I make about 1/4 more than my husband. We have 2 Accounts and I write a check to his account every payday, leaving enough to pay some bills. He takes care of most of the bills. I autopay the insurances from my account and put money into savings. It’s not a problem for us. BTW, I have a BS degree and he has about 5 degrees, including a PhD.
Interesting question.
I have been on all sides of this. My father earned significantly more than my father-in-law, at least towards the end of their respective careers. So the Lovely and Talented Mrs. Shodan and I don’t really come from similar financial backgrounds.
On the other hand, when we first married she made almost three times what I did. Time passed, as it tends to do, and currently I made almost four times what she does. (Got a raise this morning. Woo hoo!)
But it has never been an issue, then or now. To give her credit, she has never mentioned it back when she was making the bigger bucks, and it doesn’t come up now.
No matter who makes the money, it is our money. We decide how to spend our money together. She does the books for our family (she has the MBA, not me), but there is an understanding that we communicate before any large purchases.
It works out.
We had this discussion back when some friends of ours got divorced. It is quite clear that, if she wanted to, my wife could take me to the cleaners financially should I be dumb enough to leave her. Doesn’t matter. I don’t want any defenses against her. We don’t have a pre-nup, we own our house jointly, the investments are in both our names, I have life insurance and she doesn’t - if I am found murdered, she will be the prime suspect. 
Regards,
Shodan
He’s an engineer and makes good money. I am going to law school, and so he pays all of the bills. Before I went to school, I was making about 1/3 of what he makes, maybe less 
but we didn’t have any problems whatsoever. All of my money went directly into a savings account and we lived off his earnings.
When I graduate from school, I am expecting to make slightly more than he does. I don’t know what that will be, but likely I will work for a mid-size firm in either Chicago, Minneapolis or Columbus, with plenty of experience and a great resume. So you can work out from there what I will likely be making.
My dream is to have him go to working part-time and get his doctorate or master’s, or whatever he wants to do. It is fine with me if he quit working altogether and chased any dream he wants. He has supported me so wonderfully without any complaints for years, while I struggled to find a job and keep it when I found it. If he wants to be a house-husband and raise a couple of kids, fine. If he wants to go into academia, fine. My only requirement is that he have a plan, and work toward it with conviction and pleasure.
I would shower him with bonbons and diamonds if I could 
. He doesn’t like either of those things, though.
I guess the only problem I have is the fact that when I was growing up my parents had a couple of rough spots monetarily, and I almost never got to spend my money on “fun” stuff – that includes make-up and non-practical clothes. So I have a bit of a hang-up when it comes to buying books or music or computer games, and when he makes all of the money I feel a bit strange about spending “his” money so selfishly, so I generally don’t. It’s going to feel really strange when I have my own money to fool around with.
My wife and I have traded places in the “who earns what” category more times than I can count. When we first got married I was making a career change and had an entry level job. She made about 1/3 more than me. With one job change we were equal, then I started making more. Gradually my raises slowed down and she pulled more or less even. Then I got laid off, went to work for a non-profit organization and now she’s making 1/3 more again.
We kept separate accounts for the first couple of years. When the princess was born, we quickly realized that children would quickly soak up any disposable income we had, and we started putting all the money into a single pot.
We’ve never really had any serious problems with money, probably because both of us came from solidly middle-class, middle-American backgrounds where buying a car was a major decision and taking an annual vacation was a bit of a stretch, if not an outright luxury. And now that we have three kids in college, our children are still soaking up any disposable income we might have.
Very interesting thread.
When my wife and I first started living together and sharing finances (about 4 years ago) she made about twice as much as me. I was right out of college with a Bachelor’s degree in Poly Sci and stuck in a dead end job. She is an MBA with a great job and promising career.
This was never a problem in the relationship and she never even brought it up but deep, deep down it always made me feel like less of a “man”. I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but I couldn’t help how I felt. Everytime we had to make a big purchase or go on vacation, I couldn’t 50/50 split what we were doing and she had to pay more for me.
Since then, I went back to school, got a degree in Comp. Sci. and have closed the pay gap considerably. Now she talks about how when the kid comes (did I mention she’s pregnant - I’ll have to start a seperate thread) that she wants to stay home. Although we can’t quite afford to live on my salary alone, if the time comes when we can, I’d be very happy if she’d do whatever makes her happy. Work, stay at home with the kiddies, run off and join the circus, wait maybe not that. I can’t imagine, though, that I could ever stay at home and have her be the “bread winner”. How 1950s is that of me?
GMRyujin: Too funny, sugartits.
If you are really a couple it won’t matter at all.
I make almost double my wife… She is a college grad and I’m not… we have been married 22 years… we both deposit all our money in the same checking account and have over the years taken turns doing the bills…
What I believe is more important for success, is that couples be within 10 IQ points of each other. When there is a greater disparity in intelligence couples do not understand each others point of view and disagreements at which point they can not be resolved mutually.
Indeed, too funny. But I have to wonder, if it’s your allowance, what does the other person care if you spend it all in one place? (Yeah, I know, I’m far too literal for my own good.)
Interesting thread. I make about 60-80% of the household income, thought she did come in w/ a substaintial nest egg through inhertants. I never though about the money comming in as mine or hers, however, just ours. I think this it the key. If you think of it as unequal (either way) then there is a problem.
Quite a lot of responses, and mostly from the camp that “it doesn’t make any difference in a good relationship”. Glad to hear that!
I still would like to hear from any dopers for whom this was a significant issue. Any guys who felt intimidated or “less a man” when dating a woman of greater financial means? Any gals who who felt they had less say in big family decisions because the guy bringing in the bucks felt he should have a greater voice? Or vice-versa?
Leave it to a Doper to analyze a one-off line. 
“Sugartits” is one of my new favorite words, one I intend to run into the ground.
QtM-I might’ve felt differently, but one of my good friends was doing the exact same thing I was (going to college and supported by Da Woman), so I could always claim to be just like him and Jefferson D’arcy (from Married With Children).
QTM, I know I’m late to this particular party but I do want to draw your attention to a recent book , The Two-Income Trap, by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, a consultant with McKinsey. I should caution that I haven’t actually read the book yet, but the reviews are interesting and the authors’ thesis presents another way of looking at income differentials within couples. Essentially, they argue that too many contemporary two-income families are taking a huge financial risk by depending on both incomes to support the family. If we think back to thirty years ago, when one-income, two-parent families were standard, if Dad lost his job Mom could go back to work and keep things going, at least temporarily. In short, job-finding odds are better when it’s two people searching instead of one. But now, when Mom loses her job, Dad often can’t even think about getting a second job to take up the slack while Mom searches. And for many couples that have accumulated too much debt, and live in houses whose mortgages require two incomes each month, the result can be quick disaster.
So perhaps it’s not a bad thing to have two spouses whose jobs have very different earning levels, if it results in treating the smaller income as supplemental - something that the family can live without if need be, or can be used on an emergency basis to pay the mortgage should the higher earner be laid off.
My wife and I have three accounts, and three credit cards: ours, mine, and hers. We decide together how much we’re going to put into “ours,” and everything else goes into “mine” and “hers.” All the bills, the mortgage and car payment, etc., come out of “ours.” Our credit card gets used for household purchases, and we pay the bill out of our account. I pay for my gas, my clothes, my books, my meals – my stuff – with my credit card, and I pay for that out of my account. The same goes for her. best of all, we do not have to account to each other what we spend from our own accounts, only what we spend from our joint account. We earn roughly equal amount of money (I earn a little more, and contribute a little more).
Compare this to 15 years ago; I was in a relationship with a woman 20 years my senior, with two nearly grown children. I rented a room in her (paid off) house (for my stuff; we lived together); she earned twice what I did, and had an inheritance besides, and she had expensive tastes. She sometimes paid my way for things, but other times wanted me to pay my own way, which often left me tapped out. I never felt like “less of a man” either way, but the combination of age and money left her feeling like “my mom,” and she required constant reassurance that she was not, in fact, playing some maternal role. What she also wanted was for me to keep some kind of account of how much she was spending on me, which I really thought was her responsibility.
It was other lifestyle issues that eventually drove her to dump me, but that lingering doubt about money didn’t help.
I’m not sure that I get this whole idea. So if wife is a stay at home mom and dad works they are more secure when dad gets laid off than a couple where both people work? Yeah, living to (or above) your means is stupid - but that is true if you have two parents work or one. Some money coming in is better than none. If SAHM even had a Saturday WalMart job, they’d be better off, they’d have some money coming in when Dad got laid off - plus she’d have some work on her resume and perhaps the opportunity to pick up enough hours to get some health benefits. Maybe they’d have to sell the BMW and buy a ten year old used Saturn, but they’d be able to buy Mac n Cheese and Ramen on the remaining income. I suspect that the issue is living to (or beyond) your means - or even more frightening - the thought that it takes two incomes to support a family to what most people think of as acceptible.
Sorry for the hijack. Brainiac4 and I have both always worked. When we first got together (2 years dating and the first 3 of our marriage) I outearned him by 10 - 30%. About the time the kids came along (5 years ago now), that relationship switched, and he has been outearning me (by about 30%). He switched industries and made a couple of career jumps rather quickly. I got out of the IT consulting industry before it sank into a corporate job for less money but more security.
I don’t know that its ever really made a difference who makes more - but realistically, we both make enough that either income is good by median household income standards - so it isn’t that my income is pin money. He was never threatened by my earning more (used to joke about it) - and took some pride in having a SO who was well paid. I think the best thing about two good incomes is it takes the pressure off either of us. I was free to get out of consulting and take a lower paying corporate job because Brainiac4 made enough to cover me - and he was free to take some slightly risky jumps in his career because I could catch him.
Which gets back to the hijack. We live a lifestyle that could be supported with some minor cuts by either one of our incomes. We wouldn’t buy new cars as frequently or as expensively (not that we do now). We wouldn’t take vacations - or not as often or as extravagently. Toys (adult and kid), gifts (we took my mother in law to Disney World last year - all expenses paid), dinners out and housekeeping would be cut or scaled back. Of course, we wouldn’t need daycare. And perhaps most tellingly, we wouldn’t SAVE like we do now.
I have two coworkers whose wives became SAHMs when their kids were born. I can say that the income disparity for them has NOT been good - its been one of the major points of contention in both marriages recently. But it certainly doesn’t have to be that way - my cousin and her husband have had an extreme income disparity since he finished his Fellowship (he’s a Cardiologist, she was a Nurse Practioner who is now a SAHM) - but both are happy with the situation. 'Course, money isn’t tight for them (they are both very frugal on top of him having a good income) and they share the same values which include her staying home being important for the kids. And both working at a similar income level doesn’t ensure happiness either, an in-law has two kids and works - everything she makes goes to bills and the business of living, while her good for nothing husband treats his paycheck as his allowance - buying boats and campers while his kids don’t have winter boots.
I read the book. The idea wasn’t exactly that a family with one income is more secure than one with two. It was more that a two-income family which spends the second income in ways that can’t easily be cut out is worse off than a family with one income, because that single income family can more easily replace the lost income, since there are two people trying to replace that one income. For example, a family which uses the second income for luxuries (eating out ,vacations, private schools, expensive clothes ) and savings can cut out the luxuries and savings fairly easily if one job is lost. A family that uses that second income for expenses that can’t be easily cut out ( a house or cars that can’t be afforded on one income) is going to be in trouble if a new job with equivalent pay isn’t found.
My husband and I make roughly the same amount of money. If he earned a lot more than me, he wouldn’t think that he got to make all the spending decisions. But I would feel uncomfortable spending money on myself.
Eh, I’ve had some relationships where I’ve earned more, some where he did. In my brief marriage, our incomes were nearly identical, we’d race to compare stubs each payday to see who’d “won” that week.
I think having similar attitudes about spending is more important than potential wage disparity. A saver and a spender will potentially face way more arguments than two similarly minded folks, whatever the incomes involved.
When fireman and I met we made about the same amount. When I stopped working that changed dramatically. Our income was cut in half.
Financially, after some adjustments, we’re fine.
I, however, have found myself not getting things I need, because I’m no longer bringing in a paycheck. We’ve talked about it alot.
Logicly, I know we can afford the things I don’t buy, but I’ve always worked (since age 13) and always paid my way. I didn’t really realize how important that was to me, until now.
Wow, me and Mr Pict. have been across the board here (and sorry Q, we have never had any major problems).
Started out with both of us making within a couple of hundreds/year the same. Then the kiddies came along and I became a SAHM (wow that’s a mouthful), and our income dropped in half :eek: But, we just tightened the belt; no dinners out, no vacations, one car, etc. All the money still in the ‘ours’ pot, but no major money fights; how can you fight over nothing?
Then I went to grad school, so again, minimal income from me. Now Mr. Pict earns about 1.5 times what I make and it still goes into one pot.
The only thing we have ever disagreed about is who pays the bills (the actual writing out of the checks, not where the money comes from). On this we have gone back and forth. It basically comes down to one of us saying “I can’t do this anymore, you do it.” I am doing it now but in 28 years it has been probably 50/50.
Qadgop, I’d be happy to elaborate (and I’m sure I could do so ad nauseum) on the situation I had with my ex, where money and our income gap was a huge issue.
I’m not sure how enlightening it would be, however, as I think it was much more a control issue than an actual MONEY issue, if that makes sense. In other words, if he and I both made a million dollars a year, we still would’ve fought, because he would somehow have perceived that HIS million dollars was worth more in terms of how hard he worked to get it or how important his work was compared to mine. Basically, my ex’s rationale regarding such things ran along these lines, according to the situation at the time:
A. I earn more, so I get to decide where the money goes. I get to spend money on what I want, and I get $150/week in discretionary funds, because I need it. You don’t need any money, but if you DO need it, I’ll give you $10 sometimes.
B. We earn the same amount, but I work harder. I work longer hours, and my work is more important than yours. So, I get to spend money on what I want, and I get $150/week in discrectionary funds, and you should pay all the bills and buy the groceries, and if you don’t have any money left over for discretionary funds, that’s too bad.
C. I earn less, so I should get to keep all of my money and you should pay all the bills. I shouldn’t have to pay them, because I need $150/week…
etc. You get the gist by now.
sigh It got worse, if you can imagine. Now, life is much happier. I’m much happier without him, and I think he and his money are much happier without me.
I don’t believe it can be quantified. It’s a matter of comfort level between the parties.
And Qadgop, who’s to day your relationship wouldn’t be better if she earned more money?
I also believe that each party should have sufficient income to return to the lifestylw they had prior to the marriage. It’s not exactly a formula to ensure a happy marriage, but it protects both parties to an extent should it not be a happy marriage.
I’m reading back over what you wrote, and I don’t know the studies you are referring to…but there is a HUGE difference between earning potential and a wage gap…
I think that if my husband supported me but I was incapible of supporting him - that would be a bigger deal than him making more. As it stands, I can support him and he can support me. If we decided that he was going to stay home with kids, the potential of his being able to support me when he stopped being a SAHD would still be there. If we decided he should support me while I went back to grad school, that would be OK because there is the potential for give and take.
In other words, it may be more of the abilitiy to give and take than the actual amount of the gap. And there has to be both the ability to give and take (i.e. similar earning potential) as well as the willingness to do so. One of my relatives is an MBA married to an attorney. She hasn’t practiced since the kids came along, but she could, which may be more important than that she doesn’t. She could support them, she is willing to if she must, but they have decided that her current occupation is more important. Another relative has a wife who stays at home - despite having the better education and no children at home, because she is unwilling to contribute financially and believes he should support her - which is a HUGE source of friction. The wage gap is real, the income potential is there, its the willingness that is lacking. In the case of my cousin married to the Cardiologist, she can’t support him in the manner he can support her, but he is relieved of a certain stress knowing that she could at least support them and the kids to some level if she had to and would willingly do so. In the case of both my coworkers, it isn’t the income gap that’s creating friction, its the hesitation on the part of my coworkers wives to return to work and contribute. Am I making sense?