I was so happy to find this article on being a woman who is planning to marry a man who is deep in debt and who actually called off the wedding – at least temporarily – until he got this finances in order. It’s an issue no one ever talks about – debt in general, & money in relationships too. I’ve seen money listed as one of the top five things a couple should make sure they agree about (the other four are having children, dealing with family, sex, and religion) before they get married. Historically women end up with a lower standard of living after divorce, for instance, than men do, despite all the jokes about how women “get rich” via divorce. Those with children, even moreso.
I’m waiting for her to outline how exactly he managed this 53% reduction in so short a time. It’s encouraging.
This is part of why, even if gay marriage happens, I don’t want to marry. I think regardless of gender, marriage screws people financially. Tax-wise, and then of course the whole divorce issue. If I’m in a long-term romantic partnership, I don’t want finance and career to be a part of that. I consider those things to be something I’ve built up on my own, through my hard work, and the same for my partner’s money and career. What we’d be building together is love, trust, and a relationship. I don’t understand why the government has to force people to combine the money element if they don’t want to.
There is data somewhere that also shows financial debt is one of the top causes for divorce. How sad.
There’s the myth that all you need is to love someone to make a marriage work…..a friend of mine married a guy and found out afterward that he had a huge amount of credit card debt and hadn’t paid his taxes for more than 10 years. Apparently his mother’s finances were in the toilet as well, so there she was a newlywed having to deal with the results of everyone else’s debts.
Crap-o.
And that whole “getting rich off divorce”? Ha! For whom? The theory is that in a traditional marriage, a woman is just one divorce away from abject poverty. I think the myth must come from men who see a slight dip in their standard of living….gasp! a slight dip?! ugh….
Divorce is a scourge on every soul that it encounters, wives, husbands, especially children. Just for the record, I never married. So I was never divorced. But so many of my friends and family underwent the hell of divorce. The financial, emotional, psychic trauma is appalling.
No one wins in divorce.