Stop including your spouse’s net worth as part of your own!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dh and I aren’t divorcing. And if he dies I get his money.

Most people never mention net worth. It’s a hard thing to calculate. Everyone I know uses household income, which by definition means both incomes.

I agree. If you are your spouse's beneficiary then you should include combined wealth. If you're not then I understand why someone wouldn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never understood why people do this. While it’s not quite as dumb as my saying, “Elon Musk and I together are billionaires!“, it’s pretty close.

Just head on over to the relationship forum if you don’t believe that marriages end. And even if you do stay together, marriage requires a lot of compromise and sacrifice. If you consider net worth as a measure of financial freedom, the drawbacks of marriage really eliminate a lot of that “freedom.“

Moreover, if two 35-year-olds each have $500,000 saved, why do they suddenly become millionaires when they get married?? But it makes people feel better to say that they have a net worth of $1 million instead of $500,000, so I guess we’ll keep using this silly standard.

This makes no sense. You would know that if you had a healthy marriage/relationship

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never understood why people do this. While it’s not quite as dumb as my saying, “Elon Musk and I together are billionaires!“, it’s pretty close.

Just head on over to the relationship forum if you don’t believe that marriages end. And even if you do stay together, marriage requires a lot of compromise and sacrifice. If you consider net worth as a measure of financial freedom, the drawbacks of marriage really eliminate a lot of that “freedom.“

Moreover, if two 35-year-olds each have $500,000 saved, why do they suddenly become millionaires when they get married?? But it makes people feel better to say that they have a net worth of $1 million instead of $500,000, so I guess we’ll keep using this silly standard.

That’s ridiculous. 100 percent of our assets are joint; there’s no way we’re divorcing. People get married to create a joint life, which means—more than anything—joint finances for increased stability.

[Anonymous]

Divorce rate is much lower than it used to be, and so I wouldn’t let that idea deter you from considering a spouses income as part of your net worth.

[Anonymous]

You seem to not understand what marriage is.

[Anonymous]

When planning retirement costs I consider household expenses and whether we would be able to have the lifestyle we want. It makes no sense to go through some convoluted math to back out what my costs would be as a single person. So if I am considering expenses jointly it makes sense to consider assets jointly.

Divorce is of course always a potential risk factor although I think the incidence of divorce decreases after several years of marriage. I suppose if one's marriage is rocky they should consider the potential for divorce in their retirement planning decisions.

[Anonymous]

My wife and I had zero assets and negative net worth when we got married and opened a joint bank account. Would seem odd and suspicious if I didn't include her net worth with mine when we built what we both have together.

[Anonymous]

It depends on whether the money was earned during the marriage, vs before or being an inheritance.

[Anonymous]

That's right people. We should stop speaking about money that is legally ours and which would be awarded to us in case of divorce because someone on DCUM finds it annoying.

[Anonymous]

This is silly.

Net worth is generally done as household net worth. I say this as someone coming from a household where each spouse manages their assets separately (other than our house).

The only exception is if premarital or inherited assets were always kept pristinely separate.

To the person who thinks net worth is hard to calculate, all I can say is really? To the penny, of course it would be hard, but estimating is easy.

[Anonymous]

How do you propose we divide it? I outearn DH by a wide margin so we would not have been able to save nearly as much without my income. But we have joint accounts and homeownership for everything except tax qualified retirement accounts. We’ve worked hard together to build our net worth, including making budget decisions, investment decisions, etc. So it is ours.

Obviously if we divorced we’d have to divide it. Not sure how that would end up working but it’s also highly unlikely at this point.

[Anonymous]

Though not as passionate as OP, I can kind of see were he/she is coming from. Those stats are combining the assets of two people and comparing it to the assets of one person. The married couple will obviously have significantly higher expenses and there is about a 50% chance that your assets will be cut in half if/when you divorce. The haters on this thread probably like the stat because they feel more accomplished than they actually are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Though not as passionate as OP, I can kind of see were he/she is coming from. Those stats are combining the assets of two people and comparing it to the assets of one person. The married couple will obviously have significantly higher expenses and there is about a 50% chance that your assets will be cut in half if/when you divorce. The haters on this thread probably like the stat because they feel more accomplished than they actually are.

Yes, two people have higher expenses than one, but not twice as high because there’s only one household to maintain. Dividing the asssets in half doesn’t give a clear picture of the financial health of the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Though not as passionate as OP, I can kind of see were he/she is coming from. Those stats are combining the assets of two people and comparing it to the assets of one person. The married couple will obviously have significantly higher expenses and there is about a 50% chance that your assets will be cut in half if/when you divorce. The haters on this thread probably like the stat because they feel more accomplished than they actually are.

Yes, two people have higher expenses than one, but not twice as high because there’s only one household to maintain. Dividing the asssets in half doesn’t give a clear picture of the financial health of the family.

Oh, it will be CRYSTAL CLEAR when you get divorced

[Anonymous]

It is true though whether the net worth is enough for you to stop working depend on how many people will live on it
2 million could be enough for one, but not enough for two