You will always have my utmost respect as I remember you writing that you were "vetting her financially" prior to getting very serious. More people should do that.
My girlfriend moved into my house when I bought it and we put all of our money in one account and from there we pay bills, invest, spend money etc. I make twice as much as she does and it really doesn't bother me as long as she's contributing. She also brought some student debt along and we're working on paying that down. In five or so years she's going to make more then me when I [hopefully] switch careers and that won't bother me either, I'll catch up eventually.
The current girlfriend is a medical resident, so while I make more than her now, that's soon to change. But, well, I'm extremely modern in some ways, and I simply don't feel the need to be the breadwinner. I make enough money that my day to day expenses are covered, plus a few extras, so it's not as though once she starts making serious money that I'm going start asking for toys. I do frequently joke that my goal in life is being a trophy husband, though. I don't think I could voluntarily stop working completely and let someone else support me, but if the combined income were enough, I could stand to work part-time hours and spend the rest of my days being a house husband and have dinner ready when she comes home on the days I'm not working. As it stands, we pay for things evenly, but we also don't live together so things like groceries and investing and that sort of thing don't come up. Past girlfriends have been a bit different. The previous one was working towards an ESL diploma and working minimum-wage jobs to get there. It was a bit odd while the relationship was new because you don't want to talk about things like money, but at the same time I didn't want her to break the bank so she could pay for her half of dinner. So I told her if there was ever a problem she should let me know and I could pick up her tab or we could stay in for dinner. If we went somewhere for a weekend, I was the one paying for the hotel bill, that sort of thing. It was a bit uncomfortable for me because while I could afford to pay for her to do things with me I didn't want her feeling indebted for it. I'm sure that feeling was worse for her, though. But that's the thing, if either partner could pay for something and one of the partner picks up the tab for both, there's not much of a trade deficit because the other partner can pay next time. But if one partner can't pay for something and the other one can afford it for the both of them, there is an imbalance, and the partner being paid for might feel obligated to repay in other ways. Or worse, the person paying might feel entitled to some other form of repayment.
In partial/kinda/notreallybutstill defense of Juice, it does look bad if the guy is working at GameStop or Best Buy making 20k a year and his girl is bringing in 300k. If it is the other way around, most of us would look at it like "Well she's hot and probably fucks his brains out." Now if its a prestige/honor job like teacher like D26, then it doesn't matter, our kids can barely fucking read these days. We need teachers busting their asses doing shit and not worried about the money. You want them doing it for the love of the game. I'm just saying it actually depends on the job itself. Like if the dude is a yoga teacher and she's a stockbroker, come fucking on.
Re: Re: Primary Breadwinner Thread I would bet my segment hasn't been deflowered yet... But that's just a guess
That list is getting shorter and shorter everyday. The world is like Baskin Robins. I gotta try all 31 flavors.
I am definitely the primary breadwinner. Currently just in guaranteed salary I make about 3x what my wife does and that does not include bonuses and commission potential for me. With on target earnings I can get close to 5x her base salary. Were the roles reversed, I honestly would not care as we very much have a pooled income model and she really is our household CFO. Were it just my money alone we would not have the savings and other assets we have with her planning and discipline. I do think our roles bother my wife though. She has both an undergraduate and a masters degree in Architecture from Georgia Tech. She finished her Architectural Registration Exams this year and thus is a fully registered Architect. She is very good at what she does and weathered the downturn pretty damn well, with really about 8 total months of being unemployed for the worst 2 years 2009-2010 and has been working full time again the last 2 years. Relative to the rest of her industry she does very well . . . . . . and just finally surpassed what I made straight out of school in 2001 with an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and going into enterprise software right at Y2K. In a lot of ways it's not fair and I can understand why it hard for her. She is better educated than I am and in a classic discipline to boot, plus she is very driven to "pull her fair share," something I love so much about her. The lesson here kids is that despite what Hollywood shows you being an Architect is neither exceedingly glamorous or profitable.
I think the actual lesson here is to do a quick google search of your prospective career before you plunge $200,000+ and six years of your life into it. Then again you guys are really old so you probably didn't have that information at your fingertips, but I gotta believe there was some old parchment with it somewhere.