Your spouse’s net worth is not yours!
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Anonymous
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Every time I hear someone talk about an unhappy marriage but lament that they can’t divorce because the financial hit would be too great, I feel like yelling, “THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER YOUR MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE!”
I have no idea why “household” net worth has become such a prominent metric, not just in popular thinking but even in government statistics and the financial industry. It causes people to engage in a “sunk cost fallacy” delusion in which they remain in an unhappy marriage to avoid “losing money” to which they were never entitled—contractually and unequivocally. The irony of this is that the purpose of money is to buy one’s freedom and happiness, but to “keep their money,” they must remain trapped and unhappy. People would be so much better off if they mentally calculated, from day one, their net worth as being “household net worth divided by two.” I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to start counting the net worth of everyone on my street as my own. After all, wealthier neighborhoods offer a higher standard of living by many metrics, so it’s reasonable for me to include their net worths when calculating my own financial well-being. “Yes, my net worth is $200 million. It’s too bad that you and your husband have only saved $1.8 million.” So stupid! |
Anonymous
| What? I'm the higher earner in my marriage, and I still feel like the financial hit would be too great. Two households! I don't really understand this post. |
Anonymous
| A marriage creates a household. A household has financial status, and spouses are financial partners. The legal system and courts recognize this. Not sure why you don't? So stupid! |
Anonymous
| We got married young when we both had nothing. Everything we have is joint, if we divorced tomorrow we would each have half of everything. |
Anonymous
| This post is really dumb. There is a huge financial benefit to combining two households into one household. That is obvious to people who are married, and that why divorce is expensive --- you have to double up a lot of costs that were combined before. |
Anonymous
| OP is single with not kids, obviously. |
Anonymous
| OP, you sound envious and have a chip on your shoulder. Agree with others - so stupid. |
Anonymous
| Huh?? |
Anonymous
| The only way your spouse‘s net worth does not count is if you had a prenup. Otherwise, your spouse gets half of yours. So the divorce will be costly for both. It always is. |
Anonymous
OP here. Higher-earner, lower-earner, non-earner—doesn’t matter. Your net worth is your household net worth divided by two. |
Anonymous
| Would you dispute that it’s much easier for a couple to live on $200k than for a single person to live on 100k? Or for a couple to retire with 3 million versus one person with 1.5? Throw kids into the equation and of course you’ll suffer if you divorce. |
Anonymous
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You're immeasurably stupid, OP:
1. Everyone knows they're entitled to half, BUT - 2. Lots of people, especially sole-earning males with wives who do not control the accounts, can hide large portions of their wealth so the other gets very little. It takes MONEY to pursue financial discovery. 3. People get used to a certain lifestyle that half of the HHI would not allow. Deprivation is RELATIVE. |
Anonymous
As a poster upthread pointed out, two households are more expensive than one household. Ergo, divorce entails a financial hit. |
Anonymous
OP here. You know who else had the brilliant idea of combining households to save money? These innovators called “roommates.” It doesn’t mean they can each claim the net worth of the other four as their own or that this advantage extends for perpetuity. |
Anonymous
| Huh...I'm also the hugh earner and our net worth IS our net worth. Then again, my money isn't family money. I earned it |