Guest Post: Great Expectations of a Nontraditional Relationship

I’m currently away getting hitched and honeymooning on a secluded beach somewhere.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these guests posts that I have lined up for you!  I’ll be back online and back to reality on Wednesday, June 22, 2011.  — Amber

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This is a guest post by an anonymous reader of Blonde & Balanced who I have become friends with over the years.  She is a great person and smart and savvy – I hope you enjoy her guest post!

Like all teenagers, I thought I had everything figured out by the time I was 17. I was certain that my adult life was going to follow a certain trajectory. Of course I would attend a cool liberal-arts college (Evergreen, maybe?) I would move to New York City immediately after graduating to begin my fabulous career in publishing. And I was convinced that I would be happily married by age 27 and would have at least one child, if not two, by the age of 30 or so.

Can you guess how many of those things actually happened? Yep—none! I went to a state school (and as a result have no student-loan debt!) and moved to a midsize city instead of NYC. At 34, I have yet to marry or have children. I’m even still renting (which, as it turns out, I’m pretty happy about right now, because I would have bought at the height of the market). I’m not living the life that I imagined almost 20 years ago, but my life in general is good. Almost five years ago, I met the man who will be my husband in the not-so-distant future, I hope. He’s amazing in so many ways, and I love him very much. The catch? From a personal-finance standpoint, he’s in terrible shape.

The love of my life is in his early 40s and just opened up a 401(k) two years ago. He deposits around $100/month into that. He does have a regular savings account, but it has less than 10K in it. He’s never worked in the corporate world; he’s a hair stylist who recently became an independent contractor after years of working on commission. Depending on the number and type of appointments he has each week, he can do really well, especially after tips. But some weeks, if clients are busy or cancel or don’t tip well, his financial situation can get rough. Plus, now his taxes are even more complicated now that he’s doing them quarterly.

I, on the other hand, (for now, knock on wood) have a corporate job with a steady paycheck and full benefits. I contribute a good amount to my 401(k) every two weeks and have a really nice emergency fund. And, on average, I make about 10K more a year than he does, and I’ll make more than that over time. Which means that, in our household, I’m definitely the primary breadwinner, which was a role I never expected (or, truth be told, wanted) to have. It means that I usually end up paying for a greater percentage of our entertainment (concerts, going out to restaurants, travel) and even some necessities, like groceries and toiletries. And, in the future, it will mean that I won’t be able to be a stay-at-home freelancing mom like I had always assumed I would be. That fact, more than anything else, has caused me to do a lot of soul-searching and mental adjustment. And I will probably be responsible for more of our retirement. I’m younger, and I have the means to save more.

Over time, though, and especially during the time that we’ve lived together, I’ve come to see the positive aspects of our nontraditional situation.

1. He doesn’t have a 9-to-5 schedule. He’s off on Sundays, Mondays, and sometimes Wednesdays, and on most weekdays, he goes in to work late in the afternoon. (Fridays and Saturdays, of course, are booked full usually.) This is great news for when we hopefully have children. Even if I continue to work full-time, our child(ren) won’t spend much of his or her time in daycare. I’d like to minimize daycare as much as possible, and I really think it could be possible with our current work situations.
2. He works for himself. He pays monthly rent to the owner of the salon, and as long as he does that, he can schedule himself off whenever he needs to be or he can work longer hours for special clients if needed. There’s also the possibility that he might make more money at some point because he is no longer paying commission to a salon owner as he once was.
3. Since he has more free time during the week, he does the bulk of the house-cleaning, which is something I’m not a big fan of doing. He also runs the majority of our errands, which have included everything from taking the laptop to the Apple Store to taking the dog to the vet to mailing packages and everything in between. You know how it’s really difficult to run errands at places that are open Monday through Friday when you WORK Monday through Friday? BF and I don’t have that problem. It’s fantastic.

Now, this is not to say that we haven’t butted heads over money issues before. It took some adjusting on his part to come to terms with the fact that I make more money and that we may never be equal in that regard. He has felt emasculated at times, and I’ve felt frustrated that I’m paying for yet another meal. But I think that we both feel now that we each contribute equally to the happiness of our household, and our relationship has never been better overall.

Do you have a nontraditional financial relationship with your significant other? Are you happy with how things are going? What are some things you would change if you could?

This is a guest post by an awesome anonymous reader of Blonde & Balanced.  Show her some love by leaving a comment!