So Many Shoes, So Little Money – Blog

Marry Rich

July 3rd, 2009

Some women believe that a sound financial plan is to marry well. I have written a post on this before – “you need a plan not a man” – but with all of the recent headlines about cheating husbands (John Edwards, Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign) and their suffering wives it bears repeating.

First of all marrying rich is never a given and rarely the solution. Second, there is no guarantee the relationship will work out. A lot of marriages end in divorce; it is a myth that you will always wind up with half of the assets. Third, having your own career means you are at no ones mercy. You answer only to yourself and are not dependent on anyone – a very empowering notion.

To paraphrase Maureen Dowd, if you give up your career to focus on your husbands/significant other/or at the request of a “special friend”, it is not his/her/their fault if things don’t work out and it turns out you sacrificed more for the relationship than they did. “Like an investor in a down market, you took a risk without a guarantee that it would pay off. If you make your significant other your career and you lose them, you lose your career too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/opinion/01dowd.html?_r=1

Raising your joint children is no guarantee either. Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Ensign and Mrs. Sanford all have children. Religion is not a savior – Governor Sanford considers himself a very religious man. Jobs can be lost – unemployment is currently 9.5%, and, in a worse case scenario your significant other could die.

The best thing you can do to take care of yourself (and your children) is to make and learn to manage your money.

Note on divorce rates:

Married adults now divorce two-and-a-half times as often as adults did 20 years ago and four times as often as they did 50 years ago… between 40% and 60% of new marriages will eventually end in divorce. The probability within… the first five years is 20%, and the probability of its ending within the first 10 years is 33%…

—Brian K. Williams, Stacy C. Sawyer, Carl M. Wahlstrom, Marriages, Families & Intimate Relationships, 2005 as quoted on Wikipedia

Filed under: Money Management

Tags: Men