Quote:
Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce
Ha, a smattering of this seems to be sliding from at least semi patriarchal to something else, maybe.
When 'the little woman' and I met, we were fully made individuals in chosen our career paths, earning similar incomes. During our life together my income has risen more or less commensurate to inflation while hers has more than quadrupled - in part because we decided I would take care of the mundane time killers, enabling her to do her thing - but mostly due to her advanced degree, which she sacrificed to acquire, and her incredible individual skill set. Our joint success allows us to enjoy a lifestyle that is far beyond my means, but to suggest that somehow she should not be entitled to individually reap the rewards of her success is almost as ludicrous as suggesting that one of us suffers while the other enjoys the high life. And so while my contribution, for example, to a dream vacation might be the car rental (while hers is airfare and hotels) it's no less important to me, and her, that we both make meaningful (but appropriate) financial contributions to every aspect of our life together.
There is no one size fits all, or any right or wrong way to successfully navigate this, but mature, like minded people are more likely to do this successfully, regardless how they choose to accomplish it.
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I assume in 10-15 years this is going to be the scenario I'm in.
While I've seen significant advancement in my position over the last decade or so, once out of University, my wife has seen almost equal advancement in hers (though at a lower base) and I've been fractionally outpacing her in the years since.
There's always the chance that I could keep it up over time, but considering the top-end of her field, it's also very possible that come our 40s she could be out earning me by 50% to 100%.
We keep separate accounts for our "personal" cash, and make proportional contributions to the savings pool (and RRSPs and such) to our wage (so I pay ~10% more than she does month to month due to wage disparity). When I want to buy a TV or a video card or some gadget, it comes out of my personal cash.
When we have a child, we've already agreed to increase our pool contributions by another 10% or so, but we carry a relatively minimal debt load as we only have 1 car payment (done in 11 months), bought a house at 75% of our max affordability, and had no outstanding debt at the outset of marriage.