We pay people to not marry - just look carefully at the tax law and welfare benefits. My father was an IRS agent and when I told him I was going to get married at age 28, almost in a panic, he asked me if she was pregnant. I said no and he said, “my God, do you know what this is going to do to your taxes? Don’t tell the government your married, just your mother-in-law”.
I figure getting married has cost over $250,000 in extra taxes over the past 34 years. I lost all the benefit of income averaging and we had to pay highest rate on most of my wife’s income.
We figure early, keeping our incomes separate and sharing the cost of shared expenses gave us both a great deal of freedom and eliminated excess haggling over BS. If I want a new toy and could afford it, it was mine, she wanted new clothes, she could afford it, fine. The only rule, no debt.
The cause for marital discord are children and money, which are highly interrelated. Most of our friends who had children after 30 seemed miserable and would have give us there’s if we had asked. So we chose not to have kids. Everyday we hear about the expense of college, cars, abortions, STD’s, unemployed (unemployable) kids moving back in with their fatherless kids, etc., etc.,.
Everyday we look at each our, after nearly 35 years of marriage, and say “God I am glad we did not have kids, aren’t we smart!!” We have a little code with some one is dumping on us about some problem with their kid/grandkid - “Have I told you today (rest unspoken) how glad I am we did not have kids”.
People with kids say I don’t know what I missed. What I am blind and deaf? I tell them what they missed - sunsets on the Zambesi river listening the the elephants; the aurora borealis on the Stellar Glacier watching the bears; fishing the Prince William Sound; Dining with the aboriginals in the Aussie Outback; dropping rocks 11,000 feet into the ocean from the Southern Alps in New Zealand.
Yep, an extra fancy safari costs 2 months tuition at a private university. I know exactly what I would have missed..., Early retirement. If I had listened to my father, I could have retired even earlier, that $250,000 would be $1.5 mil now and I suspect I would still be with the same Lady.
You sound like the kind of man who made the right decision.
I’ll never understand married couple celebrating the fact that they have no kids. Look at all these fancy vacations we get!! Too bad your parents didn’t feel the same way. Enjoy your next trip to Tahiti. I’ll be back here contributing to the human race teaching my sons to read, ride their bikes, baseball, swimming...and yes soothing a skinned knee or taking an occasional trip to the ER. At least I’ll have a legacy other than a fancy photo album filled with pictures of me dancing with the flavor of the month savages....
You are brilliant and disciplined to live debt free. I am relatively successful but I am sure you have a lot more $ saved and obviously less debt than me. However, my son makes me the wealthiest person on Earth.