My wife is a stay at home mom for the most part to our 2.5 year old daughter. About 6 years ago she decided to leave her job at a major bank. She had great benefits, pension, 401k, tuition reimbursement, you name it. She worked there for about 8 years but just couldn't take it anymore. She would complain every day. If it wasn't about the people she worked with it was about the job or the commute. I held out as long as I could and finally broke down and I told her to quit. I just couldn't listen to it anymore. Her heart just wasn't singing anymore and she wanted to do something different. She promised that she would get 2 jobs to make up for it. Financially we were in the position to do so. No kids, one cat, a very tiny condo that we now rent out.
Fast forward 6 years, we have a daughter and bought a new town home in 2014. She had odd jobs for the most part but nothing that made very much money, not even close to what she made at the bank. She decided to get her real estate license and has been doing that part time, but it's not that easy when you're home with the baby all day. The most she made in a year was $27k. Last year she only had one sale and that was in January. She make about $3k. She was making about $75k with the bank. My best year (with bonus) was about $90k.
Living on one salary has proven to be extremely difficult. We've run up credit card bills and taken money from our 401k to pay some of them off. She is constantly telling me that I don't make enough money to support us and that I need to make 6 figures. She berates me and tells me that I'm not driven and I should be looking for work somewhere else. It's emasculating. I do enjoy my job. I have great benefits and flexibility. I've been there for almost 4 years and really don't want to leave, but I may be forced to.
Recently we've been thinking of moving. We'd also like to have another child and need a bigger house with a yard. Since we live in a town-home, we don't have a lot of freedom for my daughter to play, plus we have a dog that needs a yard as well. The problem is that she wants to live in a very wealthy neighborhood. We simply can't afford it on my salary alone. I try to tell her this and gets pissed when I say we can't afford it. She says I need to make more money, tells me I'm lazy and not driven, etc etc etc. She actually mentioned that she made more money than me when I first moved in with her and she "should have known". That's some serious shit to hear from your wife that you sacrifice everything for. I moved from out of state 10 years ago and barely see my own family. I fire back at her saying things are very expensive nowadays and that we need two salaries to be able to save for the future / retire and pay for the things we need. She doesn't like to hear that. She will bring up friends that stay home while their husbands go to work. One friend in particular makes over $200k per year. I can't compete with that. She wants a life of leisure and I'm not adding up to the man that can give her that.
My dilemma is that if she has to go back to work, our daughter will have to go to daycare year round. She won't have a normal summer like I did when my mom was home and my dad was working. Things are very different than they were years ago. You need 2 salaries to survive. At least that's what I think.
My wife is not lazy, she does want to succeed in real estate, but given the current economic situation and the fact that she's home with our daughter every day, I'm not sure what to do. I think a lot of it has to do with her not doing as well as she'd like financially. She's always made her own money and doesn't like to rely on anyone else. She takes her insecurities out on me since I'm the closest one to her.
Just looking for some advice on how to handle this and if anyone else is in this situation. Do I leave my job that I enjoy to appease her or do I tell her to suck it up and figure out how to help out so we aren't drowning in debt? I don't want to assume all of the risk and stress for the next 20 years. I feel like she has a 1950s mentality where woman stays home and the man works but that does not exist anymore. Thanks for listening.
tl;dr wife doesn't like that I'm not making 6 figures. Gets mad when I suggest she goes back to work. She doesn't like that idea.
Submitted March 26, 2020 at 08:41PM by DrThundr https://ift.tt/2y9RysJ
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