Reply to SAHM: what do you do to protect yourself financially?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "SAHM: what do you do to protect yourself financially?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Taking someone’s earned SS benefit/ retirement? Don’t people have any pride? I literally cannot imagine feeling entitled to money someone else earned. I don’t get it. How do you look at yourself in the mirror?[/quote]

Presumably, the SAH spouse enabled the working spouse to earn more money over the lifetime of their marriage.  As a legally married couple they have paid their taxes over the years.  And most likely the working spouse has earned well above the minimum social security earnings necessary to qualify for the maximum social security benefit - maybe double, triple or even quadruple the minimum earnings needed to qualify for the maximum benefit.  Yet, instead of getting two maximum benefits, they, as a couple only get 1.5.  If the working spouse dies the non-working spouse will be left with only 1/2 of his benefit.

Had the husband and wife both worked, they could have both earned less money, paid less in taxes and still qualified for two maximum benefits.

In my own case, I worked before marriage and I qualify for either my own social security benefit OR half my spouse's, whichever is greatest.  Most SAHs that I know have, in fact, paid into social security, they have just done it through their own work before kids and through their spouse's enhanced income due to having a SAH spouse.

No one gets married, quits their job and SAH for 10+ years because they are getting a fabulous deal on social security.  They absolutely have earned the right to a retirement income though, even if it is half of the social security check that their working spouse gets.[/quote]

Is your first statement something that is known?  Do workers with a stay at home spouse on average have a higher income than those with two working partners?  Because there are many of us 2 parent working families that both earn well above the min earnings required for max benefit.  But we can each only draw 1x the max benefit.

I don’t think we should allow sahps to pull from as (unless of course it’s based on their own earning pre and/or post kids).  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics