Reply to Your spouse’s net worth is not yours!

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[quote=Anonymous]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![/quote]

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