So my wife and I are deeply in love, and have been in a relationship for years. We both have well paying full time jobs, and as naive/spoiled as it sounds, we want to spend more time together-even if it means being way more minimal (smaller apartment, less/no nights out to eat, etc). Is this not possible? Could we both work part time jobs and make it?
We live in Buffalo NY, if that helps in terms of cost of living. Any ideas/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Do people ever do this?
You could start a business together.
How would you be set for health insurance? Not many part-time jobs offer it, and buying it on your own can be expen$ive.
My major concern in that situation would be about your retirement. A part time job may pay the bills for now, but what about the future?
My g/f at the time and I both had barely over minimum wage jobs, averaging maybe 30 hours a week each. We had lots of free time, not much money, but if you dont mind cooking inexpensive basic stuff at home and living simply.
The fun thing was how much we got into stuff like board games, cards, etc. Cheap entertainment, very personal and interactive.
Starting a business together is kinda a neat idea, but as a self employed person I would question your sanity in this economy unless you were opening a pawn shop.
This would be the biggest hurdle for most people, I think. Part time jobs with benefits are few and far between.
As Scarlett said, it’s going to be difficult to afford health insurance if you both work part time. I work PT for a fortune 50 company and to buy it out would cost me $800+ a month for family coverage. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
It’s also going to be very difficult to put money away for a rainy day, illness, or retirement if you spend everything you make today. And if you ever hope to have kids, just forgetaboutit because they’re money suckers.
Before I’d quit my FT job, I’d put together a budget for your new revised incomes and then live it for a few months to see if it’s realistic. It’s one thing to say that you can live without cable; quite another to actually do it. And remember that even if you’re crazy in love today, nothing dispels romance like not being able to afford to get new tires or take a vacation.
One other thing you might consider is trying to find an employer who will let you take unpaid vacation. My company allows employees to take unpaid vacations if they aren’t eligible for it yet, up to a maximum of 4 weeks per year. Taking off one week every three months will go a long way in giving you time together while protecting your income and necessary benefits.
You might consider having one person go part time and use the other 20 hours of the week to take care of the household–the shopping, the cleaning, the errand-running, the bill paying. If all that gets done during the work week, it leaves nights and weekends to be together.
You might also consider switching jobs to ones that have a lot of free time–married teachers, for example, see very little of each other during the school year but have nice big blocks of time together in the summer and holiday seasons.
Thanks for the input so far guys. Here’s some additional background:
We don’t have a car (I take the metro to work)
My wife can’t have kids
We live fairly minimally
So with this in mind, and yeah the health insurance would be bad, I don’t know…we want to try 
The budget thing is a good idea.
Keep that advice coming 
You don’t have to be employed with anyone in particular to set up your own retirement account. Some places like TIAA CREF are even having openings for anyone to invest with them…basically you need to think before you spend, and squirrel away as much as you can when you can.
Oh GOD NO!
Not saying it might work for SOME, butttt
My girlfriend and I had to refurb/rebuild a rental property of her’s that had been turned into a meth lab.
A few months into that kind of “togetherness” and everybody’s lucky that it didnt turn into a murder/suicide on a couple of occasions…
People do retire early and then pick up part time jobs.
There are three big questions: Can you live on it - happily enough. Including having enough money for “the landlord jacked up the rent?” Can you afford health insurance? Can you put money aside for retirement? In some cases, the answer to the last is “we’ve already put enough away for retirement.”
No kids will make it a lot easier.
Note that a lot of part time jobs are horrible in terms of controlling your own time - you work opening at the coffee place, she ends up closing at Target, she has the Saturday shift at the intake desk at the hospital, you have the midweek lunch rush - and you can work less and see each other less than you do now.
Are you really sure about the “way more minimal” bit? I know two couples who have done pretty much what you’re suggesting in this past year. All four are now back working full time. They missed the stimulation of work, and they found living simpler lives on much smaller incomes far less fun than they had thought (or possibly romanticised) it would be.
I’m here to agree, you have to be totally tight with your partner to live a frugal life. In the absence of all the distractions which can be bought with extra money, you really get to know each other and get really close. I would guess that some people just can’t deal with the closeness, so be careful it’s what you want. Especially with the economic climate, in which it’ll probably be way more difficult to move up in work hours than to scale back.
A couple that I know sort of do this.
The main difference? They inherited a duplex and have no mortgage payments and the rental from the other side pays the taxes and maintenance on the building.
They are both hippie commune kids, and are more like the people on that british show where they raise their food [cant remember the name of it to save my life…]
Jay and Sandy grow most of their food, work part time jobs [one works for meals on wheels 4 hours a day delivering lunches] and the other one works in a local not for profit doing routine clerical stuff. Their main expense is basic cable and internet access. They have a basic telephone service [no long distance, nothing fancy.] They buy all their stuff secondhand, and scrounge stuff up on the bulk garbage days when people put out the big crap like rugs, old appliances and furniture.
I would say that if you have to actually pay for your dwelling, it can not be done.
Hm, if you already live minimally, what are you going to cut when your income takes a 40% (20% x 2) nosedive AND you have to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance premiums? (If you are considering going uninsured, any endorsement for your plan goes right out the window.)
The economy is in the toilet, so most companies are reducing their workforce, so ideally you could work something out with your current employer. Would they be willing to accomodate your request to simply reduce the number of hours per week? If not, have you checked the Want Ads to see what companies are even hiring right now? Have you asked a Head Hunter what hourly rate you could expect in your field working part-time? (You might be unpleasantly surprised how profound the pay gap is between part-time and full-time) Do you have unique job skills that you’d be able to contract out?
What about working in the same place or for the same company and spending the day together there?
On the other hand, I know a couple that have been doing it for 25 years - next year they can collect social security. They even did it with kids.
In their case, he had a “very” high paying job. One day he realized he didn’t like his job. They had always lived very frugally for his income. He had stock options in a company that experienced incredible growth, so they cashed out, paid off their small home, and retired.
They drove the same used car for 15 years - and only had one of them. If the stock market wasn’t doing well, then they’d pick up part time jobs. They started a housekeeping business and could both work full time doing that, but keep their client list down to working two days a week - together. The kids went to public school and public colleges. Their kids have long left home now.
The Good Life
A little crazy yes.
In these economic times you do NOT want to lower your income. The option to increase it back if necessary may not be there for a while.
What can you do? Mrs. Dvl and I spend virtually every moment together because our skillsets were a perfect match for a business (communications consultancy). Also, our client interests (international non-profits) aligned, so we share the same focus.
The result is that we spend 24 hours a day together.
For us, it’s bliss. (Except maybe when we quit smoking.)
Oh, we get insurance through a part time client (keeps us on the books). There are also freelancers’ unions that help you buy into a group policy. I heard that in the downturn their rates got quite competitive.
So focus on what you can do for a spell, and see if that can turn into a business opportunity.