This guest post from Mandy Walker is part of the “reader stories” feature at Get Rich Slowly. Some stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. These stories feature folks from all levels of financial maturity and with all sorts of incomes. Mandy writes the blog Since My Divorce, a collection of stories mostly from women about life after divorce — the challenges, the hardships, the accomplishments and the joys. She now realizes that her divorce was part of a much larger journey about learning to honor her feelings.
In January 2006, I sat in a board meeting for a non-profit health clinic and listened as one my fellow board members told us she was getting divorced after more than twenty years of marriage. “I’ve decided that if I have to support my husband for the rest of my life, I may as well be divorced and be happy,” she said.
For the next few weeks, her words reverberated in my head. I had been married for almost sixteen years. To the outside world, we could be the perfect couple:
- Beautiful home
- Nice neighborhood
- Two beautiful children
- Ski house
- Overseas vacations
- And so on
I’d taken a severance package from my corporate job in financial services a couple of years before and was taking some time off contemplating a second career as a journalist/writer. He was a teacher, but had been a stay-at-home dad for a few years while looking for something new.
From the inside however, it was struggle, a common story of two people who used to love each other who had grown apart. Until then, though, I couldn’t bring myself to consider divorce. No one in my family had been divorced, and I had no divorced friends. I had no role model. But I kept hearing my friend. I wanted to be happy too. What was holding me back?
I had been the primary breadwinner during our entre marriage. My husband had worked most of the time, but didn’t contribute to the household expenses. At some point many years ago, I got tired of reminding him to make his agreed payment, and so just let it go. Now it festered. If we divorced, that would mean giving half of all “our” assets to him. That could mean giving up on retiring early, giving up half the retirement nest egg, giving up the large house, giving up the no-budget lifestyle, and maybe even giving up on going to journalism school.
But still those words echoed — I just wanted to be happy.
Running the numbers
As the household bill-payer, I knew everything about our finances, so I put all our assets into a spreadsheet, estimated the current values, and what it would look split everything in half. I’ve used Quicken for many years, so I knew what our monthly expenses were, and from there I created a budget for myself — something I hadn’t had for many years. I compared that to what would be my half of the assets. I started to think that maybe this wasn’t so impossible after all.
No, I wouldn’t be able to keep the house. But I didn’t want the house — it was too big. My two children and I didn’t need 5,500 square feet and an acre of yard. I didn’t want the expense or responsibility of maintaining it. A smaller house in the same town would be better for us and would lower my mortgage expense. I didn’t want the ski house either. Those ski weekends had come to be work rather than leisure.
No, I wouldn’t be able to retire early, but if I was able to negotiate some additional funds in a settlement, I would be able to finish my Master’s degree and build a second career. It would allow me to work part time until our children were through high school, which I felt was important to their well-being (and was something I really wanted to do, having worked full-time even when they were infants). Yes, it would probably mean working until at least normal retirement age, but that didn’t even seem like a sacrifice.
The assets we had would certainly provide both of us with the wherewithal to cover expenses related to the children, but it would mean negotiating child-support payments each month. The thought of that produced a knot in the pit of my stomach. If I hadn’t been able to get my husband to make his agreed household contribution during our marriage, how would I deal with delayed and haphazard child support? I knew it would be a legal arrangement and there would be legal recourse but I’d come to realize I wasn’t good with conflict.
So again, I turned to Excel. I’m not sure what made me think of this, but I decided to project what the children’s expenses would be through the end of high school and college. I asked our financial adviser what I should assume for college expenses ($40,000 per year) and an inflation factor. Then I took the net present value of that large amount (less the value of their 529 College savings plans) and that was what I proposed to set aside in a trust to cover the children’s expenses.
Once I figured out how to protect the financial resources for the children, virtually all of the resistance and reluctance I’d felt to dividing the assets disappeared. Divorce indeed became a possibility.
According to my attorney, the trust was an unusual arrangement but there was provision for it under Colorado State law, and while there was inevitably some negotiating around the division of assets, my husband agreed with the concepts. So, how has it worked in practice?
How’s the children’s trust working?
I love the children’s trust. So far, it’s spared me what seems to be the typical child-support wrangling. My ex and I don’t discuss normal day-to-day expenses, and for non-routine expenses we generally see eye-to-eye. That’s pretty much the same approach to finances as during our marriage. I don’t mind that; it makes my life easy.
In practical terms, the bulk of the money is in mutual funds within a brokerage account. Day-to-day expenses are drawn from a checking account funded with periodic withdrawals from the brokerage account. I keep four to five months of expenses in a cash account within the brokerage account. That leaves enough flexibility to deal with unpredictable expense spikes so common with children.
The bad news is that because of the financial crisis, the trust is not likely to last until both children are through college. However, thanks to some extra cushioning, the trust fund will probably cover each child until they graduate high school — my daughter in 2011, my son in 2014. Their 529s will then kick in for college. Almost certainly, there won’t be enough. And while that’s not what I’d planned, I’ve come to embrace the idea that my kids will benefit from having some student loans.
Where am I now?
My first reaction to being divorced — in school and freelancing — was to cut back on absolutely everything and to agonize over purchases that weren’t clearly essential. Each month, I’d just draw from my brokerage account what I needed to cover what I had spent. You’d think that would be a great, care-free way of living, but I was paranoid my nest egg would run out before I had established my second career and an earnings stream. In many ways, I was being irrational.
What helped has been to establish a regular monthly income that comes from my brokerage account to my checking account. Again, I used my Quicken data to figure out a budget and the monthly amount. (Interestingly it’s right around $75,000 a year.) This has created certainty, much like getting a regular paycheck, and makes me feel comfortable. I can take my savings balance, divide it by the monthly amount, and figure out roughly how much longer I can support myself. I can still draw additional amounts for unforeseen expenses or splurges, but I do so being able to project the consequences.
While an adjustment, being on a fixed income is actually refreshing. I’m more mindful of my purchases, but don’t feel it’s a hardship. There’s so much I’ve been able to cut back on and not miss. The mail-order catalogs no longer fill the recycling bin, and my house is less cluttered. These days I use coupons at the grocery store, and I enjoy seeing how high I can get the percentage of savings. I’m more of a comparison shopper, too, and less impulsive. That makes me feel I’m actually a better decision maker now.
The financial crisis put a major dent in my savings, as well as the children’s trust. That, the loss of my health insurance once I graduated, and the difficulty of getting well-paying freelance work, motivated me to find part-time work. I found a great twenty-hour a week position at the nearby university. My financial adviser calls it my “tranquilizer” job. And yes, the benefits give me peace-of-mind, and the additional income helps to stretch out my back to work deadline.
I work in the mornings so I’m able to be home in the afternoons when my kids are done with school and ready for various after-school activities.
Looking to the future
Thanks to an unexpected small inheritance, my savings should last me another three years, at which time my son will be a high school senior. However, with my daughter off to college next year and my son likely driving himself, I’m thinking of returning to full-time work by January 2011. This is very appealing: It would leave me with a healthy emergency fund, it would give me the earnings to start paying off my mortgage faster, and I would likely still be able to retire by sixty-five.
Clearly I won’t be retiring early, but I have no regrets about that. What’s more important to me is being able to be at home in the afternoon when my children come home from school. And I’m happy. At times I’m euphoric. I can be walking to work and find myself smiling for no particular reason. I love my life now — and I couldn’t say that before.
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Interesting. I guess as it should be this article is simply about money. I don’t feel any sympathy for the author though. It leaves me wondering why the father didn’t get the kids. He was a stay at home dad after all and may have been closer to them. The comment that she likes being home in the afternoon when her ‘kids’ get home from school is interesting too. They might have liked that when they were young but if they are like most kids there is not a lot of quality time happening those afternoons while they are teenagers. (They may need a ride now and then) If I had been the father I’d have been fighting for custody of the kids.
If the article teaches anything it is that it is useful to use products like Quicken to track spending – something far too few people do.
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Good for you- your happiness and your children’s futures are the most important thing. You can have all the awful middle class aspirations (big house, holiday home, 3 cars etc) and still not be rich if you’re dead on the inside.
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“…his agreed household contribution…”
It sounds like the whole cause of your divorce was that you didn’t combine accounts. Why did you just put both your paychecks into one checking account?
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Not contributing to household expenses — what a jerk! Congratulations on freeing yourself from that burden while simultaneously protecting your kids and planning your own new career & life.
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I agree with Dangerman, you phocus your post on the financial consequences of divorce and mention nothing about feelings.
However, I do not understand there were no feelings involved. Rather, I like the fresh approach, you only phocus on the practical aspects and leaving the usual anger and pain out of the post.
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Great post. A divorce may seem simple to others if it’s the “right” thing to do, but I had no idea about all the financial consequences of doing.
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That’s awesome that you are so comfortable with your divorce. How do your kids feel about it?
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“I’ve decided that if I have to support my husband for the rest of my life, I may as well be divorced and be happy,”
And someone who says that is your role model? Wow…..
Isn’t marriage supposed to be, where the couple supports each other in times of hardship.
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Congrats on your new found happiness. It sounds like you have made a complete life-overhaul in addition to getting divorced.
I am just curious and not judging, did you consider altering your job and such before getting divorced to see if that was the true source of your unhappiness? I know for me personally when I ended a job I hated, my entire outlook changed.
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This is a good article about how to take a logical look at finances. Whether its a divorce, time off, retirement, etc, you lay out a good story for the importance of putting some time into understanding all the numbers and making an informed decision.
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For god’s sake Dangerman, it’s a blog post, I think we can assume it was a little more complicated than that. Interesting info on the trust versus support. Congrats OP – it’s a great thing to say you love you life right now!
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Your story is inspiring to many. So many of us are living the same life and are afraid to challenge what we have come to know. My story as you know is similar and I am happy to have made the choice I made to get divorced. Thank you for sharing your story.
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Yikes! If any male wrote this story he would be abandoning his family! Let’s see, primary bread winner, stay at home parent. That is many families in the country. It’s just usually reversed gender roles from this situation. I know there are tons of divorces each year, but as a child of a divorce, it shouldn’t be sensationalized.
Hopefully this is a Halloween tease and it’s a joke that shouldn’t have been included on this site.
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I know everyone doesn’t feel this way, but as someone who put herself as a single mom through college and grad school with work study, outside part time jobs, scholarships and loans, it amazes me that people think their kids have to have a full-free ride through college. My route was indeed very hard, but I got a LOT more out of my education than the trust-fund party kids. I would suggest to the writer that she not worry too much about her kids having to take out loans, or even get part time jobs. If they’re really interested in education, it won’t hurt and it might enhance their learning. Good article!
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I’m not judging the writer, as I’m very sure that there was much more to the divorce than who pays what. But I was bothered by the phrase from a colleague about paying for someone else over the course of her career. Would most people see that positively if the gender were switched? “I’m tired of paying for my stay at home wife’s expenses while she watches the kids. I might as well get divorced and be happy”. I doubt it. To be fair, it’s hard to tell from a quick quote if there was more to the conversation, though.
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“Isn’t marriage supposed to be, where the couple supports each other in times of hardship.”
Yes, but that was precisely the problem in her situation. SHE was the one doing all the supporting, and it wasn’t a two-way street.
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…My husband had worked most of the time, but didn’t contribute to the household expenses…
Oh, this says it all. How selfish! For either spouse to work but not share their money with the family is just sick. Good for the writer to get out of that marriage.
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sounds like your husband was not contributing as much to the marriage as you were, so as far as joining your accounts, you did the right thing.. otherwise he may have spent your money as well..
Congrats on doing what was right for you, I’m glad that it wasn’t anything earth-shattering. Ignore the other negative comments – I love how people judge without understanding where you are coming from..
The only thing that matters is that you made a right choice for yourself and your children.. Everything else is noise
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Barring abuse, divorce is rarely better for the life long well-being of children. This woman chose to “honor” her feelings rather than her moral responsibility to her kids. I’m not saying never divorce, but rather wait until the kids are adults.
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I’m slightly upset that a divorce could be decided over a balanced budget. I’m pretty sure you had several good reasons to break up, but did you omit the part where you confronted your husband about the crisis (your needs, your unhappiness and so on) and at least gave him a chance to adjust before it’s too late?
luigi
(btw, congratulations for your honesty and your great blog!)
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Cheryl, that is simply not true. Kids are better off in a happy, safe environment. Kids of any age sense tension and discord in the household and it affects them. My life improved greatly when my parents finally separated and we learned what peace and harmony were.
Anyway, good for you! I like the trust idea – it sounds like you took the children’s expenses “off the top” of the assets you had built. This way you don’t have to count on your ex (or soon to be ex?) to pay you on an ongoing basis – and you don’t have to pay him.
Once you finish your degree, might you make enough money to help out with some tuition during the years the kids are in school? Perhaps working full-time would help with that, but I would understand wanting to be home in the afternoons if that’s your preference.
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Considering there was no abuse and no cheating, I fail to see why a marriage counseler wasn’t first considered? “Growing apart” is both your faults, and it doesn’t sound like you even tried to grow together again, you instead went straight to trying divorce. There is nothing in this article that suggests you wouldn’t have been happy if you had worked on your marriage. Not very inspiring, someone who just gives up on their marriage because they were in a rut and the Excel spreadsheet said it was okay.
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I’m saddened to see so many people questioning Mandy’s reasons for her divorce rather than discussing the financial side of her story.
@Cheryl, I have to respectfully disagree. I’m a child of parents who should have divorced – they chose to “stay together for the kids” and it was miserable. Their relationship isn’t abusive and they put my sister and I first growing up (I suspect that was part of the problem), but they were (and still are) bitterly unhappy and that affected our entire family life. I remember hoping so badly that they would divorce when I was in high school, so that maybe they would be happier. The year they spent separated was the closest I’ve ever seen either of them to being even remotely happy…and it was heartbreaking when they sort of reconciled (now isn’t that counterintuitive?).
Children are more sensitive that adults seem to give them credit for…they know when their parents’ relationship isn’t working.
I’m in my 20s now, and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen either of my parents truly happy…and it breaks my heart. Looking back on my high school years I don’t have fond memories of my family being together and doing wonderful family things…I just remember we were all miserable and stuck in a miserable situation because my parents bought into the idea that you “should stay together for the kids”
If they had divorced maybe they would have had the chance to find happiness. Seeing my parents happy is a gift I would give almost anything to see.
Mandy, thank you for your story. I think your children are very lucky to have such a courageous woman for a mother.
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I say WELL DONE. If you are happy with yourself and your life, you will be a much better mother to your children than if you were unhappy and just tolerating life for their sake. Staying together “for the sake of the kids” is NOT helpful if the parents are unhappy, fighting, or constantly stressed.
Making a plan for your financial future was very responsible and proactive, and having an amicable divorce will make sure you have a smooth coparenting relationship, which will benefit your children. Good job.
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@Cheryl: Speaking from experience, no, it isn’t. Kids are smarter than most people give them credit for, they can tell that their parents are miserable. It’s better to just end the pretense and give both parents a shot at genuine happiness rather than dragging the whole family through years of misery because of some ridiculous notion about staying together for the chyyyyyldruuuun.
@OP: Thanks for a great article!
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Sounds like you made a tough decision and made it work. Good for you. If nothing else, over the years, I have learned that no one knows what is going on in another couple’s marriage and that means I can’t judge. I suspect that the reference to not paying the agreed upon amount was not necessarily the cause of the divorce, but there is no reason to go into the reasons in a public forum. Especially with kids involved. And I have watched, within our family, a situation where staying together for the children’s sake was creating real issues for those children. So, I’m glad you figured out what was important for you and that you and your ex seem to have been able to put the kids’ needs first — and I’m glad that you all had the assets to divide in the first place. Good luck.
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Congrats on working out a solution that saves the kids from the bulk of the usual post-divorce bickering. I like to see unique solutions to these problems.
I have a friend that when he and his wife divorced, they decided to keep the house in a trust in their kids names. The kids would live in the house, go to the same school etc, and the parents would take turns living at the house, rather than shuttling the kids back and forth between two separate homes.
Let’s face it, when divorces turn into bickering, the children lose the most and the lawyers gain the most.
Bob L
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It’s my opinion that marriage in general is a poor idea. There is no valid reason in our modern life that I can see to get married. I understand that if you’re of a particular religious or cultural belief, or if you’re pressured by family, it may be a hard road to travel but you can indeed “live in sin” for your life and be perfectly fine. There’s nothing wrong with lifelong cohabitation and I see no positive reason to bring the government and religion into it. Some people counter this argument by positing “taxes” as a reason but I say if you’re getting married for tax purposes, you’ll be paying a lot more than you’ll save down the line to your divorce lawyer.
So what’s left? Love? Commitment? Why do you need an official document to have this? Why do you need outside validation of government or religion? Why can’t you make that commitment in your heart? The possible negatives far outweigh any outdated idea of what marriage is. As we see in this story, Mandy feels slighted that half of the income she earned goes to her husband in divorce. For her, marriage was a poor financial decision… probably the poorest. “But she should have gotten a pre-nup,” you might say. A pre-nup? Commitment, indeed.
Marriage only makes it more difficult to split if the relationship comes to a natural end and the winners are always the lawyers. It unnecessarily brings the government even further into our lives. Forget the political argument that allowing homosexuals to get married will ruin the institution of marriage — that ship has already sailed with so many heterosexual people so flippantly getting divorces (as seemingly demonstrated in the story above).
I choose to opt out of that mess.
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Given that I don’t know the WHOLE story of this woman’s marriage, just what’s presented in a ~1000 word blog post, I’m not inclined to sit in judgment of her decision to divorce. This is, after all, a personal finance blog and not a church confessional.
What I focused on was how anomalous her situation was financially compared to most female divorcees. Not many women have the luxury of a ski house or a financial planner to consider when considering a divorce.
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Thank you for a well-thought out post.
I also do not know the whole story, but it seems to ne that Mandy thought very hard about her situation. She ran the numbers and figured out what she could and could not do. She had a plan and put it into place. Mandy honored her feelings, BUT, she considered her responsibilities to her children before she made any moves.
Good for you, Mandy, and best of luck in your future.
Beverley
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this all sounds like a middle-age crisis framed as a personal finance blog post. i thought mending one’s finances required taking personal responsibility and not blaming others (the so-called lazy bum husband)?!?!?
going to great lengths to set up a trust to protect the kids seems to be just a distraction away from the years of personal irresponsibility in maintaining relationships necessary to maintain happiness.
that excel seemed to agree doesn’t change the bitter taste in my mouth as a reader.
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Initially I didn’t have anything to say, because this situation is so anomalous, as Sean in #24 says.
But after talking with my husband about it (while snuggling this morning– no divorce on our horizon!), he pointed out that this is a really good example of how having significant savings and financial resources can smooth out the process of even something like a divorce. The reason (I assume) that most people get settlements with monthly child support is that most people can’t come up with a net present value settlement at the time of divorce.
To be able to do that takes a lot of stress out of an already stressful situation. Similarly being able to downsize from a 5,500 sq ft house to something reasonable. And so on. The trade-offs one makes during an emergency such as this when one has been saving for financial independence and has those resources are much smaller than the trade-offs an average family has to make.
So there is a positive lesson to be gained… even if you’re not saving for a specific goal, it’s nice to have a lot extra in the bank. You may need it some day.
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Good luck to you and the kids.
$75,000 a years sounds like a large budget, you probably want to live a little less large and save more.
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@ those chastising cheryl, the research available on the subject of divorce is quite definitive. children of divorced parents have higher rates of substance abuse, depression, eating disorders, and have much higher rates of divorce, themselves. they tend to have more distant relationships with both parents after the divorce. parents spend considerably less time with their children post-divorce; this likely has to do with parents pursuing “happiness” and “dreams.”
tying this into personal finance, all those things have real-world costs associated with them that i doubt quicken accounted for when the original poster plugged her numbers into the spreadsheet. separate households cost more money and use more of our earth’s ever dwindling resources. this is all irrefutable.
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Where did *any* of the money in this story coming from?
It says:
“I’d taken a severance package … a couple of years before and was taking some time off… He … had been a stay-at-home dad for a few years while looking for something new.”
It sounds like *neither* of the parties in this story had worked for the last several years, and they were both living off of (and still are, apparently) a giant savings account.
I’m trying to stay out of the discussion about the divorce, but I essentially agree with Eric in comment 13. I’m sure the story was simplified to fit into a blog post, though.
Really, the strangest part of the story is that *nobody* seems to have any income in it, yet they’ve got a 5,500 square foot house, withdrawing from savings at a rate of $75k/year is considered perfectly reasonable, and putting 40k/year/child aside for college was a no brainer.
Where did all this money come from? This doesn’t sound even remotely close to most people’s financial situations.
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Dink, not marrying may work out well for the bread-winner or in a couple where both parties put their careers first. If the couple decides that one party should give up or seriously limit his/her career to raise children or support their partner’s career, as is often natural over the course of a long-term relationship if there are children or a high-profile career involved, marriage offers a lot of protections.
Divorce courts recognize that both parties contribute to the life a couple builds, even if one party is the primary financial provider. It’s as simple as recognizing that one party gave something up in reliance on the marriage contract. I would never live with and build a life with someone to whom I was not married.
On a different note, we’re not here to hold a referendum on whether or not the author of this post should have gotten a divorce. It isn’t possible or reasonable for us to determine that, anyway, so why try?
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I just can’t really imagine “crunching the numbers” on my marriage to see if divorce is a good option. When I married, we made vows to each other. Lifelong Vows.
Its so sad to see people to split over money(and I’m sure other problems) when there are such good tools out there to enrich marriages and life.
I think a lot of people marry to get something out, instead of pouring into their spouse. And yes, that goes for both spouses!
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Nothing in this story really adds up. It either needs to be three times as long, so we can really understand what is going on, or it needs to be 1/3 as long, and just deal with the financial considerations of putting children through college while on a fixed income.
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You know, I really shouldn’t have read the comments. I hate it when I do that. What I really liked about this article is that it focused on the feeling of being trapped by the numbers, and about the blogger’s ability to figure out a way take that out of the equation. Once the financial issues of divorce was out of the picture, she was able to evaluate it as an option on the relationship levels. I would never want to stay married because my husband and I were afraid of what it would cost to be divorced.
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Happiness is more important than money, or even retiring early, any day of the week…
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Contrary to what some of you think, this post is not meant to glorify divorce or to present it as merely a financial decision. When I met Mandy in July and she told me her story, I asked her to write about it, but from a financial perspective. Get Rich Slowly is a site about money, not about relationships. Sure, relationships are a huge part of managing finances, but this is not the place to delve into the “he said, she said” aspect of something like this.
I ask you to accept on faith that Mandy did what she thought was best for her family, including the children. That’s what I’ve done. And that’s what I do whenever I publish a reader story. I trust that the writer is making the best decision they can.
I agree with Tyler (#35) that there’s an awful lot of money left unexplained here, but even that doesn’t bother me. I publish stories from people who struggle to get by, and I also publish stories from people who never have to work again, if that’s what they want.
So, I guess what I’m saying is: This post is not a referendum on divorce. Nobody’s saying divorce is an ideal to be strived for. Mandy was in a position where she felt trapped, and part of that was because her husband wasn’t contributing to the financial side of the marriage. This is her story about how she coped with the financial aspect of divorce. Let’s focus our discussion on that, and not about whether divorce is right or wrong.
I will continue to delete comments that are merely abusive and not constructive.
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I think it is great that you were able to figure out what to do and come up with a solution.
Question – you mention that your husband worked for most of the time you were together, but never contributed any money?
I find this astounding – why didn’t you do something when this started? Or after a couple of years?
Mike
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So husbands with stay at home mothers for their wives should divorce them because they aren’t contributing financially to the household? What then, if my husband loses his job and takes a pay cut in his next, I should divorce him because I am sad I have to spend more money than he does to keep our ski house? If when we retire, my 401k has more money than his, I should divorce him? Sorry, I don’t see how this article addresses dealing with a spouse not contributing to the financial side of marriage, especially considering this family had tons of money and NEITHER had a job at the time she started considering divorce, he because he was the stay at home father and she because she didn’t know what job she wanted? At least he wasn’t working because he was a stay at home parent. If that was what this article was supposed to be about, it fell very very short. If a spouse won’t contribute to the household expenses, set up automatic withdrawal and find out WHY he won’t. She implied he would give the money once reminded so the automatic withdrawl seems from this article to be all she needed…not a divorce years later. You both had overseas vacations and 2 nice houses, what the heck was he spending his money from a teacher’s salary on that somehow was making you live a lesser life? This story just doesn’t make sense and is missing so much that it doesn’t really have a moral other than “yay divorce” which is why many of the commenters are commenting on that.
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Another woman I know is struggling with a relatively new marriage, because her husband has contracted some health issues which prevent him from working, which has cut their budget sharply and shifted the onus of supporting the household onto her. I can’t offer more insight than that, only that I feel her agony like a knife in my own heart when she speaks of her marriage and her commitment to keeping it together. She is supporting her husband, at the expense of a great deal of her own happiness.
I also broke up with my boyfriend many years ago, after he quit his job to focus exclusively on school. I had been building a career for a couple years by the time things got to the breaking point, and I was routinely disgusted by his childishness and immaturity while I learned to stand on my own two feet as an adult to the point where I couldn’t be intimate with him. We got back together about a year and a half ago, and now that I’m struggling professionally (he’s still in school, but back to work and in line for a full-time position) he couldn’t be kinder or more supportive.
I don’t think Mandy was wrong to divorce her husband, nor do I think my friend or I were wrong to break up with our boyfriends. We were miserable, our libidos curtailed into nothingness by lack of attraction to our lovers. My story has a happy reunion in it, but it came after two years of separation in which we both had to learn hard lessons about ourselves and our feelings, as well as a period of very low trust when we reunited. He still jumps to the conclusion that I’ve found someone else again and am about to dump him if I act angry, even 18 months later. It’s agonizing to me, because I’ve always tried to explain that my throwing him over for someone else was the symptom of my inability to effect positive change in our relationship culture, and not the cause of me breaking it off; furthermore, I hate what I did and avoid engaging in certain behaviors to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Still, this question haunts me – why is male underachievement so hard to tolerate on our parts? Why is it so much more normal for women to quit their jobs to stay at home with the children? (Is it more normal?) As a feminist and a gender egalitarian, it offends my deepest principles to think that a woman cannot be a happy bread-winner or head of a household, or that a man cannot stay at home and still be a valued member of a marriage or a relationship. But as a denizen of this universe we call reality, I find that the actual shape of things is quite different, and I don’t know what to think.
Thank you, Mandy, for being brave enough to tell your story and to give us all food for thought.
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Thank you J.D. The OP bashing was getting out of hand. I feel Mandy’s story came across as thoughtful and responsible. Current and future finances is a HUGE part of splitting up a family. If it isn’t planned for there will be unpleasant suprises for everyone.
I would also like to say that any partner who refuses to contribute to the family financial pot is probably not contributing in many other ways, too. (psychological, emotional)
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JD- it is impossible to separate the financial from the ethical. they are far too intimately intertwined to pretend they’re not connected. you opened the door to criticism of a poorly reasoned blog post that leaves out salient details important to learning anything about the process of assuming financial responsibility. all that is left is for readers to comment on the errant reasoning when details about the basics numbers aren’t presented.
this is your fault. edit the reader contributed blogs better if you want the content to be considered as separate from the implications.
also, if you simply wanted the financial aspects of divorce considered, then why didn’t you edit out the husband-bashing which clearly has nothing to do with the basic accounting? the husband is unable to respond and present his side of things. i bet $1000 that his side of things is vastly different from hers.
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There are a few things that bother me about this post. First, the dollars aren’t explained at all. Second, if the genders were reversed and this were a man divorcing a woman for not financially contributing to the marriage and then the man took the kids away, the majority of the posts would be whinging and complaining about the poster and the justice system. Third, it’s hard to relate to this post at all. Ski house? Sorry but that puts her asset base above 98% if the population. I don’t feel that this post was a good choice for GRS.
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Mandy,
Thank you for making you guest blog on a personal finance website about your personal finances. You have every right to gloss over the details surrounding one of your most difficult decisions, especially in a public forum.
I am a child of divorce, as are most of my friends and we can all agree, divorce is hard on children. So is watching your parents marriage fall apart, knowing that you are the reason your parents are holding on to a dead and miserable relationship. The realization that your parents really don’t love each other is hard, and is generally an epiphany separate from the realization that their marriage doesn’t work.
Life is hard, you can’t shelter your kids from all of it. Mandy, I hope you are as strong and sensible as you sound in this post. If you are, the comments left here won’t really matter, positive or negative, so I say this mostly to the rest of the commenters.
The best thing that I learned from my parents divorce is that it’s never to late to be happy. My parents divorce taught me about what a good relationship is not. It’s true, I was not very close to my parents after the divorce, and we did grow apart. But it’s not the growing apart that kills a relationship, it’s the realization that growing together is killing you.
Good job Mandy, your writing is focused and insightful, and your personal finance decisions are sound. Best of luck to you in your future writing endeavors. And yes, taking some loans on for your education is good for you. I’ve paid back 20% of my 30k and I graduated less than 2 years ago. I feel great about it and I’ve learned so much in the process.
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I just have to make a comment on #1′s comment about being home in the afternoon when kids are older. With older children, the time between when school gets out and parents get home is the time when kids get into trouble. To me, being home then makes more sense than being home when a child is younger and will be supervised in an after-school program or at a daycare center.
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@Sam (#46)
I agree that I ought to have been more attuned to the fact that this would raise hackles. You’re right that I should have flexed my editor muscles more. I knew that some folks would be upset, but I didn’t realize they’d attack Mandy so much. Why didn’t this occur to me?
Well, because I’ve known a few friends in similar relationships. They work hard, but for whatever reasons have spouses who aren’t able or aren’t willing to contribute (whether financially, emotionally, or whatever). There are certain relationships where one partner carries the bulk of the burden. These are unhealthy relationships. In some cases, I see these couples having children, and that just makes matters worse.
So, Mandy’s story didn’t seem out-of-the-ordinary to me. Nor did it seem like Mandy was doing anything wrong. (It still doesn’t. In fact, I think she did the right thing.) Sure, we don’t have all of the information here, but I don’t feel like she bashed her ex-husband in any way. In fact, I thought she was pretty respectful toward him in the post. (And of course his side of things would be different than hers. It always is, right? But this is Mandy’s story, not his.)
I understand that for some people divorce is forbidden territory. And I’m not trying to say that people should use divorce as an easy way out. But divorces do happen, and they have financial implications. This is the story of one divorce and the financial aspects of it.
Anyhow, I think it’s clear from the comments that some people disapprove of Mandy’s actions, but just as many (or more) think she did the right thing. What I want to hear about is how other people have dealt with the financial implications of divorce. I’ve had a few friends go through divorce, and I know it’s a sticky business for everyone (except the lawyers)…
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