4 ms·

Because cost per year is totally how normal people value their relationship.

lazide 2y ago
If cost per year exceeds available cashflow? Everyone starts to think about the relationship that way at that time. If you’ve been around long enough, unless you’re really lucky, you’ve had that experience before.
- djtango 2y ago
  My wife and I recently did a model for how we expect our expenditure to increase once we have kids. We obviously will love our children but we find it irresponsible to not have done the exercise of how much our kids will cost per year (and what that means for our own personal savings etc).
  - lazide 2y ago
    If only it was just that type of situation. There are the ‘I must be a stay at home mom/dad because I can’t handle the stress’ type situations. There are the ‘I need to buy x we can’t afford to be happy’ type situations. There are the ‘we have kids now and he/she can’t leave, so I can do whatever I want’ type situations. I had someone actively sabotage my job (in a very difficult to detect way) because they were worried I’d leave them if I was too ‘independent’, or got promoted. And I’ve seen many other people have spouses do that to them too. Everything from dramatically increasing stress levels at home, to sabotaging sleep, or creating health issues until the spouse stopped ‘getting away’. All the way up to creating false accusations and trying to destroy them unless they got ‘under control’.
    - djtango 2y ago
      Wow that's horrifying - sorry to hear that you were in that situation and thank you for being willing to open up about this. It doesn't have to be just partners - a friend recently told me about her husband's younger sister who would regularly spend beyond her means then rely on her brother / parents to bail her out of her debts. That's also one of those impossible relationships where you feel obligated to help but the relationship has a real cost.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Yup. A friend of mine had his wife do something similar (first time) during an economic slowdown after he got laid off - she all the sudden started spending waaay beyond even their pre-layoff means ($60k something on credit cards) while hiding the bills and stuff she was buying. Luckily he figured out something was wrong before they went bankrupt on top of everything, but yikes. And at that point, divorce won’t solve his joint liability for the balance. At least the younger sister can only guilt the family into trying to cover her butt financially, instead of - well whatever that was.
  - knallfrosch 2y ago
    I guess for most people it's not about how expenditures increase, but how the income decreases when you lower the work time from 200% to ~150%.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Honestly, if someone is staying home it’s likely going down to 90% overall. Even if no one if staying home, with the impact of a young kid, 150% is generous. Because if the other party works as hard/long as they used to, expect resentment and turbulence.
    - djtango 2y ago
      Food, plane tickets, cots, nappies, child care, education, extra curricular, upsizing house/car - these are all pretty large expenses for kids... Sure every one of these can be squeezed but living solo/without kids is definitely leaner but yes its a double hit of expenditure goes up and earnings go down
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  > If cost per year exceeds available cashflow? How would that problem be solved by ending the relationship? You'd then have to pay even more for seperate rent, cars, etc. Or are you talking about one partner spending excessively and dragging the other partner into this financial mess?
  - lazide 2y ago
    There is almost always one larger earner, and one larger spender. For this to be coming up, necessarily someone (or both) has to be overspending. If both are low earners, and aggregate earnings are insufficient to cover the lowest set of available expenses, then someone (or both) need to be living in with their parents. Or they’re going to be homeless, or similar. Often; it’s one or both parties overspending on unnecessary expenses. In which case, splitting up almost always changes the dynamics so at least one of the parties can stay solvent. But there are infinite ways to screw this pooch, of course.
djtango 2y ago
I think modern dating via apps made this very transparent: if you're usually paying for dates (or even if you're splitting) you will start to develop an intuition for some kind of cost per interaction and this can be quite important if you're dating in any kind of volume because the expenditure can add up. Eg I had someone tell me in NYC they're spending almost 1k a week on dating. That's obviously an extreme example but when your expenditure is that high it necessitates being analytical about how you're spending your time and money. Then if you already had that mindset, it's natural to see how it can extend into relationships (and friends and family). Ultimately, relationships are about give and take and we can only give as much as we can give etc. But there's always some implicit assumption of parity and even if you don't care for perfect parity, it's worth doing the audit once in a while to assess whether you're happy being a net giver or a net taker or if you need a reset because relationships of all natures can and have been broken over money.

If cost per year exceeds available cashflow? Everyone starts to think about the relationship that way at that time. If you’ve been around long enough, unless you’re really lucky, you’ve had that experience before.

djtango 2y ago
My wife and I recently did a model for how we expect our expenditure to increase once we have kids. We obviously will love our children but we find it irresponsible to not have done the exercise of how much our kids will cost per year (and what that means for our own personal savings etc).
- lazide 2y ago
  If only it was just that type of situation. There are the ‘I must be a stay at home mom/dad because I can’t handle the stress’ type situations. There are the ‘I need to buy x we can’t afford to be happy’ type situations. There are the ‘we have kids now and he/she can’t leave, so I can do whatever I want’ type situations. I had someone actively sabotage my job (in a very difficult to detect way) because they were worried I’d leave them if I was too ‘independent’, or got promoted. And I’ve seen many other people have spouses do that to them too. Everything from dramatically increasing stress levels at home, to sabotaging sleep, or creating health issues until the spouse stopped ‘getting away’. All the way up to creating false accusations and trying to destroy them unless they got ‘under control’.
  - djtango 2y ago
    Wow that's horrifying - sorry to hear that you were in that situation and thank you for being willing to open up about this. It doesn't have to be just partners - a friend recently told me about her husband's younger sister who would regularly spend beyond her means then rely on her brother / parents to bail her out of her debts. That's also one of those impossible relationships where you feel obligated to help but the relationship has a real cost.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Yup. A friend of mine had his wife do something similar (first time) during an economic slowdown after he got laid off - she all the sudden started spending waaay beyond even their pre-layoff means ($60k something on credit cards) while hiding the bills and stuff she was buying. Luckily he figured out something was wrong before they went bankrupt on top of everything, but yikes. And at that point, divorce won’t solve his joint liability for the balance. At least the younger sister can only guilt the family into trying to cover her butt financially, instead of - well whatever that was.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  I guess for most people it's not about how expenditures increase, but how the income decreases when you lower the work time from 200% to ~150%.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Honestly, if someone is staying home it’s likely going down to 90% overall. Even if no one if staying home, with the impact of a young kid, 150% is generous. Because if the other party works as hard/long as they used to, expect resentment and turbulence.
  - djtango 2y ago
    Food, plane tickets, cots, nappies, child care, education, extra curricular, upsizing house/car - these are all pretty large expenses for kids... Sure every one of these can be squeezed but living solo/without kids is definitely leaner but yes its a double hit of expenditure goes up and earnings go down
knallfrosch 2y ago
> If cost per year exceeds available cashflow? How would that problem be solved by ending the relationship? You'd then have to pay even more for seperate rent, cars, etc. Or are you talking about one partner spending excessively and dragging the other partner into this financial mess?
- lazide 2y ago
  There is almost always one larger earner, and one larger spender. For this to be coming up, necessarily someone (or both) has to be overspending. If both are low earners, and aggregate earnings are insufficient to cover the lowest set of available expenses, then someone (or both) need to be living in with their parents. Or they’re going to be homeless, or similar. Often; it’s one or both parties overspending on unnecessary expenses. In which case, splitting up almost always changes the dynamics so at least one of the parties can stay solvent. But there are infinite ways to screw this pooch, of course.

djtango 2y ago

I think modern dating via apps made this very transparent: if you're usually paying for dates (or even if you're splitting) you will start to develop an intuition for some kind of cost per interaction and this can be quite important if you're dating in any kind of volume because the expenditure can add up. Eg I had someone tell me in NYC they're spending almost 1k a week on dating. That's obviously an extreme example but when your expenditure is that high it necessitates being analytical about how you're spending your time and money. Then if you already had that mindset, it's natural to see how it can extend into relationships (and friends and family). Ultimately, relationships are about give and take and we can only give as much as we can give etc. But there's always some implicit assumption of parity and even if you don't care for perfect parity, it's worth doing the audit once in a while to assess whether you're happy being a net giver or a net taker or if you need a reset because relationships of all natures can and have been broken over money.