need to be home from 10-2 next Tuesday. He runs it by me and plans around whatever I have planned, or asks if I'd prefer to call to schedule.
I think the larger point is that whether or not there is a power imbalance really depends on the individuals involved, but also the communication. If my DH was doing the things you mention, that wouldn't be okay. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was just an oversight that he didn't consider how those behaviors might affect me, and I'd just let him know that going forward, I would appreciate it if he worked with me *before* scheduling deliveries, or let him know that I have plans--both social and household related--and that means sometimes I won't be home when he gets home, or available when he wants to do something.
If he wasn't on the same page, that would be a meaningful problem that would require many conversations and compromise on both parts.
Since the OP is asking this in mostly a "looking ahead" way, I thin these things can be added to lists of things to discuss with the spouse before the resignation letter is submitted, to make sure everyone has the same expectations. For me, it is entirely reasonable and fair that I do more of the house stuff. That's my "work" while he is at a paying job. But it's not reasonable that I do 100% of them, and it's not reasonable that suddenly my time is entirely at his disposal outside of his working hours.
-
When I retired I insisted that DH retire as well. I didn’t want to be subject to snide comments such as “it must be nice to be able to lay around on the sofa all day “ if I wanted to lay around on the sofa all day.
It was a good decision.
-
In January DH is officially employed again, while I am not, and first then I will be in the situation this thread is asking about. DH plans to FIRE again pretty soon after, but he is hoping for a goodbye package.
So far with both of us free this year, each of us has cooked more or less every alternate day. Exception is when I am in a cooking phase where I suddenly want to try out lots of dishes, then I do more cooking voluntarily.
For cleaning, my treshold for cleaning is usually lower. And after I cleaned it is usually cleaner. Often when I clean, DH starts helping and cleans something else. Or otherwise I kindly ask if he wants to do some cleaning later. But he has managed to "clean" the bathroom without cleaning dust from the sink, which is my indicator to that the bathrooms needs cleaning. So I rather do the bathroom myself and him for example the floor in the living room. Sometimes he starts cleaning by himself and then I help him.
The strange thing is that DH used to be a perfectionist in many DIY projects. But for cleaning he doesn't show the same standards. Except for when we cleaned the house for selling it.
-
Are your requests for more respect for your at-home hours just being flatly rejected?
Not rejected. Spouse is usually quite apologetic and strives to make changes. They just don't last. That is why I say it takes constant communication and it really does feel like a Sisyphean task sometimes.
I suspect it is a combination of home just being out of sight, out of mind, our different personalities, and child rearing of elementary aged children. But based on many, many people of my acquaintance, we aren't really outliers. So I do feel it is worth talking about the potential pitfalls of one spouse leaving the work force early.
When I retired I insisted that DH retire as well. I didn’t want to be subject to snide comments such as “it must be nice to be able to lay around on the sofa all day “ if I wanted to lay around on the sofa all day.
It was a good decision.
^ My mother is a teacher and my dad is so annoyed every summer when she is "off" work. I used to be so mad at him when he would complain about my mother relaxing. I then married a person who decided to go into teaching and I find myself also getting upset when he isn't using his summer time in a way that I feel is productive. Human nature to just be jealous probably?
Now I want to be done working but my husband isn't interested because he is finally in the job that he has worked towards for the last decade and is within spitting distance of tenure. But he is uncomfortable with the idea of my not being productive (he tries to be supportive, but is uncomfortable with it).
I think both retiring at the same time, or both continuing to work can make a lot of sense, especially if you don't want to have to constantly negotiate everything about differing stances on it.
-
Are your requests for more respect for your at-home hours just being flatly rejected?
Not rejected. Spouse is usually quite apologetic and strives to make changes. They just don't last. That is why I say it takes constant communication and it really does feel like a Sisyphean task sometimes.
I suspect it is a combination of home just being out of sight, out of mind, our different personalities, and child rearing of elementary aged children. But based on many, many people of my acquaintance, we aren't really outliers. So I do feel it is worth talking about the potential pitfalls of one spouse leaving the work force early.
I'm not questioning the validity of the conversation, I'm taking an interest because I don't understand.
-
Are your requests for more respect for your at-home hours just being flatly rejected?
Not rejected. Spouse is usually quite apologetic and strives to make changes. They just don't last. That is why I say it takes constant communication and it really does feel like a Sisyphean task sometimes.
I suspect it is a combination of home just being out of sight, out of mind, our different personalities, and child rearing of elementary aged children. But based on many, many people of my acquaintance, we aren't really outliers. So I do feel it is worth talking about the potential pitfalls of one spouse leaving the work force early.
I'm not questioning the validity of the conversation, I'm taking an interest because I don't understand.
Roger that! :) Just sort of weird to talk about because I think my spouse is great, but this is also a thing that comes up over and over for us so I'm sort of trying to contextualize it without sounding too negative?
-
Are your requests for more respect for your at-home hours just being flatly rejected?
Not rejected. Spouse is usually quite apologetic and strives to make changes. They just don't last. That is why I say it takes constant communication and it really does feel like a Sisyphean task sometimes.
I suspect it is a combination of home just being out of sight, out of mind, our different personalities, and child rearing of elementary aged children. But based on many, many people of my acquaintance, we aren't really outliers. So I do feel it is worth talking about the potential pitfalls of one spouse leaving the work force early.
I'm not questioning the validity of the conversation, I'm taking an interest because I don't understand.
Roger that! :) Just sort of weird to talk about because I think my spouse is great, but this is also a thing that comes up over and over for us so I'm sort of trying to contextualize it without sounding too negative?
I get it, even the very best marriages have faults and in the good marriages, those are the faults that we can handle, but the faults in other's marriages would be intolerable. It doesn't make one marriage's faults any worse or better than another, just different, different thresholds for different challenges.
No marriage is perfect, even the very best, very happiest ones, and there's nothing wrong with being aware of and observing those imperfections, as long as you accept that it's okay to have some.
-
I work in the office and my spouse works at home for pandemic reasons, sometimes with the kids doing school at home. Neither of us have unscheduled time, frankly, due to the kids, and I never makes plans after work that weren't either scheduled in advanced or, once in a blue moon, an event that I forgot to put on the calendar. My spouse is quick to point out that I'm not the one stuck at home all day if I start to get over scheduled. But as a working mom, I've always felt the need to be at home as much as possible, primarily due to societal pressure that's always on moms.
My spouse does more kid related work during the week, but I'm the cruise director - scheduler, planner, financier, etc. So I'd guess that my household related work is actually more time consuming. It's a division of labor issue more than anything.
-
Ptf
-
I can’t think of any time, ever, when my dh has arranged something in the expectation that I would be home, because he has never, ever arranged anything that had to do with the house.
-
I can’t think of any time, ever, when my dh has arranged something in the expectation that I would be home, because he has never, ever arranged anything that had to do with the house.
Interesting, why? It's the same in my house, partly because I'm home less but have more flexibility in my schedule than my spouse. But mostly because I have a better feeling for projecting household related obligations and longer-term plans. I've always wondered if I'm enabling that dynamic or if I've taken it over for good reason.
-
I'm posting to follow, as I plan to semi-retire in January, and my OH will still be working full time.
We've talked about this and haven't really come to very firm solutions. When I first talked about REing OH was worried that I was doing it for childcare reasons and would miss my job. Now we've talked that through and I've made it clear that I am burned out from my job (and also I am carrying on part time, so keeping one toe in the water for now at least) I think he's relaxed, but the practicalities are still a bit unclear.
I think we will just need to feel our way. We have agreed in principle that because I will end up doing a lot of kid errands (school drop-offs and pick ups) he will pay a bit more towards school fees - but we haven't agreed a number (and I am doing this because I am burnt out and need a change, not because it is necessarily the most cost-efficient way to deal with childcare issues).
As a PP said I think I will feel guilty not picking up a bit more of the home work if I'm at home more often. Plus to be honest our current state of disorganisation bothers me much more than it bothers my OH - and will bother me even more when I'm home more I'm sure. I am itching to get rid of a lot of stuff and sort things out. I did it on my maternity leaves and although it's not exactly "me" as a one-off project every few years I enjoy it and find the benefits keep flowing for quite a long time.
I'm not worried that OH won't pull his weight because he's the kind of person who really struggles to sit down and relax. He always has to be doing something useful. I'm the opposite extreme - find it very hard to change tracks, so very difficult to start a new task, but then when I'm on it I will do it to a very high (arguably obsessive) standard and will keep going until it is done. I actually think we work OK as a team: I am there to force him to relax sometimes and to finish what he starts, and he can get me started on things I am prevaricating about and make appreciative noises about my thoroughness!
But the dynamics of our household will change for sure. I will get more time with the kids, and will care more about the house. It's possible I will get frustrated with picking up more chores. It's possible he will feel jealous of my free time (although with kids there won't be that much of it, and as I said, he is not really the kind of person who knows what to do with free time anyway: he could also FIRE if he wanted to but he has no idea what he would do with his time).
It's nothing that would put me off my FI-semi-RE plans, but definitely something I think we will have to keep an eye on, and will probably be a bit bumpy at times, as any big change tends to be... super interesting for me to see how everyone else on the thread is handling these imbalances, and the challenges they've had!
-
For dividing up all the household labor -- both visible and invisible -- this book about a system to get all the expectations out on the table and negotiate who does what is a good read: Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
https://smile.amazon.com/Fair-Play-Game-Changing-Solution-When/dp/0525541934/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Fair+Play&qid=1605070064&sr=8-1 (https://smile.amazon.com/Fair-Play-Game-Changing-Solution-When/dp/0525541934/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Fair+Play&qid=1605070064&sr=8-1)
-
I was married before and when I met my wife of 23 years now and have 4 kids she Had a descent job and I had my own business. She worked her butt off raising the kids but I was home every night and we always had dinner other than when the kids got older and sports go in the way. Then as the kids got older she came to work for me which really was us at the time and was my in house accountant. Then I started really hating my business and worked more remotely from work managing things as I just hated the office and dealing with peoples shit and she actually took on a bigger role herself managing people so I did more around the house.
Finally I walked in and said enough and walked away from the business and we retired together and she worked for my/our company for 16 of the 25 years plus I had it as well as some other smaller businesses.
So after a year and a half i guess now with the new election around 2016 we were concerned about Healthcare so I took a job and while they paid me good I gave them the finger after 3 months. Just more of what I was dealing with from my own business but less money and for someone else which just proved I need to be retired. So she went and got a job and she fell in love with it. So I have been fired now 5.5 years and she has been working the last 3 give or take. I take care of all the needs of the house, I make dinner at least 5 days a week, run kids around and so on. She still says all the time " I want to work and do this for the family because you put us in a good position" and while that made me feel guilty for the longest time because i was the bread winner I just dont understand the power struggle or other things going on mentioned. We have our issues but its usually disagreements about kids and how were going to help them as they range from 15-22. Weekends If were not busy I am usually busting my butt outside on the house or projects and she is going bonkers in the house. If she makes dinner I always say thank you and the nights I do she always does. She appreciated me being fired as we get shit done and I appreciate what she is doing adding a layer of protection with Healthcare but I do remind her often while appreciated quit anytime but fortunately she loves what she's doing. Actually our biggest problem would be I am an OCD neat freak and she is a hoarder! haha.. Anyhow its a partnership and like i said while we have our issues as does any marriage more times than not we appreciate each other and while we don't talk a lot about marital things and maybe take some things for granted we do talk about balance freely and I feel no more Manly guilt and in fact it works great because we do communicate about this part of our marriage on going as it plays into our future plans together. I don't know if that helps at all but if I felt or she felt some of the things that are being mentioned I would hope it would be talked about.
-
Communication, communication, communication. This does not seem to me to be a gender problem or a power problem but the-relationship-skill-of-communication problem.
My wife's still on the job (Coast Fire), whereas I FIREd in 2019. I took on all non-work responsibilities for a while, but we kept talking and tinkering because the volume was keeping me from my passion, writing. We just kept talking and adjusting the allocation until we got it right.
One other thought to share. When it comes to dividing responsibilities at any time in a relationship (pre-FIRE, Coast Fire, one partner has FIREd, post FIRE), there is something to be said for identifying both preference and competency. My wife grew up fixing everything around the house with her father. She enjoys it and she's great at it. So, she takes the lead on fixing things, and I act as her apprentice when she needs an extra set of hands. I used to negotiate for a living, and I take the lead on any task that borders on negotiation. My wife likes to scrub the bathroom (weird right?), whereas I like doing laundry (yep, laundry). We both like to cook and split that up or often work together. The list goes on, but you get the point. Said another way, there's no right way to divide responsibilities, as long as both partners agree that the division is equitable.
If you are having problems communicating about this with your partner, a good exercise is for both of you to engage in a thought experiment. In it you both image yourself as your partner living a life where you are only a supporting character in the story of your partner's life. If done honestly, this is a very disarming way to humanize your partner and look more objectively at your own behaviors.
-
My husband mostly- FIRED in his early 40s (he'd do occassional consulting that was so irregular it couldn't be counted on) and I am still working 20 years later. I wouldn't say that it effected the power balance of our relationship. But I would say it put some stress on our marriage. There were times that I resented having to be the "responsible one". I fully realize now in hind site that some of this was self inflicted. We had a decent stash in the bank and our house was paid off. BUT, I don't like to stress about money and I don't like to dip into savings for regular living expenses. Irregular incomes didn't work for me. (I'm talking 2 years +without a gig). But mostly, we needed health insurance. This was prior to the ACA and even if it wasn't, I personally would have a moral aversion as an able bodied person to collecting it. Just my 2 cents and a heads up.
-
My wife and I started dating when she was 18 and I was 23. We’re now 27 and 32, been married about 5 years.
When we met, she was just finishing high school and a couple months after I started doing contract work and moving frequently all over the country. She came and moved with me, and rarely worked. I think she worked with me for about 4 months in 2015, and that was about it.
Many people in my field do “long distance” relationships, but that just seems miserable with me so she’s always came with and we live off my single income.
If she were to work now, she’d “maybe” earn about 10% of my income, so it’s hardly worthwhile. In turn, she does all the cooking, cleaning, errands, etc. I work 55-60 hrs a week so she has plenty of time to do all the “home” stuff, plus work out a lot, knit, see friends, etc. Then, when I’m not working, it’s nearly 100% “free time” since she handles everything else.
I would say that if you were to look at it as a “power” level (which I hate even thinking about it like that) our personalities are just complete opposites so it would naturally seem like I have more “power” since I’m very direct, anxious, and aggressive. She is very laid back, and avoids any type of confrontation.
Aside from that, we are identical in hobbies. We lift weights together, camp together, travel together, and enjoy all the same foods and movies.
Again, I don’t like the term “power” because I think we would both be devastated to not be together, but in some different ways.
-
This is a very interested question. We started talking about retirement, finances, dreams about 6 months into our relationship. Well, I guess we both felt comfortable with each other and things were serious. I'm 39 he's almost 45 and we've been together almost 2 years now. Plan to marry or commitment ceremony once covid regulations are closer to the olden times (read: not until 2022 at least I'm guessing).
When we first started dating he made almost 7 times what I was making (granted, I was making very small, definitely poverty level money). By the end of year 1 I'd gotten my year's earning up to close to half of his income, and saved 1/3 of it. Then my partner couldn't take his job anymore, quit end of Feb. Right before the pandemic. Whoops! He is still unemployed, made a little with doing delivery apps, but he hasn't done it the whole time since it's stressful and meh often. Meanwhile, one of my careers (music) mostly shut down, but my other (acupuncture) I now am working more than ever. So the breadwinner at probably $50-55k end of year. Already he definitely seems like he feels bad even though I am happy to pay for things, he won't let me contribute too much to household expenses, he says they are his responsibility (do pay 1/2 utils, and a small portion of "rent" towards his mortgage. It's not a lot) Luckily we are both frugal and he has savings, so he's managing, hasn't dipped into emergency fund bc of the delivery apps. I'd say I contribute more on the food side but I'm a snob about what I eat and do most of the cooking, bc I like it. He has really been anxious about not being the main provider and about not having a 9-5 type schedule, so unsure how he would really react if FIREd or if I was.
I am concerned about the future which I think I could potentially reach FIRE (probs real leanFIRE for y'all) in 5 years if saving at my current rate, and similar income. I want to get back to long distance hiking and music making, and not a steady acupuncture gig. I plan to do some work (some of which will be passive- tradelines) but travel is 100% part of what I plan to do. I've gone on a few 1-2 week things since we've been together and particularly for those that were hikes he's been very, very supportive. I just feel a bit bad to not share with him. He says he would want to reach FIRE on his own, his number (which I think is too high based on what I've actually seen him spend in life) is 4 times mine. I guess it's all in the future and we will see, any place I get to with my finances will be benefit to both in any case.
-
My DH is still working and I've now been FIREd for almost 2.5 years. And I say congratulations for asking a good question and it's a good sign that you are asking - that probably means that y'all will be thoughtful about it and work hard with each other. Undoubtedly, in a hetero relationship, I would advise the woman to be very careful around this because, while the FIRE population might be different, there's no question that in genpop, women do a disproportionate amount of home and childcare, even when all parties *think* they are pretty equal, and it's only gotten worse with COVID. But for those of us that think and work on it, and are used to defying societal norms, I think it's also rather easy to escape the unfair norms.
In my case, I was very concerned 1) about my partner being judgmental about me being a lot less productive (which was, after all, a big part of my goal in FIREing!) and 2) that I'd end up taking a lot more housework on just for practical reasons (as well as guilt on my part and the desire to free up his time so we could use our limited together time more effectively!). What I did not worry about, but now sometimes think about when I take other people's perspective is how much I look like a housewife to outsiders, which I really, really hate.
In fact, I used to make like 2-3x DH's salary (lawyer's at BigLaw firms get paid ridiculous amounts), and I retired strictly on my own money. We don't share at all. But of course people don't know that, and he has a pretty presitigious job so some people that are like acquaintances, etc. probably think that I'm just coasting on his money. That really chaps my hide, as it is so important to me that I did this on my own and I'm not riding his coattails. So yes, as people have said on this thread, I shouldn't care what other people think, but power can also be perceived from outside, and I'm a little bit devastated that young girls and boys could perceive us as just fulfilling some stereotypical gender roles, vs. me taking my own power and using it to make my own choices. But, whatever, I can't solve everything.
As for within and between ourselves, we did talk before I FIREd about this idea that it would be efficient for me to do more housework, so that when he had time off (and he does work 55-60 hours per week) we could spend it together more effectively. He was pretty insistent that I shouldn't take on more work, which I appreciated. The philosophy was exactly right. I was just worried the practical day-to-day would be different (as happens in most relationships - the couple wants to and thinks they share duties equally but in reality, guess who does more?). But in fact it hasn't been a problem, partly because I've been volunteering a similar number of hours per week as he works most of the 2.5 years and partly because I don't feel guilty at all about not doing more and letting him use his weekend time to do his chores. Yay! This was something I was happy to discover about myself. So I think the upshot here is that discussing it ahead of time is valuable and important, and then you also have to see how you actually operate in real time when the situation comes to pass, and may need to revisit and adjust from there.
He is also good about not being judge-y. This is where I feel like the most risk can be. It takes a good person not to be judge-y about another person, especially if they are not working as hard as you are, even if they "earned that right." I don't know if I can say I would be as good a person. But luckily, my DH has been. He'll be put to the test more in the coming months and years as my volunteer obligations scale back, so we shall see. But I do know him to be very un-judge-y in general and he seems like he's on a good track right now.
But just to be clear, we definitely talked a lot ahead of time that the *principle* at least was that I was not retiring to become his housewife and I was doing this for my own reasons and to the extent I might choose to do additional household work or what have you, it would be strictly because it was on my own whim at that time, and not because of any dynamic between us. And that seems like a really good place to land vis a vis the disctinction between power and housework. If I do more, it's because I've flexed my power to decide to, not because I have diminished power and am expected to.
-
My DH is still working and I've now been FIREd for almost 2.5 years. And I say congratulations for asking a good question and it's a good sign that you are asking - that probably means that y'all will be thoughtful about it and work hard with each other. Undoubtedly, in a hetero relationship, I would advise the woman to be very careful around this because, while the FIRE population might be different, there's no question that in genpop, women do a disproportionate amount of home and childcare, even when all parties *think* they are pretty equal, and it's only gotten worse with COVID. But for those of us that think and work on it, and are used to defying societal norms, I think it's also rather easy to escape the unfair norms.
I loved your whole post @sui generis - this bit particularly resonated with me. Both time-use studies and anecdotes tell me that it's really common for men in a hetero relationship to think that they are doing a fair share, while women spend far more time and energy doing and managing the household and childcare chores. Something that often gets missed is the effort of planning, scheduling and assigning the chores: the difference between adding the sunscreen to the basket and monitoring the sunscreen in the house, knowing how fast it is normally used, forecasting that the kids will need plenty for the pool party they have at the weekend, adding it to the shopping list and reminding the designated shopper to go before the weekend. It's different for all relationships, but it's really important for both men and women to be aware of the trend and the potential for blindspots.
-
My feathers are mostly grown out & I'm sitting on the edge of the nest waiting for the right wind or something, the future of health insurance mostly, but my (male) partner is still years off. Sorting out how to maintain the right expectations about how I use my time (I paid for it, point-blank) feels easier than the finances post-FIRE. I want to move away from the HCOL neighborhood I live in for work & I want to keep entirely separate finances until there's more parity, but how does that work without renting? Owning is the cheaper choice where I'd like to move. On the one hand charging rent to a partner feels wrong, & maybe legally risky. On the other he wants significantly more house than I would alone.
I'm also perturbed by the specter of being seen as a kept woman, but that's probably to be blamed on an upbringing that one should be "grateful" to financial providers ... in the form of exempting them from all other accountability. I hope it's an irrelevant fear, but especially in event of a rupture I don't want to have to explain to anyone that I'm FI just to be seen as 'deserving' of the free time & assets they'd otherwise think he was paying for. Though they pretend otherwise people here still think a woman's fortunes rise & fall with their romances. My plan was to be vague about the relationship of my productive hobbies to compensation & let people think I'm gainfully working at something, whether or not it's true at the time.
-
I will be working for only another year. DH will work for another 7-8 years. I've already had several conversations with him about expectations b/c I don't want any resentments or surprises (or as minimal as possible). We've been pretty detailed about what additional family tasks I will take on and what he will continue to do. We've also had conversations around how I plan to spend my time, I don't want to fall into a place where I am expected (unintentionally) to be 'on-call' for everything. They have been very good conversations and we will likely see a family counselor for a few months during the transition just to keep comms open. Good luck! I'd love to hear about your transition.
-
My feathers are mostly grown out & I'm sitting on the edge of the nest waiting for the right wind or something, the future of health insurance mostly, but my (male) partner is still years off. Sorting out how to maintain the right expectations about how I use my time (I paid for it, point-blank) feels easier than the finances post-FIRE. I want to move away from the HCOL neighborhood I live in for work & I want to keep entirely separate finances until there's more parity, but how does that work without renting? Owning is the cheaper choice where I'd like to move. On the one hand charging rent to a partner feels wrong, & maybe legally risky. On the other he wants significantly more house than I would alone.
I'm also perturbed by the specter of being seen as a kept woman, but that's probably to be blamed on an upbringing that one should be "grateful" to financial providers ... in the form of exempting them from all other accountability. I hope it's an irrelevant fear, but especially in event of a rupture I don't want to have to explain to anyone that I'm FI just to be seen as 'deserving' of the free time & assets they'd otherwise think he was paying for. Though they pretend otherwise people here still think a woman's fortunes rise & fall with their romances. My plan was to be vague about the relationship of my productive hobbies to compensation & let people think I'm gainfully working at something, whether or not it's true at the time.
Re: renting vs owning
Well first, I'm going to assume you're not married. For non married couples where I live, it's very normal for one home owning partner to collect rent from the other. There should be no legal issues with this, but it's still always good to consult a lawyer and draw up whatever agreement the two of you feel is fair.
That agreement could be that he is a traditional tenant of yours and entitled to no equity, or you could agree to an equity payout in the event of a split. This can be arranged either as the two of you co-owning, or it can be arranged where he has no actual claim to the house, but you make a separate financial agreement that you will pay out the equivalent of his share of equity. This way it's always your house and if he becomes an ex, has no say over whether or not to sell.
As for size of house, that's going to have to be a compromise regardless of whether you buy or rent. But yeah, if you two are substantially at odds on this and cannot find a home you are both very happy with, then even if it's expensive, consider sticking with renting so that you never end up with a house you don't want to own.
You're right though, the financial aspects of a relationship can be incredibly challenging if the two people aren't on the same page in terms of priorities. It requires A LOT of communication about tricky negotiations. Hopefully the house size is your only significant sticking point, but that's a substantial one that I've seen a lot of couples grapple with.
As for being seen as a kept woman, the only thing I can say is that absolutely everyone walks around every day being judged by misperceptions about themselves. You do it to, you make countless assumptions about everyone you know that are probably grossly inaccurate, and some of them very hurtful.
Whenever I start feeling bent out of shape that people who don't know me well might assume uncomfortable things about me, I try to remember that I unintentionally think all sorts of hurtful things about others that I'm not even remotely aware are hurtful.
When I remind myself that I do it too, it's easier to not take it personally, because I in no way mean it to be hurtful to anyone. It's not malicious, it's simply cognitive efficiency, we fill in the blanks of what we don't know about people until and unless we are given specific evidence to contradict it.
I assumed for years that my friend's girlfriend didn't like me because she never accepted an invite and often seemed to sabotage my friend coming over, or would call him and insist he come home early. She stopped working shortly after they got together as well, and had a bit of a shopping addiction. She seemed like a controlling kept woman, but I generally just stayed out of it and shook my head. Her boyfriend was always vague and dismissive if anyone said anything. Only after they broke up did I find out that she had experienced major trauma and had developed crippling anxiety and agoraphobia.
I wish I had known, I tried to find out why she behaved as she did, but she didn't want anyone knowing her personal business, which I respect. Who am I to be entitled to her innermost intimate truths? It sucks, and I feel terrible, but I filled in the blanks with the information I was entitled to.
You have no idea the endless secrets of those around you, and your brain glosses over them with reasonable, probable conclusions. People will always do the same with you, and assuming you're a kept woman isn't the only one you wouldn't appreciate. People make tons of assumptions about you every day that would probably irritate you to be aware of.
It's not personal, so try not to take it personally.
I long ago decided to be amused by how people might mispercieve me, and take it as a point of pride that I defy expectation so much that those who encounter me are almost guaranteed to draw inaccurate conclusions.
Any time I choose to get to know someone, it's always a game of uncovering all of the incorrect assumptions they had made about me up to that point. I find it fun because I'm proud of what it represents. For example, DH and I have the same last name, and everyone we meet assumes, reasonably, that it's his family name. I get a kick out of knowing that he took mine. I don't feel the need to tell everyone (he does because he thinks he's so damn cool for doing it), but I just enjoy knowing they're assuming something stereotypical and that it's wrong because my marriage defied that gender expectation.
People will assume you're a kept woman because what you've chosen to do is so rare and exceptional. The only way people won't make wildly inaccurate assumptions about you is if you are the most vanilla, predictable, gender normative, white sheep of the pack.
-
@sui generis - thank you for that awesome post! There was so much in there to think about.
In fact, I used to make like 2-3x DH's salary (lawyer's at BigLaw firms get paid ridiculous amounts), and I retired strictly on my own money. We don't share at all. But of course people don't know that, and he has a pretty presitigious job so some people that are like acquaintances, etc. probably think that I'm just coasting on his money. That really chaps my hide, as it is so important to me that I did this on my own and I'm not riding his coattails. So yes, as people have said on this thread, I shouldn't care what other people think, but power can also be perceived from outside, and I'm a little bit devastated that young girls and boys could perceive us as just fulfilling some stereotypical gender roles, vs. me taking my own power and using it to make my own choices. But, whatever, I can't solve everything.
In the bolded, you really articulated something that has been nagging me but I hadn't quite wrapped my brain around yet: the way we are perceived from the outside does send messages to our children.
I've never really considered leaving my job during COVID, even though it would be easier, and one reason is that I don't want to send that message to my daughter and son.
But I also see how being home is perceived by outsiders because I have worked from my home the entire time we have lived in this current location. I am treated differently than my husband by members of our community. Now some if this is definitely location dependent (in a conservative-ish area of the midwest) and I would probably still be treated similarly if I worked outside the home? But I think perception-wise, home= less than in so many ways.
-
My DH is still working and I've now been FIREd for almost 2.5 years. And I say congratulations for asking a good question and it's a good sign that you are asking - that probably means that y'all will be thoughtful about it and work hard with each other. Undoubtedly, in a hetero relationship, I would advise the woman to be very careful around this because, while the FIRE population might be different, there's no question that in genpop, women do a disproportionate amount of home and childcare, even when all parties *think* they are pretty equal, and it's only gotten worse with COVID. But for those of us that think and work on it, and are used to defying societal norms, I think it's also rather easy to escape the unfair norms.
I loved your whole post @sui generis - this bit particularly resonated with me. Both time-use studies and anecdotes tell me that it's really common for men in a hetero relationship to think that they are doing a fair share, while women spend far more time and energy doing and managing the household and childcare chores. Something that often gets missed is the effort of planning, scheduling and assigning the chores: the difference between adding the sunscreen to the basket and monitoring the sunscreen in the house, knowing how fast it is normally used, forecasting that the kids will need plenty for the pool party they have at the weekend, adding it to the shopping list and reminding the designated shopper to go before the weekend. It's different for all relationships, but it's really important for both men and women to be aware of the trend and the potential for blindspots.
Yeah. That kind of stuff takes a lot of bandwidth but doesn't look like work and so gets ignored as a contribution. This was the first book I ever found that talked about that dynamic:
https://www.amazon.ca/Wifework-Susan-Maushart/dp/0747561729
After i read it I brought the subject up with the married women I knew, and every one expressed frustration that their husband paid no attention to how much milk was in the fridge, or whether one of the kids had a dental appointment (or even whether they themselves had a dental apt)... instead, waited for their wife to tell them if they needed to do something. And couldn't understand why their wives were angry. I think this mode is changing, but I don't think it has changed quite as much as people like to think.
-
Yes, the expectation that a wife should be constantly communicating the household needs, lest she be accused of not communicating what needs to be done is quite something. It afflicts women in general, but mothers incredibly so, only bc there's so much more to remember.
-
Malcat, you are a gift. (Yes, unmarried. I’ll follow the tip & ask an attorney about rent contracts. It should be simple math, but it feels skewed by the below.)
While I love playing the game of assumptions with acquaintances, I should’ve clarified the social fear's less about strangers & more about family & friends: loss of social support in the event that the partnership isn't made to last. I’ve expended myself singlemindedly for years to build a stash while he’s comfortably enjoyed the present with room for mistakes, setbacks, & social life. I live in the South, so no amount of type-A, grade-A achievement & breadwinning seems to preclude the need in even those who know me well to offer reminders that I should be grateful to the men I’ve supported: as I’m just a parasite by biological destiny on male relations, I owe my accomplishments to them. (Biblical quotes about rib bones are optional. Horrific, but it’s not malice, merely entrenched mental habit.)
The precedent in both family & social circle is that when couples dissolve, men are retained & rehabilitated, women are ghosted or scarcely-tolerated, regardless of the original relationships or even conditions of the split. In the local imagination it’s a woman’s job to provide, then endlessly endeavor & endure to preserve, coupledom. Employment is a shield which allows me to choose a preferable failure state if the relationship falls apart: I can (barely) tolerate the community scapegoating me as excessively career-focused & frigid, but not at all as a lazy housewife who couldn’t ‘earn’ her keep even with ‘nothing else to do.’ (He’s more feminist than this, but an introvert among extroverts who won’t control the narrative.) Even if we’re on good terms, it rankles to carry the knowledge/ pressure that the costs of “not keeping a man” are so high: there’s no parity in that, it ceases to feel like a free association of equals.
On the other hand, hammering all this out makes me realize that social impact of RE on this cluster**** is really negligible in the end & the issue has been that with work I haven't had time to find community that can see me as more than a current or potential accessory to someone else.
-
Malcat, you are a gift. (Yes, unmarried. I’ll follow the tip & ask an attorney about rent contracts. It should be simple math, but it feels skewed by the below.)
While I love playing the game of assumptions with acquaintances, I should’ve clarified the social fear's less about strangers & more about family & friends: loss of social support in the event that the partnership isn't made to last. I’ve expended myself singlemindedly for years to build a stash while he’s comfortably enjoyed the present with room for mistakes, setbacks, & social life. I live in the South, so no amount of type-A, grade-A achievement & breadwinning seems to preclude the need in even those who know me well to offer reminders that I should be grateful to the men I’ve supported: as I’m just a parasite by biological destiny on male relations, I owe my accomplishments to them. (Biblical quotes about rib bones are optional. Horrific, but it’s not malice, merely entrenched mental habit.)
The precedent in both family & social circle is that when couples dissolve, men are retained & rehabilitated, women are ghosted or scarcely-tolerated, regardless of the original relationships or even conditions of the split. In the local imagination it’s a woman’s job to provide, then endlessly endeavor & endure to preserve, coupledom. Employment is a shield which allows me to choose a preferable failure state if the relationship falls apart: I can (barely) tolerate the community scapegoating me as excessively career-focused & frigid, but not at all as a lazy housewife who couldn’t ‘earn’ her keep even with ‘nothing else to do.’ (He’s more feminist than this, but an introvert among extroverts who won’t control the narrative.) Even if we’re on good terms, it rankles to carry the knowledge/ pressure that the costs of “not keeping a man” are so high: there’s no parity in that, it ceases to feel like a free association of equals.
On the other hand, hammering all this out makes me realize that social impact of RE on this cluster**** is really negligible in the end & the issue has been that with work I haven't had time to find community that can see me as more than a current or potential accessory to someone else.
You nailed it with the last part.
None of this has anything to do with you or your partner.
If your social sphere isn't meeting your needs, get a better social sphere.
The attitudes your are describing are not sustainable for long term happiness, that can't be the only thing you surround yourself with, you will go completely insane.
You need your own network, and it doesn't even need to be geographically close to you. The people I share more with right now are friends I schedule regular calls with, and only one lives in my city, and one is a friend from here I've never met.
Take this seriously. Make it your top priority. You NEED social connection with people you can trust to respect you as you are. It truly is a basic human need.
Some people can get this from their partner alone, but I really don't recommend it. As you already noted, relationships can end, and this can also put way too much emotional load on a partner, being a person's only healthy relationship. That's a lot to carry.
The good news is the world is jam packed with adults dying for more friends who can understand them. What do you think brings us all here?
-
... The good news is the world is jam packed with adults dying for more friends who can understand them. What do you think brings us all here?
If you ever end up arranging a pseudonym, put me down for the book, please, we all need more text to shout "YEAH!" at & gift to friends.
I deleted a line in a previous draft (this is my best effort at concision) re: "the people I'd eat ice cream with after a breakup are hundreds of miles away", not least because they fled the stifling illogic & dead-ends of our circle here. The locals were my group first... but he fits the script & thus threatens no one, which is eminently winsome; I don't, never have, never plan to. Our mere dating relieves tensions because I'm normalized as "owned" & can be largely ignored as a counternarrative without the guilt of exclusion since I'm still his plus-one. The last few years have been a s#!&show of trauma & forced-march labor so I haven't branched out to new groups with non-existent spare energy, but clearly I'm not over that social deletion.
If my SO were also ready, we could/ might relocate; despite separate finances I might feel more free to pull the plug (not worrying about his inability to cover catastrophic emergencies, e.g. medical), another crack where the sensation of a tipped power dynamic comes in. Broadly: even a status quo we're both frustrated with & find displeasing is on balance beneficial to him personally & professionally, costly to me on the same axes.
Anticonsumerism is isolating, being female with any desire for authenticity or self-determination is triply isolating, work is similarly performative. I've been feebly brainstorming better social spheres; my hope post-pandemic is to make local friends in volunteering, maybe audit classes, but I can tell my future vision is hazy due to burnout around the edges. I've got a bad case of one-more-month syndrome, but that's far superior to the last year at least!
-
My husband still works and I FIRED. Nothing much changed. It’s a second marriage and we keep our finances separated to some extent. I pull my weight with my savings and a rental property. I paid off our mortgage before I FIRED so now he buys me health insurance through his job. I keep busy with exercise and art classes. I think he’d be bad off psychologically if he gave up his job, and I was bad off with a very stressful job. I was so stressed, he pretty much got tired of hearing about it and told me to quit. So I did :)
-
... The good news is the world is jam packed with adults dying for more friends who can understand them. What do you think brings us all here?
If you ever end up arranging a pseudonym, put me down for the book, please, we all need more text to shout "YEAH!" at & gift to friends.
I deleted a line in a previous draft (this is my best effort at concision) re: "the people I'd eat ice cream with after a breakup are hundreds of miles away", not least because they fled the stifling illogic & dead-ends of our circle here. The locals were my group first... but he fits the script & thus threatens no one, which is eminently winsome; I don't, never have, never plan to. Our mere dating relieves tensions because I'm normalized as "owned" & can be largely ignored as a counternarrative without the guilt of exclusion since I'm still his plus-one. The last few years have been a s#!&show of trauma & forced-march labor so I haven't branched out to new groups with non-existent spare energy, but clearly I'm not over that social deletion.
If my SO were also ready, we could/ might relocate; despite separate finances I might feel more free to pull the plug (not worrying about his inability to cover catastrophic emergencies, e.g. medical), another crack where the sensation of a tipped power dynamic comes in. Broadly: even a status quo we're both frustrated with & find displeasing is on balance beneficial to him personally & professionally, costly to me on the same axes.
Anticonsumerism is isolating, being female with any desire for authenticity or self-determination is triply isolating, work is similarly performative. I've been feebly brainstorming better social spheres; my hope post-pandemic is to make local friends in volunteering, maybe audit classes, but I can tell my future vision is hazy due to burnout around the edges. I've got a bad case of one-more-month syndrome, but that's far superior to the last year at least!
This makes me so sad.
That is so not the norm everywhere. Where I live, there's virtually no social consequences for me being boldly authentic, frugal, opinionated, and generally non conforming.
I mean, there would be I suppose if I let people into my life who treated me that way, but knowing some folks who live in Texas, I'm willing to bet it's also a regional thing.
Point being, yes, the need for a social network that actually accepts and respects you must migrate to the very top of your priority list. This is a hair on fire emergency IMO. This really, really matters.
How you are feeling in your own emotional space is incredibly damaging. If you can't find the people locally, then find them online. Whatever it takes, find people who can make you feel like the person you are, as you are, is deserving of deep abiding respect.
FWIW, I would take your company any day over the people you are describing who have those archaic, sexist, and limiting beliefs.
Good god, how fucking sad for them that they don't get to enjoy you in authentic form. How sad for them that they find such comfort in reductive nonsense. It's just sad.
-
Good god, how fucking sad for them that they don't get to enjoy you in authentic form. How sad for them that they find such comfort in reductive nonsense. It's just sad.
I don't know you of course or the area you live but totally agree with everything Malcat said and especially this last bit. You SCREAM "splendid person" over the internet. There will be people IRL who value you for who you are. I believe there must be such people even in your area though given how you've described things I can also believe they are hard to find. Maybe try places where people automatically cannot fit into those neat boxes? Volunteering could be a good start .... they must must must be out there, and are trapped trying to find a way to meet YOU just as much as you are desperate to meet THEM with this massive sea of just UGH in between you. But there will be a way through.
-
@eyesonthehorizon I know exactly what you feel like. I grew up in a place like that. When my parents divorced my mother was basically chased out of the community she was born in (unlike my father, who stayed) and my father was known as a bad 'un and was a perpetrator of domestic violence. Everybody knew and my mum didn't even think of pressing charge. Still, divorcing a man like that was taboo. Especially as she ended up richer than him after the divorce because her job was better paid and now her husband didn't spend all her money. She started over in a new city in a different province in her 50s.
A bit earlier I had also left the community for college and knew I was never going back. As I was breaking away from the community I sought help from the college psychologist and she was sure I was suffering from paranoia, she just couldn't comprehend that these kind of places exist.
I knew I had to leave even when I was a kid. I didn't fit in and I was always going to be a weirdo. In highschool adult women were already warning me that with my behaviour I'd never get married. And what's the point of life for a woman if you're unmarried? But breaking away was still hard. It cost me dearly. Only one close relative fully supported me and always loved me and talked and probably bragged about me to everyone. Others still secretly cared about me but didn't want to advertise that. I remember when I visited a lady who had literally changed my diapers and her neighbour dropped in unexpectedly. She looked frightened because she was going to be the talk of town now.
-
@Imma, have you read Tara Westover's splendid memoir, "Educated"? It might speak to you. Easily the most haunting book I've read in years.
-
Malcat, you are a gift. (Yes, unmarried. I’ll follow the tip & ask an attorney about rent contracts. It should be simple math, but it feels skewed by the below.)
While I love playing the game of assumptions with acquaintances, I should’ve clarified the social fear's less about strangers & more about family & friends: loss of social support in the event that the partnership isn't made to last. I’ve expended myself singlemindedly for years to build a stash while he’s comfortably enjoyed the present with room for mistakes, setbacks, & social life. I live in the South, so no amount of type-A, grade-A achievement & breadwinning seems to preclude the need in even those who know me well to offer reminders that I should be grateful to the men I’ve supported: as I’m just a parasite by biological destiny on male relations, I owe my accomplishments to them. (Biblical quotes about rib bones are optional. Horrific, but it’s not malice, merely entrenched mental habit.)
The precedent in both family & social circle is that when couples dissolve, men are retained & rehabilitated, women are ghosted or scarcely-tolerated, regardless of the original relationships or even conditions of the split. In the local imagination it’s a woman’s job to provide, then endlessly endeavor & endure to preserve, coupledom. Employment is a shield which allows me to choose a preferable failure state if the relationship falls apart: I can (barely) tolerate the community scapegoating me as excessively career-focused & frigid, but not at all as a lazy housewife who couldn’t ‘earn’ her keep even with ‘nothing else to do.’ (He’s more feminist than this, but an introvert among extroverts who won’t control the narrative.) Even if we’re on good terms, it rankles to carry the knowledge/ pressure that the costs of “not keeping a man” are so high: there’s no parity in that, it ceases to feel like a free association of equals.
On the other hand, hammering all this out makes me realize that social impact of RE on this cluster**** is really negligible in the end & the issue has been that with work I haven't had time to find community that can see me as more than a current or potential accessory to someone else.
I’m late to the conversation, but I want to chime in and say that your social situation sounds like absolute shit. On thé west coast i have this impression that the south is backwards, but I would have never imagined to this degree. I concur with others on prioritizing yourself and finding supportive relationships in whatever way you can. Hell, I’ll be your friend if you want!
-
And @imma - I had no idea that such backwards attitudes existed in the western world outside of the United States and our uniquely backwards thinking. I’m sorry you grew up that way and I’m glad you escaped. Your mother especially.
-
Thanks @Dicey , I'll look into it! Hadn't heard of it. My background personally is not orthodox religion, but "just" conservative. We were nominally Catholic like everyone in our town was.
@ysette9 somehow Americans like to think that everyone in Europe must be more modern and progressive and their own country is backwards. But Europe is big - well, not geographically big compared to your continent, but there are so many different countries with different cultures, and like everywhere we have big divides between rural and urban areas. And some places are very modern in one way and very conservative in others.
Personally, I'm from the Netherlands, and while we're known for our tolerance towards drugs and prostitution, we also strongly feel that children should be raised primarily by their mothers. Everywhere except in the most urban elites fulltime working mothers are frowned upon. In the company I previously worked for, the director actually announced that he'd never hire a mother for a fulltime job because he believed that could only end up in disaster. On the flip side, working 4 days a week is acceptable in almost all fields, and is also increasingly common for men. Among my friends and acquaintances (highly educated women in their 30s in one of the biggest cities) I know more young mothers who take recreational drugs on the weekend than young mothers that work fulltime.
In the rural, conservative area I grew up in, women could work in the family business or a couple of days a week in an unthreatening job like nursing or working in a shop. But anything else was considered to be a challenge to the "provider" as an insult to the breadwinner.
But with our acceptance of parttime work we're actually more modern than for example Germany, in many places in Germany mothers still mostly stay home. The further East you travel in Europe, the more women work outside of the home.
-
Oof. Thanks, Malcat, LightTripper, Imma, Ysette, for the kind words & insight, & thanks to Dicey for the book recc. We have been in crunch at work & I didn't think I could compose anything cogent, but I've come back & reread these for grounding about six times in five weeks. Malcat, the alarm is rung. I've made a point of reconnecting with my far-flung sensible friends for some sanity. I know no word for the bewilderment beyond fury I read into your reply; I've lived in that space... for others, after a gaslit youth that it didn't count if it happened to me. LightTripper - wait, I have a reputation here? I appreciate the hope; fortunately I like people enough that I always trust some of them are up to good. You described my precise affinity for certain subcultures: I seek the places where the boxes don't fit anyone. I've sloppily assumed, as I ramp toward the
terrifying costly purchase of my own time, that this was something I could slot in after RE but I'm seeking ways to engage it in pandemic mode. Thanks for the calls to action.
Imma: I am so sorry. That summary does sound a lot like what I grew up with; many mothers worked, but poverty was the driver when I was growing up (rather than aspiration as now) so I'm not surprised to hear it's more common further east. I cut the domestic abuse line from my first post, but here "we" certainly look the other way, let it be "the couple's private matter", then if there's a split, rehabilitate the men's images into great hubs & dads while ousting women who won't swallow the inconvenient truth for the sake of letting everyone else "move on": I'm so glad your mom escaped. The sensation when people in a decent society pathologize you for having witnessed a sick one is vertigo-inducing & even if you know where fault lies it feels awful to be anyone's secret. I'm guilty of assuming the Netherlands would be progressive on women's freedoms but it sounds like there's a higher premium on nonwork life generally, which just forces women to uphold a much higher standard in (gendered) nonwork pursuits, rather than the split difference as here with baby on one arm & briefcase on the other... or briefcase & bikini body, which in either case regardless of individual agency is read as signaling willingness to serve men's interests, despite acquiring a now-compulsory measure of male-coded success. Women are supposed to do it all... plus find a man who earns more, or strife is her fault.
Ysette, the thing I'd compare it to is Hollywood & Silicon Valley's relatively permissive attitude toward assault, dubious consent & exclusive bro culture: women are allowed different expressions of power (freedoms) across regions, but no matter how powerful women get in former British colonies it seems they are still reliably subjected to yet-more-powerful men - only the justifications/ formality of hierarchy differ, the specifics of public vs. private power. I lay it out much more plainly than it appears where it's normalized and excused, but is it really different than Sean Penn continuing to get work the last few decades or the vehement defenses heard of Elon Musk's purported calculating attitude toward his first wife? Same dance: whatever the purported values, it's charisma & power that move. Women out there are often just richer and thus have more options before absolute rock bottom.
-
I wouldn't be so absolute about the state of womanhood in the world. Yes, men are still in power, and yes, that still creates a lot of power imbalances for women, but there are plenty of places and ways of being a middle class woman in the western world that is highly autonomous and authentic.
I don't have children, I made far more than my DH, I retired well before him, and I am extremely assertive in both my professional and personal life, and I get no meaningful push back. I "lean in" more than most alpha males, and I generally command enormous respect for it.
I'm not saying every woman can just boldly live as her authentic self with no consequences, that's not at all what I'm saying. I recognize my position of privilege to live as unapologetically as I do. Also, I do experience consequences, they're just consequences I'm more comfortable with than feeling the need to censor my own existence.
My point is not that everyone can do it, but that it very much can be done. So if the consequences of the social oppression you describe are unacceptable to you, as they would be to me, then you have the option to do something about it.
You can build your own tribe, or develop a really thick skin against judgement, or move somewhere less shitty towards women, or whatever works for you as an individual to feel like you aren't perpetually living under oppressive boot-heels.
That's not sustainable for mental health, and I don't consider it an acceptable way to live.
-
My DH is still working and I've now been FIREd for almost 2.5 years. And I say congratulations for asking a good question and it's a good sign that you are asking - that probably means that y'all will be thoughtful about it and work hard with each other. Undoubtedly, in a hetero relationship, I would advise the woman to be very careful around this because, while the FIRE population might be different, there's no question that in genpop, women do a disproportionate amount of home and childcare, even when all parties *think* they are pretty equal, and it's only gotten worse with COVID. But for those of us that think and work on it, and are used to defying societal norms, I think it's also rather easy to escape the unfair norms.
I loved your whole post @sui generis - this bit particularly resonated with me. Both time-use studies and anecdotes tell me that it's really common for men in a hetero relationship to think that they are doing a fair share, while women spend far more time and energy doing and managing the household and childcare chores. Something that often gets missed is the effort of planning, scheduling and assigning the chores: the difference between adding the sunscreen to the basket and monitoring the sunscreen in the house, knowing how fast it is normally used, forecasting that the kids will need plenty for the pool party they have at the weekend, adding it to the shopping list and reminding the designated shopper to go before the weekend. It's different for all relationships, but it's really important for both men and women to be aware of the trend and the potential for blindspots.
Yeah. That kind of stuff takes a lot of bandwidth but doesn't look like work and so gets ignored as a contribution. This was the first book I ever found that talked about that dynamic:
https://www.amazon.ca/Wifework-Susan-Maushart/dp/0747561729
After i read it I brought the subject up with the married women I knew, and every one expressed frustration that their husband paid no attention to how much milk was in the fridge, or whether one of the kids had a dental appointment (or even whether they themselves had a dental apt)... instead, waited for their wife to tell them if they needed to do something. And couldn't understand why their wives were angry. I think this mode is changing, but I don't think it has changed quite as much as people like to think.
[/quote
Thank you for this. I know I'm late to this party but I'm working on my marriage and this is one of the issues I want to address. I will definitely look for that book. I work and my husband is the SAHP and I still do most of the doctor/dentist/school stuff.
I never wanted to be dependent on a man, so I fell into the opposite trap of making a man dependent on me.
-
In my case, my DW has been a stay at home wife (no kids) for 20+ years now, and it worked out well for both of us. She tended to find the workforce frustrating because she has EXTREMELY high standards for how things should be done, and her coworkers didn't ever meet them. Managing the household she can meet her own standards, and we were able to keep a lot of free time to do things on evenings and weekends, which wouldn't have been the case if we were both working. Since we are both naturally frugal, we saved enough on my income alone to be able to retire very soon.
So she has sort of faced this question, and tells me regularly that she feels guilty that she isn't bringing in an income, despite my telling her that I highly value the effort she puts into making the house into a home, ensuring our good nutrition, paying bills on time so we have a great credit score, and so on. I think, and tell her, that she is very much an equal partner in what we have achieved.
My concern is that to do the job of household management to her standards requires about 50 hours/week of work, and she still always feels behind. I currently help out some evenings and put a weekend day into chores as well, but I'm a bit worried that when I retire, I will be expected to pitch in more, which is not unreasonable on the face of it, and it will turn into 60 hours/week to "stay on top of everything". Thus I'll be trading ~40 hours/week of paid work, which I do generally enjoy, + benefits, for 30 hours/week of unpaid work. Conversations about lowering standards for household management over the years have not been very well received. We will probably have to have some more negotiation on that.
-
^^ Im curious what kind of household tasks would take 50 hours per week - week in and week out - for a childless couple? Not judging just curious (nosey!!) but it does seem like an awful lot of time devoted to chores. I Fired as a childless single homeowner with a horde of pets and did all the stuff myself and, once retired, seemed I had lots of free time. So maybe your spouse is choosing to work that much of home chores because she wants to feel she is an equal contributor while you're working but will slack off a bit once you retire. Doubt you'll have to help out unless you enjoy it and can do it together.
I'm curious about this too. We have kids and both work full time but still manage to eat nutritionally and have good credit and finances. We spend evenings and weekends with kids/each other mostly so chores aren't taking up a huge amount of time. Our standards are obviously not super high by necessity, but we aren't lacking in cleanliness, healthy food, and free time. People will frequently "fill" their extra time with chores to feel productive.
-
Since this week my DH is back to work for 3 months, while I am still FIRE'd. He is of course working from home, which at least saves him from a commute. What I notice, is that I have some more trouble to get out of the door to go skiing. Normally it helps being two, because you can mentally motivate each other. But now DH said I had to entertain myself. Normally, in summer, I find this easy. But in winter it is more of a mental hurdle.
-
^^ Im curious what kind of household tasks would take 50 hours per week - week in and week out - for a childless couple? Not judging just curious (nosey!!) but it does seem like an awful lot of time devoted to chores. I Fired as a childless single homeowner with a horde of pets and did all the stuff myself and, once retired, seemed I had lots of free time. So maybe your spouse is choosing to work that much of home chores because she wants to feel she is an equal contributor while you're working but will slack off a bit once you retire. Doubt you'll have to help out unless you enjoy it and can do it together.
I'm curious about this too. We have kids and both work full time but still manage to eat nutritionally and have good credit and finances. We spend evenings and weekends with kids/each other mostly so chores aren't taking up a huge amount of time. Our standards are obviously not super high by necessity, but we aren't lacking in cleanliness, healthy food, and free time. People will frequently "fill" their extra time with chores to feel productive.
I used to have an aunt like that. As a kid I wondered what she did all day, as she seemed more busy than my mum who was working, raising kids, volunteering, baking our own bread and making all of our own clothes. She was very offended and said I'd get it when I was an adult!
I still don't. I don't spend a lot of time doing housework because honestly my standards aren't too high, but when I do a deep clean before we have overnight visitors it still doesn't take that much time.
@Reynold I can imagine it must be very stressful to live with such a perfectionist. It's fair to do your share when you're retired but I think in an average childless household that shouldn't be more than an hour per person per day, cooking included. Unless you live in a mansion or something.
-
In my case, my DW has been a stay at home wife (no kids) for 20+ years now, and it worked out well for both of us. She tended to find the workforce frustrating because she has EXTREMELY high standards for how things should be done, and her coworkers didn't ever meet them. Managing the household she can meet her own standards, and we were able to keep a lot of free time to do things on evenings and weekends, which wouldn't have been the case if we were both working. Since we are both naturally frugal, we saved enough on my income alone to be able to retire very soon.
So she has sort of faced this question, and tells me regularly that she feels guilty that she isn't bringing in an income, despite my telling her that I highly value the effort she puts into making the house into a home, ensuring our good nutrition, paying bills on time so we have a great credit score, and so on. I think, and tell her, that she is very much an equal partner in what we have achieved.
My concern is that to do the job of household management to her standards requires about 50 hours/week of work, and she still always feels behind. I currently help out some evenings and put a weekend day into chores as well, but I'm a bit worried that when I retire, I will be expected to pitch in more, which is not unreasonable on the face of it, and it will turn into 60 hours/week to "stay on top of everything". Thus I'll be trading ~40 hours/week of paid work, which I do generally enjoy, + benefits, for 30 hours/week of unpaid work. Conversations about lowering standards for household management over the years have not been very well received. We will probably have to have some more negotiation on that.
Like everything, this is a matter of communication and mutual respect.
You have to clearly communicate your desires for what kind of retirement you want and listen while she communicates her desire for what she wants retirement to look like, and find a way to meet each other's needs.
There's no right answer, there's just the answer that will work best in your marriage for both people to feel happy, loved, respected, and appreciated.
-
PTF -- as I'm not in this situation yet but I most likely will be in a few weeks.
This has been some good food for thought, because while my spouse and I have a good balance for chores and whatnot now, we should make sure we're on the same page about expectations when I'm FIREd... especially if kids come into the picture later (which we do plan on).
Our chore solution is the most nerdy and technical solution possible, which is that we built a web app that rewards chores based on an auction+scheduling system. It works well for most things, but not all (... one of the things I want to work on once I'm FI...).
-
...So maybe your spouse is choosing to work that much of home chores because she wants to feel she is an equal contributor while you're working but will slack off a bit once you retire.
Seconding this, since I have been there & done that myself while unemployed staying with friends & witnessed other friends do the same.
...Our chore solution is the most nerdy and technical solution possible, which is that we built a web app that rewards chores based on an auction+scheduling system. It works well for most things, but not all (... one of the things I want to work on once I'm FI...).
Once you brush it up are you planning to release that for general use? That sounds amazing...!
-
Now after a few weeks of DH working from home, it seems he is not resenting me. Sometimes in the morning he asks where I am going to ski today, maybe to motivate me to do so. I have a bit of a challenge to find motivation to go out in heavy snow weather.
So far, I have taking the job of clearing the car and parts of the driveway of snow. The rest is done by a tractor. I clean a bit more than usual, in the sense that I do the tasks that we used to divide. But if DH in the weekend notices the floor is dirty, he still cleans it.
I also do most of the cooking, but have been doing that for some time, because there are so many recipees I want to try out.
Unfortunately I often don't fall asleep again after DH's 6:30 am alarm clock. That is a bit to get used to.
-
...Our chore solution is the most nerdy and technical solution possible, which is that we built a web app that rewards chores based on an auction+scheduling system. It works well for most things, but not all (... one of the things I want to work on once I'm FI...).
Once you brush it up are you planning to release that for general use? That sounds amazing...!
Definitely would like to! It needs some major improvements before it's really ready -- we've had a couple friends try it out and give up on it because it's too fiddly at the moment. But hey, I'll have lots of time to work on it soon.
-
The consensus (from women) so far seems to be:
- Yes, being at home more shifts expectations. It can exacerbate existing imbalances.
- Other obligations, like children or elderly parents, adds another layer of complexity.
- The appearance of being a housewife can chafe.
- Communication and friends are essential.
I've loved the thoughts and conversation so far, and they've come to insights that I didn't expect. But is it a crazy thought that the shifting expectations (i.e. that if you're home and you're not doing anything, you should do a larger share of the housework) are a good thing? Well... maybe not "good", but fair?
I can imagine that this would motivate me to dive deep into a hobby and/or get out of the house!
-
The consensus (from women) so far seems to be:
- Yes, being at home more shifts expectations. It can exacerbate existing imbalances.
- Other obligations, like children or elderly parents, adds another layer of complexity.
- The appearance of being a housewife can chafe.
- Communication and friends are essential.
I've loved the thoughts and conversation so far, and they've come to insights that I didn't expect. But is it a crazy thought that the shifting expectations (i.e. that if you're home and you're not doing anything, you should do a larger share of the housework) are a good thing? Well... maybe not "good", but fair?
I can imagine that this would motivate me to dive deep into a hobby and/or get out of the house!
For me, that logic is what made sense. I look at everything about our lives as one collective set of obligations. I'm not working, so the "make money" obligation falls 100% to DH. (Or maybe 90%, if you consider me managing the investments and finances.) That eats up much of his time. If he's spending 50 hours a week on that, it doesn't feel fair to me that I spend the 50 (or 25, depending on how you look at it) hours a week that it frees up for me to then do stuff that is for me, instead of for us. Or that's for fun, rather than for practicality. Otherwise, he's working 50 hours a week and doing chores for maybe 15, while I'm only doing 15 hours of work for the household. If I take on 10 of his 15, I still have plenty of free time, plus time to do "us" things that might otherwise not have happened at all, and his burden is lightened a bit. IOW, the time he's buying by working seems like it should be at least partly time I buy back for him by doing more chores. That way, we both benefit with more leisure time based on the fact I'm not working.
If we had separate finances, I can see how I'd look at it differently though.
-
But that reasoning assumes there's still a need for money. So before FI. That seems fair. But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? I can imagine I wouldn't be too happy doing most of the chores if I was retired while my s/o could retire (and pick up his fair share of chores) but didn't? At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
-
But that reasoning assumes there's still a need for money. So before FI. That seems fair. But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? I can imagine I wouldn't be too happy doing most of the chores if I was retired while my s/o could retire (and pick up his fair share of choice) but didn't? At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
That is a really good question and one I don’t have an answer to. Work doesn’t trump whatever else I’d you don’t need the money, but then in that case should work be viewed as something closer to a hobby that you do because you want to, not because you have to?
I occasionally have to tamp down resentment towards my husband’s job when it means meetings at dinner time. It was easier before when it was bringing home great bacon to advance us towards our goals. But now that we are well past our initial FIRE goal and More doesn’t bring anything different for our lives than Enough, then I don’t have as much patience for the meeting. But hopefully it is all a temporary thing.
-
But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? ... At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
+1
In that case, I would weigh their work time with the same importance (ability to offset chores) as your hobbies! You're right, though- the calculus gets a little mushy with things like this.
-
But that reasoning assumes there's still a need for money. So before FI. That seems fair. But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? I can imagine I wouldn't be too happy doing most of the chores if I was retired while my s/o could retire (and pick up his fair share of chores) but didn't? At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
Would outsourcing the chores be an option? If one party wants to continue working (and some of this might depend on *why* they want to continue working, as well as how finances are handled), then they can pick up their share of the chores by paying for the housekeeper and the lawn service, or similar. Or the fluff and fold service, or meal prep, or whatever makes the most sense. IOW, one party spends ~10 hours a week on chores and the other pays for ~10 hours of labor so that it doesn't fall to the first party.
That way, each party is in effect covering half of the chores, one with money and the other with labor. The money would come from the same place that all hobby money comes from, whatever that looks like in the framework of finances the couple has set up, since it's basically an expense created by party 2's desire to engage in their work hobby.
-
But that reasoning assumes there's still a need for money. So before FI. That seems fair. But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? I can imagine I wouldn't be too happy doing most of the chores if I was retired while my s/o could retire (and pick up his fair share of chores) but didn't? At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
The fact that my DH works, means we aren't travelling anywhere, like to our cabin. He just told me I could go alone or with a friend. Because of corona we are now supposed to stay put as much as possible. But I do resent him a bit for that I need to do all my outdoor stuff alone. It is only for 3 months, but it is most of the snow winter in this area. Now if I want to go skiing together, I need to use the crowded weekends, which I prefer to avoid.
-
In the first two months, I did feel like he expected me to pick up more of the chores around the house. I can't really tell if it's really his expectation or my own imagination. Anyway, this is the 4th month now and I care less about the chores so I do what I feel I want to do. He hasn't complained (he has way lower standard of cleanliness than I do so maybe that's why lol) and I am less stressed out about it.
We talked about outsourcing cleaning and hiring someone to do it but haven't done so. I'm very nervous about letting anyone in our house during COVID.
The fact that my DH works, means we aren't travelling anywhere, like to our cabin. He just told me I could go alone or with a friend. Because of corona we are now supposed to stay put as much as possible. But I do resent him a bit for that I need to do all my outdoor stuff alone. It is only for 3 months, but it is most of the snow winter in this area. Now if I want to go skiing together, I need to use the crowded weekends, which I prefer to avoid.
I can relate to this. I love to travel and go on a camping trip but we can only go on weekends because he needs to work on weekdays and we can't really avoid the crowds on weekends!
-
Had a very brief chat with my husband about this, to which his response was "Well of course we'll keep splitting things evenly." Because he's great like that.
Fortunately, it's pretty easy to tell who's doing how much with our chore app, so I don't expect it'll be too hard to hold him to that.
The one wrinkle is that if we do have a baby while I'm RE but before he pulls the plug, we've agreed that I'll be pulling the majority of the weight there -- just because there's no real choice when one person has a full-time job and the other doesn't. Babies are very time-consuming. Although we have also talked about doing childcare at some point down the line; it's in our budget, so it's an option that would be available, if I wanted it. (And that would be post-COVID.)
Oh, and one other thing is that we don't do cooking in our chore app, because it's a little trickier to track that way. Honestly, it's been a pretty reasonable split between us anyway, but I do end up doing a bit more, especially if there's some recipe I'm excited about. I'm fine with that -- especially since a lot of the extra cooking I do ends up being just for me. (I like to eat a lot more vegetarian food and desserts than he does, that kind of thing.)
-
Upon reflection, one slightly weird thing for me has been that I do my chores spread out throughout the week whereas DH does his on the weekend, and then I'm sitting there just reading a book or something and I can't help but feel lazy. Maybe I should shift my chores to the weekend too, so I can avoid that feeling, but I do really prefer sprinkling them over the course of the week. OTOH, this method would mean that our entire house was clean all at once, so there are certainly several pros for switching it up.
-
Oh, and one other thing is that we don't do cooking in our chore app, because it's a little trickier to track that way. Honestly, it's been a pretty reasonable split between us anyway, but I do end up doing a bit more, especially if there's some recipe I'm excited about. I'm fine with that -- especially since a lot of the extra cooking I do ends up being just for me. (I like to eat a lot more vegetarian food and desserts than he does, that kind of thing.)
I am doing this as well. In the past we would normally alternate cooking every other day. Nowadays I cook between 5 to 7 times a week. Since a few months I am cooking from a Turkish cookbook and from budgetbytes. I have a whole pile of recipees I would like to try out, rather sooner than later, as the book was from the library. Now I bought the cheaper part 1 from the same writer and have started there.
Therefore I have taken controll of grocery shopping, to make sure I have all the ingredients. And also because I have kickback CC cards for groceries, that DH doesn't want to get. I also like baking bread and need to do so a few times a week to make enough to not have to buy. Alternative would be to just buy bread. Sometimes when I am totally uninspired, I ask DH to cook. It is all voluntarily, as it is my hobby to do cooking and learning new dishes.
And in the foraging season I also preserve a lot of food, like plants or mushrooms. This isn't exactly cooking, but takes a lot of time in the kitchen. Again, all voluntarily as it is my hobby.
-
I'm posting to follow as I am in the inverse situation. My wife is the primary breadwinner and loves her job.
But I am wondering how much flak I will get from our circle of people when I quit and she works.
As for dividing chores I would personally be ok with a 60/40 split in my direction. I love cooking and listening to e-books so I would probably do most of it voluntarily.
Anyway, even though I'm not the wife here thanks for all your posts and insights. They have been useful.
-
I'm posting to follow as I am in the inverse situation. My wife is the primary breadwinner and loves her job.
But I am wondering how much flak I will get from our circle of people when I quit and she works.
As for dividing chores I would personally be ok with a 60/40 split in my direction. I love cooking and listening to e-books so I would probably do most of it voluntarily.
Anyway, even though I'm not the wife here thanks for all your posts and insights. They have been useful.
My DH did not get flak for quitting, but we have little children in an area with insanely expensive daycare, so it's quite normal here. I have been the primary breadwinner for 10+ years but he always had a part time job until Covid hit.
-
I'm posting to follow as I am in the inverse situation. My wife is the primary breadwinner and loves her job.
But I am wondering how much flak I will get from our circle of people when I quit and she works.
As for dividing chores I would personally be ok with a 60/40 split in my direction. I love cooking and listening to e-books so I would probably do most of it voluntarily.
Anyway, even though I'm not the wife here thanks for all your posts and insights. They have been useful.
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
-
... snip
My DH did not get flak for quitting, but we have little children in an area with insanely expensive daycare, so it's quite normal here. I have been the primary breadwinner for 10+ years but he always had a part time job until Covid hit.
I guess it's a little different here because we have no children and even if we did childcare costs are very reasonable where we live. I guess here in Denmark having any Stay-at-home adult is indeed very rare.
-
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned and my close circle of friends would understand why I prefer not to work.
I do have one example that surprised me:
Imagine being at a birthday party at a friends place with a lot of people that you only barely know. Well, plans were being discussed what people were doing and careers, when I was asked about my plans I told them that I was planning a 3 month sabbatical to exercise and relax. The reaction of two women was priceless. They both turned to my wife and asked indignantly "and you are just okay supporting him like THAT?". The undercurrent being that any man who didn't make any money was not worth keeping.
Afterwards my wife and I were pretty certain that they wouldn't have said anything if my wife had taken 3 months off from work. Ohh the irony.. :)
-
Some people really are vile. I can understand a little envy, and a lot of interest. But what is there to judge?
I also strongly suspect if your wife had said it they at least would have waited until you were out of the room to bitch about her .... :)
My actual friends are all encouraging me to do less. It will be interesting to see whether acquaintances may get judgemental - though I'm not sure it should be that obvious to most people (except other people with free time, who presumably will not judge!)
-
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned and my close circle of friends would understand why I prefer not to work.
I do have one example that surprised me:
Imagine being at a birthday party at a friends place with a lot of people that you only barely know. Well, plans were being discussed what people were doing and careers, when I was asked about my plans I told them that I was planning a 3 month sabbatical to exercise and relax. The reaction of two women was priceless. They both turned to my wife and asked indignantly "and you are just okay supporting him like THAT?". The undercurrent being that any man who didn't make any money was not worth keeping.
Afterwards my wife and I were pretty certain that they wouldn't have said anything if my wife had taken 3 months off from work. Ohh the irony.. :)
Lol, yes, my previous ex was unemployed for a period and I got a lot of flack as to why on earth I would date him, that is, until they figured out how rich his family was...which was also hilarious because it's not like he was getting a cent from them.
Oh the silly assumptions people make.
That said, my ex was a fucking asshat who should have just gotten a damn job, so they weren't wrong on their first judgement. Lol.
-
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned and my close circle of friends would understand why I prefer not to work.
I do have one example that surprised me:
Imagine being at a birthday party at a friends place with a lot of people that you only barely know. Well, plans were being discussed what people were doing and careers, when I was asked about my plans I told them that I was planning a 3 month sabbatical to exercise and relax. The reaction of two women was priceless. They both turned to my wife and asked indignantly "and you are just okay supporting him like THAT?". The undercurrent being that any man who didn't make any money was not worth keeping.
Afterwards my wife and I were pretty certain that they wouldn't have said anything if my wife had taken 3 months off from work. Ohh the irony.. :)
Lol, yes, my previous ex was unemployed for a period and I got a lot of flack as to why on earth I would date him, that is, until they figured out how rich his family was...which was also hilarious because it's not like he was getting a cent from them.
Oh the silly assumptions people make.
That said, my ex was a fucking asshat who should have just gotten a damn job, so they weren't wrong on their first judgement. Lol.
People are often genuinly baffled when they find out what kind of work Mr Imma does. Especially coworkers, because I can't be vague around my job title/salary around them like I usually am. They know his income must be lower and his job has very little status. They don't really know what to say. From their expressions I think they are either feeling sorry for me that I'm stuck with such a lazy, deadbeat guy or they think he must have had a mental break or something. People are very, very nasty to men who don't work or earn less than their female partner - both women and other men.
Actually, what I admire about him is that he has many talents and that he chooses to apply them to what brings him most joy, not to what society thinks he should be doing. He gets negative reactions all the time about being a "kept" man. We are actually both financially self-sufficient and he could live perfectly well on his income only. But that's besides the point. Even if I paid the bills, that would be totally acceptable if he was female. A lot of my male coworkers have SAH wives.
-
Interesting post. If our finances play out as hoped, I'll be FIREing in a couple of years, and my husband will continue to work, per his choice. I've saved up plenty for retirement on my own & there are some compounding health factors that will benefit from me dialing down my career (particularly the international travel). We both are high earners, although I'm currently more senior & making more (we work at the same company).
We have pretty clear division of labor currently, so I'm not super worried about that changing drastically. I definitely do more parenting, & more overall labor (when taking into account the planning/organizing/etc). But, my husband works more, so it's not as though he's sitting around while I work. He's the least lazy person I've ever met, and I consider myself a hard core productivity person. Our kids will also be a junior & senior in high school when FIRE happens, so parenting looks quite different, and has a shorter "in the house" life span by then.
What is top of mind for me when I FIRE is really about the control & planning of money. This is about me & my control issues, definitely not about my husband. We currently have our own accounts, and his check covers the mortgage, I cover everything else. When I FIRE, the mortgage will be paid, and he'll cover all of the expenses. I'm having a really weird mental block on him taking over paying all of the other bills. The budgeting, the planning, the tracking. In fact, I'm thinking of asking him to transfer his check to my account and/or adding me to his account (which, he'd happily do, if I ask), so that I can do the budgeting, planning bill paying. This suggests to me that I really need to feel in control & financially secure (no surprise), but I'll have to give more thought on how to approach that in the next few years.
-
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned and my close circle of friends would understand why I prefer not to work.
I do have one example that surprised me:
Imagine being at a birthday party at a friends place with a lot of people that you only barely know. Well, plans were being discussed what people were doing and careers, when I was asked about my plans I told them that I was planning a 3 month sabbatical to exercise and relax. The reaction of two women was priceless. They both turned to my wife and asked indignantly "and you are just okay supporting him like THAT?". The undercurrent being that any man who didn't make any money was not worth keeping.
Afterwards my wife and I were pretty certain that they wouldn't have said anything if my wife had taken 3 months off from work. Ohh the irony.. :)
Lol, yes, my previous ex was unemployed for a period and I got a lot of flack as to why on earth I would date him, that is, until they figured out how rich his family was...which was also hilarious because it's not like he was getting a cent from them.
Oh the silly assumptions people make.
That said, my ex was a fucking asshat who should have just gotten a damn job, so they weren't wrong on their first judgement. Lol.
People are often genuinly baffled when they find out what kind of work Mr Imma does. Especially coworkers, because I can't be vague around my job title/salary around them like I usually am. They know his income must be lower and his job has very little status. They don't really know what to say. From their expressions I think they are either feeling sorry for me that I'm stuck with such a lazy, deadbeat guy or they think he must have had a mental break or something. People are very, very nasty to men who don't work or earn less than their female partner - both women and other men.
Actually, what I admire about him is that he has many talents and that he chooses to apply them to what brings him most joy, not to what society thinks he should be doing. He gets negative reactions all the time about being a "kept" man. We are actually both financially self-sufficient and he could live perfectly well on his income only. But that's besides the point. Even if I paid the bills, that would be totally acceptable if he was female. A lot of my male coworkers have SAH wives.
Interesting.
I made more than double what DH made until I retired last year. No one ever blinked about it. However, that's probably because we both made 6 figures. Had he been working a lower than median income job, it may have been different, although a number of my female colleagues have low earning spouses and it's not perceived poorly in my social circles. There are a number of stay at home dads as well.
I caught flack for my ex because there was no reason for him to be depressingly jobless and everyone knew it.
-
I make more than double what DH makes, working fewer hours. DH has already given notice. I don’t think we will get much flack, but if we do get asked if I’m okay with that, I plan on just looking at the person quizzically, and saying, “Sure, why not? It’s not like we need the money.” If they’re going to be a bit snarky and judgy, I’m okay with a subtle putdown.
In terms of the power shift, DH has already offered to do all the cooking and whatever else needs doing around the house, not because I asked him to, but because he wants to.
-
I'm posting to follow as I am in the inverse situation. My wife is the primary breadwinner and loves her job.
But I am wondering how much flak I will get from our circle of people when I quit and she works.
As for dividing chores I would personally be ok with a 60/40 split in my direction. I love cooking and listening to e-books so I would probably do most of it voluntarily.
Anyway, even though I'm not the wife here thanks for all your posts and insights. They have been useful.
A very gentle and non-personal reminder that in many relationships, when the chores are split 50/50 each person thinks they are doing considerably more than 50%. In straight relationships, men have more of a tendency (on average, with many exceptions) to assess their contribution as higher than it is.
It sounds like you are already being very thoughtful about approaching household tasks and I hope you have an excellent retirement.
-
It will really depend on the type of people that you socialize with and what you consider "flack".
I guess I'm pretty thick-skinned and my close circle of friends would understand why I prefer not to work.
I do have one example that surprised me:
Imagine being at a birthday party at a friends place with a lot of people that you only barely know. Well, plans were being discussed what people were doing and careers, when I was asked about my plans I told them that I was planning a 3 month sabbatical to exercise and relax. The reaction of two women was priceless. They both turned to my wife and asked indignantly "and you are just okay supporting him like THAT?". The undercurrent being that any man who didn't make any money was not worth keeping.
Afterwards my wife and I were pretty certain that they wouldn't have said anything if my wife had taken 3 months off from work. Ohh the irony.. :)
Lol, yes, my previous ex was unemployed for a period and I got a lot of flack as to why on earth I would date him, that is, until they figured out how rich his family was...which was also hilarious because it's not like he was getting a cent from them.
Oh the silly assumptions people make.
That said, my ex was a fucking asshat who should have just gotten a damn job, so they weren't wrong on their first judgement. Lol.
People are often genuinly baffled when they find out what kind of work Mr Imma does. Especially coworkers, because I can't be vague around my job title/salary around them like I usually am. They know his income must be lower and his job has very little status. They don't really know what to say. From their expressions I think they are either feeling sorry for me that I'm stuck with such a lazy, deadbeat guy or they think he must have had a mental break or something. People are very, very nasty to men who don't work or earn less than their female partner - both women and other men.
Actually, what I admire about him is that he has many talents and that he chooses to apply them to what brings him most joy, not to what society thinks he should be doing. He gets negative reactions all the time about being a "kept" man. We are actually both financially self-sufficient and he could live perfectly well on his income only. But that's besides the point. Even if I paid the bills, that would be totally acceptable if he was female. A lot of my male coworkers have SAH wives.
Interesting.
I made more than double what DH made until I retired last year. No one ever blinked about it. However, that's probably because we both made 6 figures. Had he been working a lower than median income job, it may have been different, although a number of my female colleagues have low earning spouses and it's not perceived poorly in my social circles. There are a number of stay at home dads as well.
I caught flack for my ex because there was no reason for him to be depressingly jobless and everyone knew it.
I'm a highly specialized professional and he's a blue collar worker, I do think people feel that's different than, say, a surgeon or cardiologist with a spouse who is a (relatively) lowly paid GP. We also live in a lower middle class neighbourhood. It's a great place to live and I'm certainly not interested in spending twice as much for a similar house but in a suburb with neighbours who all went to college. But people are surprised about that sometimes.
It's a great way to filter out the secretly prejudiced "progressives" though. This relationship has cost me one of my oldest friendships. I'm sad about it, but it was the right thing to do. They are a member of the socialist party, open minded, etc etc etc but when I started dating a blue collar worker (who literally saved my life early on in the relationship) they kept trying to set me up with random acquintances that have a PhD in molecular biology or something. For me, intellectual curiosity is important, but it's totally irrelevant whether that has led to a degree or not. What attracted me to Mr Imma is that he pursued what he loved most. If for someone that's molecular biology, great, but for him it was something else.
-
But that reasoning assumes there's still a need for money. So before FI. That seems fair. But what if you are FI (together) and one half of the couple decides to quit work, but the other loves their job and doesn't want to quit? I can imagine I wouldn't be too happy doing most of the chores if I was retired while my s/o could retire (and pick up his fair share of chores) but didn't? At that point work would be more like a hobby and not necessarily a more important hobby than those of the FIRE'd woman?
This is essentially the situation I am in. My DH could RE but he loves his job and has zero desire. We balance things by paying someone to clean our house, having groceries delivered and eating more take out than we should. I don’t mind cooking so I do 100% of the cooking. I also don’t mind laundry because I listen to a podcast while I’m doing it so I do 100% of that as well. My DH knows how much I hate dishes so we take turns and he drops our kids off at school most of the time so I don’t have to rush and get ready in the morning. I do more chores than him but the fact that he does the stuff I hate works for me. I quit working 3.5 months ago and I haven’t felt any shift in power yet. We make decisions together and he doesn’t seem to resent the free time I have. My biggest issue is going to be convincing him to retire when our kids graduate high school so we can travel more.
-
I just read an article in Dutch news about domestic abuse. Having encountered this in my life both as a victim (from a parent) a direct witness (when my mother was abused) and an indirect witness (two friends went through it in their marriages) I know domestic abuse happens not just in lower economic classes but everywhere in society. But what I noticed is that this article actually listed becoming FI as a strong trigger for domestic abuse where it hadn't happened previously, because some men feel so emasculated by a financially independent woman.
This is also in a nutshell what my friend went through, she was not FI but previously her husband was the breadwinner, then she started working again and she instantly made way more than he did. It hurt him very deeply and lead first to jealousy and rows, then to abuse, then to stalking. My feeling is their marriage wasn't great before this happened. I personally can't see this happening in my own situation, I'm hyper alert for any early warning signs of abusive behaviour and I've not come across them, but I wondered if that's something other women have been worried about. I had no idea that a woman becoming FI (in the FIRE sense) seperately from her husband happened so often that it had become officially listed as a trigger, but of course it happens quite a lot that when one person loses their job, the other starts to work more hours, and I suppose inheritances are not uncommon either. In my country it's pretty much standard practice that inheritances to not become part of the marital assets. Is this something any of you have ever worried about?
-
I don't worry about this, because my DH is not so driven by status and being masculin.
-
I'm grateful I don't think I have to worry about this either, but I'm always on alert. You never know even with the best of people how a trauma or health problem might change something and change a relationship. I don't want to get complacent.
But, I definitely see this risk from a prior relationship of my own. It was just a risk, but there were definitely some red flags around things that would make him feel emasculated. Our society is just so fucked up to raise boys to be so fragile and precarious in their self-worth. I feel pretty bad for them except for the fact that the people they take it out on suffer even more than they do.
And I absolutely agree that this is a problem that crosses economic class. Even though society has gotten better about encouraging and opening spaces to female achievement, it has not gotten much better (IMO) about the implicit ways girls are taught to defer to males, to please males, and to placate males. Therefore, even if you are doing something that is celebrated, a male in your life expressing displeasure means something is wrong with what you're doing and it's a priority to resolve that conflict. But this is the best time to prevent controlling and abusive behaviors before they get started.
Until all women, of all classes, aren't intimidated by male anger, this is a risk people need to be aware of.
-
I just read an article in Dutch news about domestic abuse. Having encountered this in my life both as a victim (from a parent) a direct witness (when my mother was abused) and an indirect witness (two friends went through it in their marriages) I know domestic abuse happens not just in lower economic classes but everywhere in society. But what I noticed is that this article actually listed becoming FI as a strong trigger for domestic abuse where it hadn't happened previously, because some men feel so emasculated by a financially independent woman.
This is also in a nutshell what my friend went through, she was not FI but previously her husband was the breadwinner, then she started working again and she instantly made way more than he did. It hurt him very deeply and lead first to jealousy and rows, then to abuse, then to stalking. My feeling is their marriage wasn't great before this happened. I personally can't see this happening in my own situation, I'm hyper alert for any early warning signs of abusive behaviour and I've not come across them, but I wondered if that's something other women have been worried about. I had no idea that a woman becoming FI (in the FIRE sense) seperately from her husband happened so often that it had become officially listed as a trigger, but of course it happens quite a lot that when one person loses their job, the other starts to work more hours, and I suppose inheritances are not uncommon either. In my country it's pretty much standard practice that inheritances to not become part of the marital assets. Is this something any of you have ever worried about?
My spouse will frequently joke about our salary difference, and I have never been worried about abusive behavior. But we clearly value each other's contributions to the household and finances equally regardless of who makes what and there is no chance that either of us will reach FI separately because all of our income/assets are marital and we've never had separate finances. I earn more now, but if I reduced my hours greatly at some point, he may be the breadwinner. Plus all non-financial contributions to the relationship are as highly valued as the financial contributions, as they should be (this cuts both ways). Neither of us is immune to being carried by the other - one of us could become disabled at any moment. This may not answer your question as there never, ever an excuse for abusive behavior. But I feel very strongly about being a unit as a couple, so that neither person should feel that their non-financial contributions are seen as being of lesser value.
-
I don't worry about this, because my DH is not so driven by status and being masculin.
Same, I have absolutely zero concerns of abuse from my DH, and I'm not sure it's possible to emasculate him.
He's an extremely confident man, but little of that confidence is fueled by traditional masculine value. He has no issue with me holding more traditionally masculine roles in our marriage, he rather enjoys observing people's sexist reactions to us, like when people ask why he took my last name, he'll often reply "would you ask her that?" or if he's feeling less confrontational he'll say "Have you met my wife? Wouldn't you?"
-
This thread has been interesting. One week from now, I'll be a retired woman with a husband still working. We haven't quite reached our FI number so he will stick it out a few more years while I take over more of the household work. Sounds like a good deal to me! I do most of our cooking anyway because I enjoy it. Cleaning doesn't really bother me, especially if I'm not trying to fit it around work responsibilities. My career got stared earlier than his and all our finances have always been shared. I contributed more early and he'll contribute more late. He also mostly likes his work so there shouldn't be a ton of resentment if I spend all day eating bonbons.
I'm not at all concerned about abuse. His mother worked at a domestic violence nonprofit for years, and she lives down the street. :) She raised her son well. We've always had the kind of relationship where we're a team and take care of each other. I'm honestly excited about the idea of being a "housewife." And after all the stresses we've gone through in the past year (covid, wildfires, 87-hour power outage, medical stuff, etc), I'm pretty sure we'll be fine with me quitting my terrible job!
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I have always been very independent and am currently the breadwinner in our marriage and the thought of this TERRIFIES me. My husband will continue to work bc he likes his job but also because it offers great insurance that covers us both. But I don't ever want to feel "stuck" or reliable on someone else.
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I have always been very independent and am currently the breadwinner in our marriage and the thought of this TERRIFIES me. My husband will continue to work bc he likes his job but also because it offers great insurance that covers us both. But I don't ever want to feel "stuck" or reliable on someone else.
I went into my career with that feeling after seeing the stress my mom went through while going back to school after a divorce. I did not want that to happen to me, and still don't. Now I feel equally "stuck" because everyone relies on me. I get a lot of anxiety about job security because I am the one that supports everyone and provides health insurance. This has led me to be overly cautious about some career decisions, including staying in bad situations longer than I should have because I needed the insurance and paycheck. My husband does not have the skills to get a high-paying job if something happens and I am unable to work. If I divorce him I will probably have to pay spousal support or child support, even if we split custody 50-50. I would like for him to go back to school and/or get a job so that I feel like I have a choice, even if I ultimately decide to stay with him.
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I have always been very independent and am currently the breadwinner in our marriage and the thought of this TERRIFIES me. My husband will continue to work bc he likes his job but also because it offers great insurance that covers us both. But I don't ever want to feel "stuck" or reliable on someone else.
I can tell you from my personal experience having been a ferociously independent woman, and the main breadwinner in my marriage, it's really a non issue if your partner is cool.
My DH just keeps telling me to simmer down because I've worked enough for multiple lifetimes and he's just catching up with me. This morning he said "I fucked off to Europe in my summers during undergrad and spent the rest of the time high and occasionally going to class, you worked 100 hour weeks, took extra courses and studied on Friday nights. You've always sucked at resting, so simmer down and get started on the backlog of chilling out that you've been neglecting your entire life. The world will still be there to save tomorrow, don't worry, we won't fuck it up too badly in the meantime."
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I have always been very independent and am currently the breadwinner in our marriage and the thought of this TERRIFIES me. My husband will continue to work bc he likes his job but also because it offers great insurance that covers us both. But I don't ever want to feel "stuck" or reliable on someone else.
I can tell you from my personal experience having been a ferociously independent woman, and the main breadwinner in my marriage, it's really a non issue if your partner is cool.
My DH just keeps telling me to simmer down because I've worked enough for multiple lifetimes and he's just catching up with me. This morning he said "I fucked off to Europe in my summers during undergrad and spent the rest of the time high and occasionally going to class, you worked 100 hour weeks, took extra courses and studied on Friday nights. You've always sucked at resting, so simmer down and get started on the backlog of chilling out that you've been neglecting your entire life. The world will still be there to save tomorrow, don't worry, we won't fuck it up too badly in the meantime."
Aww, what a great guy! LOL @Simmer down..... I know my worry is 100% mine. Although a man of few words, my husband is similar.
-
I think this is a pretty wise question. While I believe the folks who say this hasn't been an issue in their marriage, I suspect they are unicorns.
I am not FIRED but part of our family plan is eventually for me to leave my job while DH still works. One of the things that has me nervous about it is the balance of power. I noticed a shift when I began a remote work job a decade ago while I was supporting DH through another graduate degree and career change. It got worse with kids, and COVID has exacerbated it further. I have always been the main breadwinner and do more than 50% of house stuff (though DH contributes to household chores far more than either of our fathers ever did).
The world is just built for men's jobs to be more "important" and fighting the status quo is really hard. More than just hard, I find fighting the status quo to be exhausting. I'd say you have to have the discussions up front, and then keep openly communicating about what you agreed to. DH and I have serious and uncomfortable discussions about this pretty regularly (we've been doing this for a decade) and it STILL REVERTS to an imbalance of power.
For what it is worth - while StarHus and I have always said we are committed to equality in our marriage we were both raised in families that operated on traditional gender roles, so I suspect we find it harder to break the patterns than people who were raised differently.
I have always been very independent and am currently the breadwinner in our marriage and the thought of this TERRIFIES me. My husband will continue to work bc he likes his job but also because it offers great insurance that covers us both. But I don't ever want to feel "stuck" or reliable on someone else.
I can tell you from my personal experience having been a ferociously independent woman, and the main breadwinner in my marriage, it's really a non issue if your partner is cool.
My DH just keeps telling me to simmer down because I've worked enough for multiple lifetimes and he's just catching up with me. This morning he said "I fucked off to Europe in my summers during undergrad and spent the rest of the time high and occasionally going to class, you worked 100 hour weeks, took extra courses and studied on Friday nights. You've always sucked at resting, so simmer down and get started on the backlog of chilling out that you've been neglecting your entire life. The world will still be there to save tomorrow, don't worry, we won't fuck it up too badly in the meantime."
Aww, what a great guy! LOL @Simmer down..... I know my worry is 100% mine. Although a man of few words, my husband is similar.
What's the basis of the fear then?
Does it feel like a legitimate fear, or an irrational fear?
-
probably irrational fear, but really, you never know what tomorrow brings I guess.