My humble opinion is that if you are not able to put pen to paper yourself and figure out if this will work then you are not ready to do it.
(Sorry to be a hardass, but no one else seems to want to call a spade a spade.)
Agreed, especially because it sounds like the idea of making a budget was new to him. Eek!
I’m all for the Hallmark romance bit but what your suggesting sounds more like codependence than love.
You might want to consider your time apart is what makes you two appreciate your time together. With out that frame of reference, you may discover your new found time together becomes very mundane.
I don’t know. I’ve always felt that in order to keep a relationship interesting; EACH person needs to keep their identity and their own life. This way each person can continue to have their own stories and experiences to share with their partner later.
Because that sure beats hearing the story of how your partner won the high school championship for the millionth f’n time!
We do manage our budget. I guess what I meant was that this idea of two part time jobs is a new concept, so I am not sure what kind of part-time job I would have to have in order to support a certain lifestyle.
Also a little background: We are relatively new after college to the workforce and are both in IT (she’s a developer and I’m a project manager) for web companies.
Thanks for the advice so far guys. It sounds like some of you think it’s possible but tough. We’ve considered doing some freelancing, combined with a more low key/part-time web job…
If you are both in IT, then couldn’t you work from home on your laptops two or three days a week? It would kind of be like working part-time but keep the full-time salary and benefits. Also, if she is your wife, and you are freshly out of college - you have the next 50 years to spend time with her. No need to hog each other all up right at the beginning.
ITA -
Why don’t you spend a few years living minimally on your current salaries with your current benefits with your current time schedules? Save up as much as possible and when you’re feeling good about that nest egg and the economy is better, the decision will be much easier.
In that case, I’d highly recommend against it. If you live minimalist now on part time jobs, you won’t save fore retirement. If you are young and just out of college, you don’t have anything saved for retirement. Retirement will come faster than you think (remember when you were twelve and you thought it would be FOREVER before you went to college - life only speeds up) and in saving compound interest is your friend. You are young enough where you won’t have a pension, might not get much in social security, and should start planning on being able to care for yourself in your old age.
Get a smaller apartment. Live frugally. And put every penny you can into retirement. When you can afford to retire, you can retire - that may be fifteen years from now with luck and perseverance. But going to work every day is not going to suddenly get easier - and eventually, you will have to.
FWIW mywife and I are both in IT as well, bit longer than you. We’ve been working together for the last 7 years. Before that we spent 4 years in the same company and we’ve even served in the regular Army and NG together. You don’t have to open a business to work together. You do however have to be professional about it.