Obviously, you have not been a college student in recent years. Listing ways students can make money through college is, at best, arbitrary. Including the Pell Grant in that list, replying to a woman whom we can all agree is wealthy, is uninformed. The Pell Grant is awarded to students who are in greatest need of financial aid. A friend of mine in college received the Pell Grant because she, as a waitress, made more money than her parents. As a graduate student in a one income household making around $30k/year, I don’t qualify for federal aid. Those kids would never qualify for the Pell Grant (unless circumstances drastically changed). Yes, I understand you provided the list to show examples of how students can pay for school on their own.

And why don’t rich people recycle, again? That part was also unclear to me…because one is rich, they certainly can’t be like the average person and buy secondhand and recycle? What?

BUT – Ya, you knew there was a but coming. After we divorced I moved back to Colorado (from Georgia where I lived with my husband) where I was born and raised. The other fact we learned from the divorce is where our priorities are, and how we took so much for granted. We figured out what was important to us, and realized, we were each others top priorities as distance often brings about longing. Than we started to question if we should have gotten divorced at all, and there is an easy answer for that. We both feel we made a mistake, and there is still 2,000 miles between us.

I bought a house when I moved back to Colorado so I’m financially grounded here in Colorado. His job grounds him in Georgia (doesn’t want to quit, jobs are too hard to find). I think we jumped the gun on the divorce since our relationship has never been better than it is right now. I think, at least in my situation, we should have done a trial separation (or legal separation) and marriage counseling instead of a divorce. We were running on emotion when we made that decision, not logic, and it’s something that’s been a life lesson.

You weren’t brave enough to use the same name on Hawaiian Libertarian as you did on this site?

Weak. Stand up for your views. Be consistent and don’t hide your (online) identity when jumping from site to site.

Also, it sounds a little like a mid-life crisis to me. This woman spent her entire adult life chasing the American dream. Accumulating wealth in various forms, and keeping pace with the Jones’. She suddenly realizes she still isn’t happy despite what she has but hasn’t fully made the connection that money won’t fix it. She tries to hide money away from her husband in the form of a trust for her kids. She doesn’t want to share half of her wealth with her husband because she doesn’t think he deserves it. Let me say this: Do you think the husband would have approached his career the same way had he not been married with kids? He made a sacrifice in the form of his career so that his kids could be better cared for and so his wife could continue her desired career path. I think its criminal to deny him his fair share just because his yearly income was smaller than the wife’s. And now the husband’s earning potential is handicapped by the fact that he hasn’t been able to advance his career in the same way his wife did. It takes a lot of trust and faith in your partner to do what the husband did. And now it’s biting him in the butt.

She also decided to change careers. So clearly multiple aspects of the wife’s life were contributing to her unhappiness. If it had been me, I would have made the career change first to see if that was enough to make me happy before persuing a divorce. I am not against all divorces, but this one is particularly disturbing to me. What makes this worse to me is that it seemed like she made the decision without talking to him about it at all. Did he even see it coming? Maybe he could have made a change.

I do have a comment on the story though: Mandy does not make much mention of her legal expenses. I applaud both her and her ex for going the collaborative route. Unless your spouse is really abusive, this is where you should end up. The reality for most divorcees is that they will disagree on at least one thing enough to end up in Court. This is an expense that should enjoy serious consideration in the calculations of anyone contemplating divorce. While a “quick” divorce will take up to 6 months a divorce involving contested custody or support issues can easily last 2 to 3 years.

I’m sure no one knows why Mandy really divorced her husband. I am sure there is a lot more to it. There ARE a lot of married people who have a sort of mid-life crisis and throw away their marriages, but we can’t really jump to that conclusion here.

Like others, I think there is a lot missing and something that doesn’t add-up, even strictly from the financial standpoint. I have been in both positions in relationships. I have been a “non-contributor” as well as the one paying for everything. When I was a “non-contributor” what that really meant was that I either did not value spending on the same OPTIONAL things or I simply could not afford to. Sometimes it was an agreement/arrangement. For example, maybe I agreed to pay for the dinners out or furniture or weekend vacation or whatever it happened to be at the time, but my GF/wife understood that meant she would have to pay the electric bill or the car payment on her own. At other times I have been married and paid all the living expenses myself. In fact, when my wife did work, it cost ME more. Because I still paid all the bills and then had to pay for her work clothes, makeup, transportation,etc. Then when she got a paycheck she certainly didn’t want to use it to pay the gas bill or food or something. She needed some girly thing or entertainment. I suspect this sort of thing happens a lot. I saw an earlier comment about a wife’s net earnings going to pantyhose- not far from the truth in a lot of cases. Yet, there is not a lot of complaining about that double-standard. When the low earning husband/BF does that ( he’s probably not spending it on makeup but maybe he likes video games or comics or music or whatever), he’s a deadbeat. If I CHOSE to live a lifestyle that I knew my spouse could not reasonably contribute 50% toward, that’s my choice. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t contribute. Again, I know nothing about the ex-husband. However, I really suspect he did contribute in ways that may have been too easy to dismiss for someone with a high income who does not make a big deal out of expenses a lot of people can’t afford. Maybe he paid for “small” daily expenses that add up. Maybe he had other issues. Or maybe he bought “stuff” for himself the way that most low-earning or non-earning wives do.

I also must respectfully disagree with J.D. in comment # 154. One of the reasons I really LIKE this blog is I feel like J.D. tends to be pretty “balanced” when it comes to money/life and between cutting spending as well as increasing earnings. It’s never been one of these super extreme judgmental frugality personal finance blogs. There are a lot of those out there. That said, this blog has always been written by a middle-class guy for a middle-class audience. At least that’s how I’ve perceived it. If I’m not wrong J.D. has mentioned his regular job income was around $40,000. I have nothing at all against high earners, even those with vacation homes and paid staff. However when I think of “frugal” I don’t think of ski homes, 5500 Sqft primary residence, the expectation of $40k per year college, and so on. And while the “GRS Way” probably can include high earners with vacation homes- provided they spend less than they earn and contribute to retirement accounts, it is at the very least not relatable at all for most people. I doubt Mandy intended to, but when she said her income seemed normal for executives in managment, she pretty much said she doesn’t make an unusual salary- for a rich person. Most people no matter how well-educated, hardworking, and/or naturally bright will ever have the opportunity to earn what a low paid executive makes. I think most people can relate to this about as well as a Major League Baseball player who only makes $400,000 as a rookie. He’s not making Alex Rodriguez money, but he’s getting paid. I think most of us can relate more to the “GRS way” as getting rich slowly with a middle-class income, owning 1 house, saving where it makes sense, maximizing investments and income the best we can. A big reason we get rich SLOW is because we don’t have huge incomes. So we have to do it over time.

I’d also be interested to know if she foresees returning to a profession similar to her higher earning position if her freelance goals don’t work out.

I’m curious as to how the reduced financial circumstances have affected the kids – was it hard to get them on board with cutting back or are they actually benefiting from the reduced disposable income by learning how to budget their own money better – maybe taking on part time jobs now and contributing in some small way?

It would seem that, once the author allowed the other spouse to ignore the joint financial responsibility, the wheels were set in motion. Very sad. I hope it all works out for all involved. I’ll pray it does.

Jan DeVries has very interesting economic histories of women in the labor market in the Netherlands.

Got any links or references?

I don’t think you are reading the article close enough. Your “grrl power” comments are very sexist and irrelevant to the article at hand. Please note the following quotes:

“He was a teacher, but had been a stay-at-home dad for a few years while looking for something new.”
“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.”

I know men who have divorced after feeling like nothing but ATM machines by their wives. I don’t think it was beyond reasonable for her to ask him to contribute if he was earning an income…and to resent him when he CHOSE not to.

Considering how overpopulated the world is, perhaps fewer families having children (and those that do, having fewer children) isn’t such a bad form of social engineering.

Women and Men really do need each other, but this natural relationship dynamic has been skewed to the point where families are disintegrating, whether by deliberate or unintended social engineering.

Perhaps, the post I linked to overgeneralized things a liiitttle bit, but anyone who says there isn’t any truth to it, well, they’ve got the rationalization hamster spinning around in their heads looking for ways around it.

I don’t deny a woman’s or man’s “place” in society at all. I never even said that a woman “belongs in the home and that’s it!”. Yet you assumed I did when you said that women “ALWAYS worked outside the home”. Both have extremely important contributions to the family unit that they are naturally attuned to. Gender is not only genitalia but hard-wired as well.

That aside, I think Mandy’s whole story is smug and self-serving. I’m entirely uncomfortable with this whole article. It’s not informative since the amount she had puts her in the top 5% of income earners. Divorce would be financially devastating for me. Not a super chance to stay home with my kid.

Jen at 172 said it best. She was the higher income earner and was comfortable with that. But it’s what she chose for their lives.

This whole article reeks of self-entitlement gooey new age bullshit. So does her personal website. I’d love to hear from her husband.

Bad move JD.

The real truth of feminism

Michelle, isn’t it ironic that this woman was the primary breadwinner in her marriage? Isn’t that what the modern women wants: equality and then some? So she complains about her husband not contributing enough money (i.e. resources in these modern times) to household expenses. YET, men have uncomplainingly been doing this since the earliest pre-civilization ages. So now that the roles are reversed, she had the power, the job, the money, the house, the vacation house, the kids and SHE’S complaining?

Shouldn’t she be happy that she’s the modern grrrll pwr woman who has everything and that man is finally in his place after thousands of years of misogny? Isn’t this what the modern woman wants?

THAT is irony. We women have what we want, men have the lower status roles that women used to be in, yet you are basically still complaining about the man not living up to his role. Oh. My. Gawd.

I suggest you read my link with some humility and introspection.

Marriage isn’t just for having children, this isn’t medieval times, and I think most of us respect couples who work it out, but sometimes you don’t work it out. My parents had a miserable marriage, made worse when my dad cheated, well Mandy don’t let them get to you. Any time you do something that is public or put yourself out to the public such as blogging then people will like you and others won’t.

You wrote about a very controversial topic, divorce. That tends to bring out a lot of emotions with people. Thanks for sharing your story, I think even if you had provided people with the specifics they would have still criticized you for divorcing.

I do think part of the criticism stems from the fact that to some it appears as if she had been influenced by another divorced co-worker, but my brain says if she and her hubby had problems for awhile, then that conversation with her co-worker made her relate to her co-worker, they had a similar problem and could both relate to each other.

I think that’s where a lot of peoples complaints are coming from. Sometimes its how you word things that matters if she had said

“I’ve been the provider for our entire family for years, my husband hasn’t had a job in 10 years or so and hasn’t made an attempt to find one, I was tired of being the main provider, when we got married we both agreed to work and I didn’t understand why all of the sudden he stopped working, we tried to work it out, but eventually he gave up looking for work and I got tired of being on his case. I wanted to be his wife and not his mother. I couldn’t make him go to a job interview no matter how badly I wanted to.”

I think if she had written it that way, less people would have vilified her. I realize to some people she saw another co-worker divorce and they think she decided to divorce on a whim. I didn’t see it that way when I read the story.

So yes, she’s still really well off, but not at all what people are projecting.

GGRRRRRLL PWR!!!! I’m empowered! Yay! I’m not happy, so i’ll just do what I want. Everyone else is getting divorced, so that must be an option.

If it was a MAN that wrote this story, we’d be reading comments like:

He abandoned his family. He didn’t have the guts to keep everything together. What a jerk, didn’t he consider the consequences?

A $75k yearly “allowance” works out to about $2 mil nest egg assuming 4% SWR. That puts her in the top 5% of households in the US.