The main intent of this post is for me to vent. I feel like my head is going to explode if I don't verbalize it, and unfortunately it is not a good time to do so at home. My wife has been the breadwinner for many years now, and was making 30% more than I do going into this year. This was accomplished in large part from her hard work, but was not achieved without personal and professional sacrifice of my own. The significant disparity in income has never been an issue between us.

A couple of months ago, my wife pursues a promotion and receives it. She is now making 50% more than I do. Early retirement has always been an important goal of ours, and we immediately decided that the additional income would be used to help make that happen. Unfortunately, it did not take long for my wife to discover she HATES her new job. Although the actual work is not what she had expected, the main issue is a difficult employee that is making my wife's day very unpleasant. A couple weeks ago I received a text asking if she could put in her two weeks notice! After I picked myself up from the floor, I responded telling her we would have to cut into our emergency fund to cover expenses.

She later asked how much she would need to make, and said she didn't think she could survive the time in requirements before she would be allowed to transfer. I told her I would have to crunch the numbers. A day or so later, she tells me she applied for a job outside the company. When I asked how much it paid, I was shocked to find out that is was comparable to what I am making NOT what she was making.

Can we survive with both of us making what I make? Absolutely! Can we continue to put 20% of our salary into our 401ks and fully max out our Roth IRAs? Absolutely NOT!

All I can about is what the hell was all the sacrifice for if she is willing to take such a huge paycut. I am trying my hardest to be supportive of her, but I have hated my job and co-workers for at least 10 years now.

Ok, take a deep breath. It sounds like you are upset because your wife is pursuing a job that pays the same amount you make? After earning 30% more than you previously, 50% more recently.
What if your wife got sick, or through no fault of her own lost her job? Would you be mad at her for jeopardizing your early retirement, or be supportive of her?

What is more important, your wife's happiness or retiring a few years early?
If you alienate her (basically saying it is her job to make more for your early retirement dreams) the extreme case could be it ends in divorce. In that case, you won't have your wife, OR an early retirement.

Sorry if I'm being too harsh, or interpreted your distress incorrectly.

Does your wife always make major decisions without consulting you? Sounds like she's acting on pure emotion & not thinking things through.

I don't blame you. I'd be mad too if my wife just up-n-decided to apply for a job that makes way less just because somebody else was being difficult at work.

Wow, do you know how that sounds TW? I think he said she did consult him. But consulting does not mean asking permission. It sounds like they talked this through then she made her decision. What is wrong with that?



I am very surprised by this statement! I'm not even sure where to begin except to say that it does not sound like you have been married very long (or will be for that matter). Your partner's sanity should be an important thing to you and supporting your partner should be automatic.

It sounds to me like she HAS made a huge sacrifice for many years. Would you really want her to be unhappy? Does this change really have that much of an impact on your early retirement? Can you revise your plan so that you perhaps work a couple of more years or spend a little less in retirement?

I think you were right on!

I've been trying to think this through. Since we are only given percentages it's hard to understand how big a deal this is. But if he makes $100k and she was making $150k then it doesn't seem like such a big deal because there should still be enough "fat" in the budget.

If the numbers are more like him $50k and her $75k then it also seems like not a big deal because an extra year of work of a small budget cut over 5 years of retirement would easily make up the difference.

So I guess I don't quite understand why this is a huge issue.

Maybe I misunderstood but in OP's second post it sounds like she applied for the other job making less money without his knowledge. That's what I was referring to.

And I have been married for 10 years. My wife is going thru almost the exact same situation & I do support her but my wife needs to stand up for herself. Maybe that's a solution for his wife also.

She has only applied for a job, she has not accepted it yet. In my opinion one doesn't need household consensus just to go on an interview. (I say "consensus" because people seem to be getting all riled up that somebody should need "permission" from their spouse before making a decision that affects 20% of their total household income.)

Different relationships have different norms and interactions. "Do what works for [the two of] you" is one of the tenets of GRS.

The hard work you've done so far has gone into the savings you've built up thus far.

I think this is the crux of the matter. If you're willing to remain that long in a job you despise, I can see how you might not understand the point of view of someone who's not willing to put up with it. But life's a balancing act. People have to decide whether it's worth being miserable during their 30+ working years in the hopes that they'll be happier during the 5-30 years they might live once they retire. That's a big gamble, because you don't know how long you'll live. If you put up with stress and misery for 40 years and then die of a heart attack the day after you retire, all that sacrifice will have been a waste. If you are miserable for 25 years, retire early, and live a happy life until you're 85, it might be worth it. But you can't predict which of these futures will happen to you.

You seem to be the type of person who's willing to sacrifice professsional happiness and fulfillment now for happiness later. Your wife seems to be the type of person who is less willing to endure misery today for an uncertain hope of happiness in the future. Don't judge her by your standards.

After discussing this with my wife she agreed that the issue at hand is how women and men view life. From her perspective women are more relational. Work is just as much about the people women work with as it is the actual job. From our experience women often view things from an emotional standpoint while men often take a more logical approach. For a man, at least from my perspective, the job is a means to an end - to support my family. I really only am interested in what my immediate supervisor thinks of me. I try to get along with my co-workers but when I leave work to come home I leave the job behind. I worked at a job for 7 years that I didn't really enjoy. It paid the bills, kept a roof over our head, and allowed me to finish my higher education. As a man I felt this was my responsibility.

I'll give you another personal example. I have a friend who hated her job. Her husband wasn't particularly fond of his job either. She ended up quitting her job because she couldn't take the emotional drain caused by a co-worker and was without work for about 6-9 months. (I must inject here and say that there was some validity to her stress. However, quitting a job before having something lined up is never a good idea.) So she quit. Her husband ended up having to take on 3 jobs during that time and they had to dip into their savings to make ends meet. Later she was able to find a much better job and currently makes about double what she made at the original job in question. Her husband has now gone back to school and is now working 2 jobs. (However, he really doesn’t need to work now that she is making the big bucks…)

Men often speak one language and women another. Women see through pink glasses, hear through pink hearing aids, and speak through a pink megaphone. Men on the other hand see through blue glasses, hear through blue hearing aids, and speak through a blue megaphone. It is learning to speak each other's language and seeing the other person's perspective that really makes the difference.

Hope the OP is able to sort things out.

I think boiling it down to stereotypical differences in female-male perspectives oversimplifies it. Most of my bosses and most of my colleagues over the past 30 years have been women, and I've seen just as wide a range of temperaments and perspectives among them as I've seen in the men I work with.

I really think it's more an issue of individual temperament. It's similar to risk tolerance: some investors are more tolerant of risks than others, and if you explore it carefully you learn that it's not just about their level of education and understanding. One might think that if you educate young investors they'll all be very tolerant of risk when they're young, and become gradually less tolerant as they age, because that's the behavior that a proper understanding of risk should lead to. But that's not what happens. Even when faced with the facts, some investors who could benefit by taking on risk remain very conservative in their investments.

Some people are naturally risk-averse by temperament, and all the information and education in the world won't change them. Similarly, people's tolerance of stress and unhappiness at work differs based on their individual temperament. Maybe some men feel like they're supposed to knuckle down, grind through, and stick it out because they're men and they're expected to be tough. But that's actually weak instead of strong, because you're letting your decisions be ruled by societal expectations rather than confronting your own personal situation and deciding what's best for you.

I've had bad jobs before. It ruins your life. You can't understand what it's like unless you personally, day in and day out, absolutely despised getting up, dragging yourself to work, and doing something you hated for 8+ hours just to make ends meet. It doesn't matter if it's other employees or the actual work itself. It's unilaterally terrible.

I'm siding with the lady on this one. I hope you don't think she WANTS to make less money. Maybe she just wants to be happier? I can totally sympathize.

Antagonizing her will not help. Be rational and try to understand what things are like for her. You'll make it, and it won't kill your retirement.

I agree with Brad. I think what this really comes down to is "fairness." The OP's position is, "If I have to put up with a job I hate, then so should you."

I think "fairness" is an absolutely essential element to any successful relationship. Personally, in my own life, I don't care a whit whether my wife makes more than me or less than me, as long as I feel she's working as hard as me. If she were working 4 hours a day while I worked 10, and she was spending her extra 6 hours watching soap operas on TV, then the salary would be irrelevant. I'd feel resentful, regardless of the relative incomes.

This extends to housework, too. If we spend 2 hours cleaning the house, I don't really care if she spent the whole 2 hours cleaning the kitchen, while I mowed the lawn, did the laundry, and swept the floors. The bottom line is, we both put in an equal amount of time, so it feels like a team effort, and we're happy. But if she decided cleaning the kitchen was too hard, and instead went shoe shopping with her sister while I was mowing the lawn, that'd create conflict.

All that to say, the solution to the OP's dilemma is either for his wife to suck it up and tough out the new job (they're both miserable, but it's fair), or for them both to find new jobs they like (win/win). The money and early retirement factors are completely non-issues for me.