Liberal Forum

Fuelman » 05 Jun 2025, 1:18 pm » wrote: ↑

05 Jun 2025, 1:18 pm

Short answer, the wife hasn't written more than 50 checks in the last 20 years and rarely even looks at the checkbook.

There is an advantage to remarrying later in life. Hopefully a person learned a few things along the way. We both came from failed marriages and discussed all the deal breakers beforehand. Those deal breakers included physical or emotional abuse, codependency, control issues (mainly trying to mold someone into something they aren't), anger issues, mutual respect being very important. We haven't raised our voices at each other more than a handful of times in 20 years. It makes a difference! One of the wife's deal breakers was me being ok with her making more money. Well ****, what kind of idiot passes that up? I politely told her I couldn't compete with a Masters Degree as long as she was ok with it.

She is the medical professional so insurance and all medical stuff falls in her wheelhouse.

I was the slightly retarded math whiz doing calculus in high school. That didn't help much in the first marriage but I eventually figured it out.

Money fortunately was never a big issue, we grossed like $115k the first year we were married. Back then you could live pretty good and we did. It took about 10 years before we broke into the $150k range and ended up just over $200k. There was never really any plan per say. My distaste for handing money over to the IRS is really the catalyst that forced me to shelter as much as possible in 401k's and HSA accounts. It added up quickly. Uncle Sam will get his pound of flesh eventually.

Throw in a good dose of luck on timing and you end up being ok. Not rich but fairly secure. 

I have much sympathy for those in the trenches, life can be quite difficult!