Improve being you got more wealth.
If yes, roughly, by how much?
For me, yes!
We are both currently PhD students, so our salary is not so high (about 30K/year each after taxes). With our combined salaries and our not-so-extravagant lifestyles we can save comfortably while still being able to spend in our hobbies. We are also very privileged in having two families that would be able to help us in an emergency if something goes very wrong, and we have a good health insurance and no debt.
We end up paying a bit less each by renting a single much larger apartment rather than two smaller "student" apartments. So it ends up being a lower total cost for a much more comfortable living place.
Since it is now two of us that cook, we cook a lot more often rather than buying meals, which ends up saving us a lot of money. If I buy food at work it is about $10 for one meal, and we can easily make 4 meals for $10.
We found a place that is 20 min away from each of our institutes by bike, so we don't have a car and rarely use public transport.
Our gym lets us share a single membership if we live together, so that is about a $350/year saving.
We have also learned some money-saving habits from each other, so we try to combine the best habits of each one of us.
At the moment I can save about 30% of my salary most months. If we move into higher-paying jobs afterwards, we don't have any reason to increase our spending until we have kids so we will be able to save more. We also want to move away from this beautiful but very expensive city, so living will become a lot cheaper.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
Absolutely not.
As a single guy, you can cut a lot of corners and find your life acceptable. I was making one of the higher wages in the city I was living in (it was a small city in the middle of nowhere so that doesn't mean much) and happily renting a room in an old lady's basement and that was fine by me. I didn't need anything fancy to eat, and I could happily just chill out on my computer for a few days if I didn't want to spend any money. Moreover, you can set a budget and stick to the budget and the only person you need to keep disciplined is yourself.
Once you get a woman into the mix, you can't cut those corners anymore. You're going to rent a whole space (we moved into a house). You're going to be getting real groceries. You're going to be funding real stuff to do. If she wants to spend a bit more money, she's going to spend a bit more money.
She filled a hole in my heart and I'm so glad we found each other, it's made my life better and after 10 years of marriage we just had our first son which filled another hole in my heart I never knew was there, but under no circumstances whatsoever can I say it made my financial situation better.
poVoq@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
I think this is an important insight, even though it is a bit unfair to put the blame on the woman like that. The problem is rather the concept of the nuclear family and the expectations it puts both on the women and the man and all the assumed to be necessary lifestyle that comes with it. Saint Andrewism made a video about more or less this recently.
So yes, due to sharing expenses and some tax incentives for nuclear families it does in theory appear to be cheaper to live together like that, but in reality people have plenty of other forms of living, often cheaper and more fulfilling (or not).
However women do seem to be still more invested in the model of the nuclear family as it is sold to them as the model that gives them the most autonomy as a stay at home mom. This is a myth, but one hard to break, and for someone quite opposed to the concept this makes it very hard to engage in romantic relationships.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
Honestly, I'd argue the opposite. My wife is a stay at home wife and a stay at home mom because it is her will to do so, but she exercises her will in defiance of overwhelming societal pressure to go out and get a career even though that isn't what she wants to do with her life. If she's talking to people she's never going to meet again, she just lies or changes the subject when it comes up because it's so uncomfortable hearing the judgmental "oh... you don't work."
Unfortunately, postmodern culture mistakes freedom to choose to do a thing with an obligation to do a thing, and the freedom not to do a thing with an obligation not to do a thing. The point of freedom should be that we each have the autonomy to follow our own chosen path willfully, rather than an obligation to follow whatever path has been prescribed for us. To switch one prescribed path for another isn't freedom, it's leading you out of one cage and into another.